"Smug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... while as forces on the same side may be reckoned the influence of the king and, in a greater degree, that exercised by a number of distinguished men such as Johnson and Burke. Ideas elaborated and propounded by French philosophers shook the smug satisfaction of the world in what was hard, shallow, and insincere, and combined with the stress of a great war to complete the slow progress of a change in English taste. After long hesitation literature ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... in the light of a second episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place in the house. The things beyond her knowledge—numerous enough in truth—had not hitherto, she believed, been the things that had been nearest to her: she had even had in the past a small smug conviction that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, however, she at last found out—with the discreet aid, it had to be confessed, of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken from her, for his comment on her ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... that officiated at these orgies. The visitors, indeed, were by no means of the turbulent stamp of their predecessors; but quiet, mysterious traders, full of nods, and winks, and hieroglyphic signs, with whom, to use their cant phrase, "every thing was smug." Their ships came to anchor at night in the lower bay; and, on a private signal, Vanderscamp would launch his boat, and accompanied solely by his man Pluto, would make them mysterious visits. Sometimes boats pulled in at night, in front of the Wild Goose, and various articles of merchandise ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... on fire. And the fire was burning away the smug complacency which had come to him during his long life in ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... all, one of the best histories of the English nation, certainly more readable than Freeman and less prejudiced than Froude, is neither studied nor mentioned in our schools. Even poor Acton, whose smug Whig bias is apparent to the stupidest, who nourished himself on Lutheran learning, "mostly," as he says, pathetically "in octavo volumes," is thought of darkly by the uninstructed as an emissary of the Jesuits. But who can either suffer from or accuse ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... Edgar, being instantly but painlessly killed. By such an act of an all-wise Providence I would at once become heir to one million dollars. It was a beautiful, satisfying dream. Even MY conscience accepted it with a smug smile. It was so vivid a dream that I sat guiltily expectant, waiting for the crash to come, for the shrieks and screams, for the rush of escaping steam and ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... tawny spark in his black eyes. Vandeman fronted him with the flamboyant embroidered monogram on his shirt sleeve, the carefully careless tie, the utterly good clothes, and, most of all, at the moment, the smug satisfaction in his face of social and human security. I thought of what that Frenchman says about there being nothing so enjoyable to us as the troubles of our friends. "Needn't think you can put it all over the boy when he's not here to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... warmly. Miss Maggie flashed her dazzling teeth; Teeters reached out and smote him with his fist between the shoulder blades; Mrs. Taylor laid her hand upon his arm with her large smug air of patronizing friendliness, and, stooping, beamed ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... had a feeling that, since he alone knew all the circumstances of his case, he alone was entitled to blame or to excuse himself. The glib judgments that moralists would pass upon his conduct could be nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic fools—of those not under this drugging spell—of such as had not blood enough, perhaps, ever ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the world, who know the World like Men, Scott, Rogers, Moore, and all the better brothers, Who think of something else besides the pen; But for the children of the "Mighty Mother's," The would-be wits, and can't-be gentlemen, I leave them to their daily "tea is ready,"[230] Smug coterie, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... so!" said Falloden wrathfully. "He is an impossible person. He wears a frilled shirt, scents himself, and recites his own poems when he hasn't been asked. And he curries favour—abominably—with the dons. He is a smug—of the first water. There is a movement going on in college to suppress him. I warn you I may not be able to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man does not know the meaning of the word friendship. He is not competent to judge, for his wealth precludes him giving a proper opinion. Smug-faced philanthropists can preach comfortable doctrines in pleasant rooms with well-spread tables and good clothing; they can talk about human nature being unjustly accused, and of the kindly impulses and good thoughts in everyone's breasts. Pshaw! ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... workshops. All that science has bestowed in the way of making labor and its surroundings clean and comfortable, healthful and attractive, was to be provided; all that the ignorance and the shortsighted greediness of employers, bent only on immediate profits and keeping their philanthropy for the smug penuriousness and degrading stupidity of charity, deny to their own self-respect and to justice for their brothers in their power. Arthur and he had wrought it all out, had discovered as a crowning vindication that the result would be profitable in dollars, that their sane and shrewd ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... living and dead. So when the ruler of the darkness shines over poor, commonplace Newport, the aspect of it is changed, and the gingerbread abominations wherein the people dwell are magnified into lofty palaces of silver, and the close-trimmed lawns are great carpets of soft dark velvet; and the smug-faced philistine sea, that the ocean would be ashamed to own for a relation by day, breaks out into broken flashes of silver and long paths of light. All this the moonlight ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... confusion was generated from the contradictions between Rodale's self-righteous and sometimes scientifically vague positions and the amused defenses of the smug scientific community. Donald Hopkins' Chemicals, Humus and the Soil is the best, most humane, and emotionally generous defense against the extremism of Rodale. Hopkins makes hash of many organic principles while still upholding the vital role of ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... certain knowledge, were put to death a hundred years ago, by master hands at the business, too. They ought, in decency at least, to look like pale ghosts 'revisiting the glimpses of the moon,' but they don't. They are smug, comfortable, and somewhat portly, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... and every bit of Brass as polished as the most refined Gentleman; the Servants were then running here and there, with merry Hearts and jolly Countenances; every one was busy welcoming of Guests, and look'd as smug as new-lick'd Puppies; the Lasses as blithe and buxom as the maids in good Queen Bess's Days, when they eat Sir-Loins of Roast Beef for Breakfast; Peg would scuttle about to make a Toast for John, while Tom run harum scarum to draw ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... dote on the Milky Way. The clouds are as soft as a fleecy rug, And as cool as cool can be. The skies fit into my figure snug, And they make me feel so blithe and smug That I am glad Fate made me Me. Oh Me! Ah Me! 'Tis a lovely fate And a mission great To be Like me And to love the skies, And the clouds to prize, And to hate the turbulent sea, He—he— So I lift my voice And I loud rejoice That the ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... nobility, for the bourgeoisie speedily took up with the puerile idea (said to have come from Holland, by the way), and built themselves grottos of shells, plaster and boulders. It was then that the chiens de faience, which the smug Paris suburbanite of ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... picking his motives to pieces: it was like seeing the child of your loins, of your hopes, your unsleeping care, turn and rend you with black ingratitude. Yes, everything went to prove Purdy's unworthiness. Only HE had not seen it, only he had been blind to the truth. And wrapped in this smug blindness he had given his false friend the run of his home, setting, after the custom of the country, no veto on his eternal presence. Disloyalty was certainly abetted by just the extravagant, exaggerated hospitality of colonial life. Never must ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sickened and saddened him. A solitary Earl's Court omnibus that lumbered past with its sinister, sparse cargo seemed to be a spectacle absolutely tragic—he did not know why. The few wayfarers were obviously prim and smug. No joy, no elegance, anywhere! Only, at intervals, a feeling that mysterious and repulsive wealth was hiding itself like an ogre in the eternal twilight of fastnesses beyond the stuccoed walls and the grimy curtains.... The ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... for its personal and private enterprises. In works dealing with those times it is not often that we get penetration into the underlying methods of the trading class. But a lucid insight is inadvertently given by Walter Barrett (who, for sixty years, was in the mercantile trade), in his smug and conventional, but quaintly entertaining, volumes, "The Merchants of Old New York." This strong instance shows like a flashlight that while the success of the shippers was attributed to a fine category of energetic qualities, the benevolent assistance of the United States Government was, in ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Pickwick." Observe the dramatic animation, with the difficulty of treating a number of figures seated in regular rows. The types of the lawyers are truly admirable. In this latter piece there are no less than thirty-five faces, all characteristic, showing the peculiar smug and pedantic cast of the barristerial lineaments. Note specially the one at the end of the third bench who is engrossed in his brief, the pair in the centre who are discussing something, the two standing up. But what is specially excellent ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... the parents, four wives became a positive luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. It was a regrettable change from the original program and it did very little good to the cause of Mohammedanism. As for the prophet himself, he went on preaching the truth ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... of incalculable power, in the era which ended with the Civil War. The New Englander of the Middle West, however, ceased to be altogether a Yankee. The lake and prairie plains bred a spirit which contrasted strongly with the smug provincialism of rock-ribbed and sterile New England. The exultation born of wide, unbroken, horizon lines and broad, teeming, prairie landscapes, found expression in the often-quoted saying, "Vermont is the most glorious ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... or promise or threat, what confidence that there was more to tell thereby like a magnet compelling any wandering information, is not known; nor is known what hatred of his conqueror, of a gallant form and a stainless name, may have uncoiled itself to poisonous ends in the soul of the small, smug, innocent-seeming man to whom he spoke; but at the end of a half-hour the Captain of the Cygnet left his prisoner of the San Jose, moved swiftly and lightly down the corridor to his own apartment, where he crossed to the window and stood there with his eyes upon ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... to make other people think. No one who came in contact with him escaped this; it seemed to crackle electrically in the air around him; he was a sort of human thought-conductor, and he shocked many a smug and self-satisfied citizen into horrific life before he had ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... to witness such a scene has not with astonishment reflected on the difference between a real committer of a murder, and the idea of one which he has been collecting and heightening all his life out of books, dreams, &c.? The fellow, perhaps, is a sleek, smug-looking man, with light hair and eyebrows,—the latter by no means jutting out or like a crag,—and with none of those marks which our fancy had ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... irony of events turns our sternest resolves to ridicule. On the next street-corner was a hair-dresser's shop, its genial little proprietor, plump and smug, rubbing his hands and smiling in the doorway. Beholding the commanding figure of the yellow-bearded young aristocrat, afar off, his professional mouth watered over him. What a harvest for shears and razor was here! Dare he hope that to him would ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... with determination. "I 'm not a calling man. And I 've come down here for rest and recreation. I 'll pay no calls. Let that be understood. Calls, quotha! And in the country, at that. Oh, don't I know them? Oh, consecrated British dulness! The smug faces, the vacuous grins; the lifeless, limping attempts at conversation; the stares of suspicious incomprehension if you chance to say a thing that has a point; and then, the thick, sensible, slightly muddy boots. I 'll pay no calls. And as for making acquaintances—save me from ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the Socialists and the Labour men, the Syndicalists and the Communists, the Nationalists and the Internationalists. All those who work for freedom are learning breadth. If they ever find a leader, I think that this dear, smug country of yours may have to face the greatest surprise ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... map], the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were lit in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... stop from Paris. My family scampered out and away and we followed leisurely after. Fontainebleau is quite smug. There is a fashionable hotel near the station, before which a fine tall fellow in uniform parades. He looked at our basket with contempt, and we looked at him in pity. Just beyond the hotel are smart shops with windows ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... reason is that so often our gardens are neither for private ease nor social joy, but for public display and are planned mainly for street exhibition. That is the way we commonly treat garden fountains! We make a smug show of unfenced, unhedged, universal hospitality across a sidewalk boundary which nevertheless we hold inviolate—sometimes by means of a painted sign or gas-pipe—and never say "Have a seat" to the dearest ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... up to me with quizzical joviality as usual. But the smug luster of his face was faded and his kindly black eyes had an unsteady glance in them that belied his vivacity. I could see at once that he felt nothing ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... rather poor, mute way, rode beside her husband to funerals, weddings, and to the college Commencement of their son at Yale. Scrimped a little, cried a little, prayed a little in private, but outwardly lived the life of the smug in body ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred "brownie" and "chipmunk" magazines were started in America. Every man with two or three ideas and ten dollars' capital started a magazine. Steele, teeming with thoughts demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal, started the "Tatler," to be issued three times a week, price one penny. Seizing upon a creation of Swift's, "Isaac Bickerstaff," a character already known to the public, was introduced as editor. Bickerstaff announced his assistants, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... frankness; of liberty and restraint; of lust and license; of brutal horse-play passing for "wit," and of candour marching with cant. The working classes scarcely called their souls their own; women and children mercilessly exploited by smug profiteers; the "Song of the Shirt"; Gradgrind and Boanerges holding high festival; Tom and Jerry (on their last legs) and Corinthians wrenching off door knockers and upsetting policemen; and Exeter ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... smug selfcongratulation was soon succeeded by a strange nostalgia which took the form of romanticizing the lost land. American books were reprinted in vast quantities in the Englishspeaking nations and translated anew in other countries. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to strike the smug Pharisee in the face, and in order to conquer that unwomanly impulse I hurried out of the office, and into the street, leaving poor ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and drink; O soul, make merry. Carouse thy fill. Ignore the maimed lives, the stricken heads and seared hearts, the reddened fangs and ravening claws of nature all round thee." Pessimism is sympathy. Optimism is selfishness. The optimist folds his smug hands on his ample knees, and murmurs contentedly, "The Lord has willed it;" "There must always be rich and poor;" "Nature has, after all, her great law of compensation." The pessimist knows well self-deception ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... whilst plate glass and a muslin curtain alone intervene between us and the broad asphalt of the Boulevard. A morocco book, a sheet of vellum, and a pencil, are before us. We write a dozen lines, and hand them to our companion; he reads, nods approval, and transfers the precious document to the smug and expectant waiter. The sharp eye of that Ganymede of the Gilt House had at once detected our Britannic origin, conspicuous in our sober garb and shaven chins; and doubtless he anticipated one of those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... bearing rather puzzled her. There was not a particle of the professional street-singer about Baubie Wishart, the child of that species being generally clean-washed, or at least soapy, of face, with lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually, too, with a smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. Baubie Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too. She ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... smug snob of virtue. You may find him a professor at the university; you may find him leading prayer-meetings and preaching pure politics; you may find him the bloodless philanthropist; you may find him a rank atheist, with his patents for the bringing ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Hooley Hill Is smitten with a devastating chill, And the once cheerful neighbourhood of Pleck Has got the hump and got it in the neck. The residential gentry of Pont Rug No longer seem self-satisfied or smug, And the distressed inhabitants of Nantlle Are wrapped in discontent as in a mantle. Good folk who Halted once at Apsley Guise Are now afflicted with a sad surprise, While Oddington, another famous Halt, Is silent as a sad funereal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... of universal morality the altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept alight A community without crime would be a community without warm and elevated sentiments—without the sense of justice, without generosity, without courage, without magnanimity—a community of small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We can have too much of crime, no doubt; what the wholesome proportion is none can say. Just now we are running a good deal to murder, but he who can gravely attribute that ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the bill to the lady, saying simply that you cannot get it discounted. Leave the rest to me, and I think the bill you have endorsed to Sparkle will be paid." Comforted by this assurance, Axminster, fearfully changed from the nervous, but smug hopeful man of the morning, departed. It now remained for me to exert what skill I own, to bring about the desired result. I lost no time in writing a letter to the Honorable Miss Snape, of which the following is ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... exceedingly busy in calculating the chances of a huge fight—indeed they spend a good part of each year in that pleasing employment. Smug diplomatists talk glibly about "war clearing the air;" and the crowd—the rank and file—chatter as though war were a pageant quite divorced from wounds and death, or a mere harmless hurly-burly where certain battalions receive thrashings of a trifling nature. It is saddening ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... staring at the smug young medical politicians and the tired old general practitioners filing in and out. One of the latter halted, fumbled in his pocket and ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... The smug, mysterious gentleman who made this picture was much pleased, apparently at nothing more than that he had proved that I had a clutch of the heart, which I had announced, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... the smug and confident contention: "Medicine is a science, one and indivisible," so impressive and undented as it was. Sir Astley Cooper in his plain, blunt way is reported to have described his own idea of his own calling as "a science founded on conjecture and improved by murder." The State ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... you know what sort of nonsense that smug gambit heralds in letters from your kindred. Even so, I now owned the Townsend house and an income sufficient for daily bread; and it looked just then as though the magazine editors were willing to furnish the butter, and occasional ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... when you offer me the salt I accept it. Why should I deprive you of one of the little complacencies of unselfishness? You see, my dear Sir, either you are to feel smug all over, or I am. Now, if I take the salt—so—I perform a true act of courtesy; but, if I postpone the salt, saying 'After you,' I at once enter into the lists, jousting with you for the prize of self-satisfaction. With my two friends it was, if I remember, a matter ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... having a devil of a time! There's a smug chap in a bowler hat who is supposed to be my valet. When I went to bed last night, I found I had a decent room enough, opening out of the sitting-room. I was obviously expected to turn in there, asking no ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... paradise, green and sunshiny and fanned by warm breezes—excuse these poetries. And you can sit in your class in Evidences of Christianity—of which you knew as much as a Chinese laundryman does of force-feed lubrication—and look out of the window and see your best girl sitting on the grass with some smug oyster who has saved up his cuts. How I used to hate these chaps who saved up their cuts till spring and then took my girl out walking while I went to classes! Is there anything more maddening, I'd ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... of towns. During the last two centuries the wealthy burgesses had grown still more wealthy in the expansion of trade, commerce, and manufactures; many had struggled and bought their way into the ranks of the nobility. The small tradesmen had remained smug, hard to move, and resentful of change. But there was a large body of men unknown to previous constitutions, and growing ever larger with the increase in population—intelligent and unintelligent artisans, half-educated employees in workshops, mills, and trading-houses, ever ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... this man very much, and treated him with the greatest harshness and scorn. He would thrust him, like a cur, over his threshold, and would even spit on him. Shylock submitted to all these indignities with a patient shrug; but deep in his heart he cherished a desire for revenge on the rich, smug merchant. For Antonio both hurt his pride and injured his business. "But for him," thought Shylock, "I should be richer by half a million ducats. On the market place, and wherever he can, he denounces the rate of interest ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... almost cordial in comparison with the cold bow which the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an "I was expecting you" in which perhaps an intention showed itself, the lawyer pointed the Nabob into a seat near his desk, told the smug domestic in black not to come till he was summoned, arranged a few papers, after which, sinking into his arm-chair with the attitude of a man ready to listen, who becomes all ears, his legs crossed, he rested his chin on his hand, with his eyes fixed on a great rep curtain falling to ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... fail to glean at least some slight degree of wilderness knowledge. Both Virginia and Lounsbury had been on horseback before. Virginia had ridden in the parks of her native city: long ago and far away a barefoot, ragged boy—much to be preferred to the smug and petulant man who now tried to hard to forget those humble days—had bestrode an old plow horse nightly on the way to a watering trough. But this riding had qualities all its own. There was no open road winding before them. Nor was there any trail,—in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Innocence—these steeds do gallop for sufficient reason, namely—they are to gallop bidden being ridden, bestridden and chidden by whip and spur applied by certain trusty men o' my company, which men go habited, decked, dressed, clad, guised and disguised as smug, sleek ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... the maggots madden me. "I know you for what you are, and I am unafraid. Under your mask of hedonism you are yourself the Noseless One and your way leads to the Night. Hedonism has no meaning. It, too, is a lie, at best the coward's smug compromise." ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... le Garou, as he was called by some, although I speak of these things as locally familiar, it is very sure that to many citizens of the town they were quite unknown. The smug shopkeeper on the main street had scarcely heard of him until the day after the final scene at the slaughter-house, when his great carcass was carried to Hine's taxidermist shop and there mounted, to be exhibited later at the Chicago World's Fair, and to be destroyed, alas! in ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... enough of this. I forbid you, as I have already done, to hold any communication with Mr Armstrong. Know that, of the two men, the man you affect to scorn is infinitely less a villain than this smug hypocrite. Go!" ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... except a grisly, purple scar that twisted down beneath the right eye of the man. It drew down the lower lid of that eye, and it pulled the mouth of the man a bit awry, so that he seemed to be smiling in a smug, half-apologetic manner. In spite of his youth he was unquestionably the dominant spirit here. Once or twice the others lifted their voices in argument, and a single word from him cut them short. And when he raised his head, ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to the great company of human beings technically known to so many of us as the poor, there would have been friendly neighbours ready to help them, and the same would have been the case had they belonged to the class of smug, well-meaning, if unimaginative, folk whom they had spent so much of ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... sort did!' exclaimed this personage. 'Yes, your damned smug, settled, sensible sort made the French Revolution. Oh! I know some say it was no good, and you're just back where you were before. Why, blast it all, that's just where we all want to be—back where we were ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... gratification when the speaker continued: "If you were, you wouldn't have come out with that one." Again, you observe, there is no answer to this kind of attack. Hence, I suppose, its popularity. And yet perhaps to take refuge in a smug sententiousness, and remark crisply, "Handsome is as handsome does," should now and then be useful. But ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... in smothered giggle and unprotesting acquiescence she sensed the resumption of eternal discipline. Already in just this trice of time she felt her rampant young mouth resettle tamely into lines of smug, determinate serenity. Already across her idle lap she felt her clasped fingers begin to frost and tingle again like a cheerfully non-concerned bunch of live wires waiting the one authoritative signal to connect somebody,—anybody,—with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover,—he is now piece-meal, in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... old, he made his first literary hit with Sartor Resartus which called out a storm of caustic criticism. The Germanic style, the elephantine humor, the strange conceits and the sledge-hammer blows at all which the smug English public regarded with reverence—all these features aroused irritation. Four years later came The French Revolution, which established Carlyle's fame as one of the greatest of English writers. From this time on he was freed from the fear of poverty, but it was only ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... had to be civil because the Trowbridges respect them very much; but it was difficult when the man said that England was the most immoral and decaying country in the world, and his wife echoed him. He is a smug old fellow with a fringe of grey fluff growing out all round under his chin; and his upper lip, very long and shaved, is like the straight cover you see on mantelpieces ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... name all his days. Therefore Sapt let Mr. Rassendyll doubt and struggle, while he himself wrote his story and laid his long-headed plans. And now and then James, the little servant, came in and went out, sedate and smug, but with a quiet satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. He had made a story for a pastime, and it was being translated into history. He at least would bear his ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Old Amzi, if he hasn't changed, is a fat-head who's content to sit in his little bank and watch the world go by. And I guess he's got a nice bunch of brothers-in-law on his hands. Poor old Amzi! There was always something amusing about the cuss, even when he was a smug little roly-poly as a boy. But I passed his bank this morning and it looked like an undertaker's office. The contrast between that old tomb and your plant pleases me, Will; it soothes my family pride. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... official record of the trials and rehabilitation of Joan, then about to be elaborately issued. Clemens was greatly pleased at being invited to prepare the Introduction of this important volume, but a smug person with pedagogic proclivities was in charge of the copy and proceeded to edit Mark Twain's manuscript; to alter its phrasing to conform to his own ideas of the Queen's English. Then he had it all nicely typewritten, and returned it to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and then, after long periods of silence, that the labor movement puts in its claim for notice. All is quiet. The kind old world spins on, and the bourgeois masters clip their coupons in smug complacency. But the grim and ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... smug. "Now Elmer will be angry at you. Maybe he'll disintegrate you. Or paralalize you ...
— The Aggravation of Elmer • Robert Andrew Arthur
... tripods projected—a new ray it must be—it was melting a passage six hundred miles long. Under our rafts, under our fleets, under our coast defenses—to come up far behind our lines. The ridge joined the coast just south of New York. Some night, while our generals slept in smug complacency, all that gray green horde of wolves would ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... "Don't be smug. It's just another worldful of people with the same old likes, dislikes and hatreds. But they are evolving a way of living together, without violence, that may some day form the key to mankind's survival. They are worth looking after. Now get below and study your Disan ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... it would sound a little—smug?" Canby asked timidly. "The way we've got him now, Roderick seems to me to be always seeing himself as a splendid man and sort of pointing it ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... reformers of all sorts have not infrequently in times of scarcity and danger been taken by their proteges for the authors of their trials and stoned, whilst the smug Government which caused the ruin, well bolstered up in the affection of its 'taxables', chuckled, serenely confident in the unending folly of mankind. Most certainly the Jesuits struggled to do their duty to ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... must be bought & ordered for the Bridegrooms shirts, the Brides smocks, Cuffs, Bands; and handkerchifs; & do but see, the day is at an end again: my brains are almost addle, and nothing goes forward: For M^{rs}. Smug said she would bring linnen, and M^{rs}. Smooth laces, but neither of them both are yet come. Run now men and maids as if the Devil were in you; and comfort your selves, that the Bride will reward you ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... are his passport. He cannot seem smug, nor colourless, nor over-prosperous: he is too vivid and too vigorous. His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... afford a smug smile. For hadn't he risen gloriously from Thieves Row to director of famed U.T.? Was not Earth, Moon, and all the Belt, at this very moment awaiting his command for the grand coup? And wasn't ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... houses that surrounded them. He heretically calls the Isis 'a mere moat,' the Cherwell 'a ditch.' The brilliant dare-devil from Italy despised alike the raw, limitary, reputable, priggish undergraduates and the dull, snuffling, smug-looking, fussy dons. The torpor of academic dulness, indeed, was as irksome to Burton at Oxford as it had been to FitzGerald and Tennyson at Cambridge. After a little coaching from Dr. Ogle and Dr. William Alexander Greenhill [45], he in October 1840, entered Trinity, where he ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... countenance of the maid and the smug figure of Finkel, who apparently did not recognize ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... far greater advantages lie with the High School senior. He is four years younger. He has lost no illusions. He has developed no sense of values. He is not conscious of the world outside his vision. But in spite of a smug conviction of superiority, the college senior has heard life knocking at the door of his young illusions. He has moments of wistful uncertainty. No, it is the High School senior who ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... no means a large class—the grave, dignified, self-possessed, well-mannered waiter; smooth-shaven, spotlessly clean, noiseless, smug and attentive. He generally walks with a slight limp, an infirmity due to his sedentary habits and his long acquaintance with his several employers' decanters. He is never under fifty, is round of form, short in the legs, broad of shoulder, and wears his gray hair cut close. ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor adjoined. Each had its ante-room, in which a private secretary wrote eternally at a roll-top desk, an excessively plain-featured stenographer rattled the keys of his typewriter, and a smug-faced page yawned over a newspaper, or scanned the cards of visitors with the air of an official censor. At intervals, an electric bell whirred once, twice, or three times; and, according to the signal, one of the trio disappeared into the presence ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... thee, and make thee rich, and heal thy hurts, save the holes in thy ears, that I may know thee for mine own." But Daniel gave no heed to him. So the Devil departed, having great wrath, and entered into a certain smug-faced man standing by. ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... estate man and began wandering about. I asked a group of Italian women and they exclaimed in a chorus "No marine views left." I hadn't said a thing about a "marine view." I wandered further and it was always the same. Some were smug and some were sorry but they all spoke of a "marine view" in a certain tone of voice, as Boston people ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... I say so? Really I think it was apt enough; now I remember them. Lady Wrinkle—oh, that smug old woman! there is no enduring her affectation of youth; but I plague her; I always ask whether her daughter in Wiltshire has a grandchild yet or not. Lady Worth—I can't bear her company; [aside] she has so much of that virtue in her heart which I have in mouth only. Mrs. After-day—Oh, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... hint.... It was an aspect he had never once contemplated before Sir Isaac died. He could on his honour, and after searching his heart, say that. Yet in Pall Mall one afternoon, suddenly, he caught himself with a thought in his head so gross, so smug, that he uttered a faint cry and quickened his ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... box, whatever he might have felt, was far too astute to show any sign of ill temper. His eternal smile was as smug as ever and so also was it over the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... mood. The little matter of the delayed letter had brought out that alien streak in him again, and once more he saw the Griersons as he had seen them in the early days of his return, unsympathetic, prejudiced, almost smug. He had been striving hard to win their approval. He had given up Lalage; he had written only things of which they could approve; he had become engaged to a girl essentially ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... is a scene in which the four martyrs, Bland, Frankesh, Sheterden, and Middleton, condemned by the Bishop of Dover, 25th June 1555, are shown being burned at the stakes. One of the martyrs certainly looks intensely smug with his hands folded as if he were at grace before a favourite dinner. Yes, du Maurier certainly failed to attain quite to the heights of the horror ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... hysterical rage, ready to vent itself at the first excuse. The sight of the girl, fresh-skinned from a wash in the river, instead of soothing, further inflamed him. Her glowing well-being seemed bought at his expense. Her words of concern spoke to his sick ear with a note of smug, unfeeling complacence. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... lavish comforts of his home he struck me as cold, yet it was not so much that he repelled me as that I recoiled from him. I also paid a visit to Rellstab, to whom I had a letter of introduction from his trusty publisher, my brother-in-law Brockhaus. Here it was not so much smug ease that I encountered; I doubtless felt repulsed more by the fact that he showed no inclination whatever to interest ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... poker, eh, Tom?" he shouted, thickly, with a wild laugh. "Ha, ha, old smug-face, up to my bad tricks at last!" But, recovering himself immediately, he pushed the other off at arm's length, and slapped himself smartly on the brow. "Never mind; all right, all right—only a bad wave, now and then. A walk will make me more a man ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... forward with his hands on the table, and an expression of extreme gratification, while the CHAPLAIN stands with a smug and respectful ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... promotion breeds conceit only in base natures. The greyhound is a gentleman, respectful and self-respecting, and it shows that by the very carriage of its tail. Only a snob at heart, petted and pampered for many generations, could have produced that perfect incarnation of smug self-satisfaction, the pug. Let us take the lesson home. The thoughts on which we let our minds dwell, and the sentiments that we harbour in our hearts, are the chisels with which we are carving out our faces and those of our ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... Phoenix. "I have no doubt our friend is stretching the truth shamelessly. You need not look so smug, Monster. You were not the only one in the war. I have gone through anti-aircraft fire a number of times. Some of it was very severe. In ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... the world knows, but his oddity is far more amusing than repulsive, far more playful than bearish. Yates's picture of him last year was not bad; neither was it good—it wanted the raciness of the original. Let the reader imagine a smug, elderly, sleek, and venerable-looking man, approaching seventy years of age, rather (as novel-writers say) below than above the middle height, somewhat inclined to corpulency, and upright in his carriage withal; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various
... One of the perplexing and irritating problems of the personal life of the preacher today has to do with the collision between the secular standards of his time, this traditional code of his class, and the requirements of his faith. Shall he acquiesce in the smug conformities, the externalized procedures of average society, somewhat pietized, and join that large company of good and ordinary people, of whom Samuel Butler remarks, in The Way of All Flesh, that they would be "equally ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... about myself more than I can help this time. Some day I shall, and then I shall have a portrait on the cover. This is an age of portraits. But some day the British public will wake up and will refuse to read the works of a smug- faced man in spectacles who tries to make them believe that he is doughty, fearless, and beloved of beautiful damsels. The bookstalls are full to-day of works written in the first person singular, and relating deeds of the utmost daring; while on the ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... imaginary virtues; He praises those who ardently seek the real ones. He knows that in the market of character cash alone is currency; here you cannot draw checks on some other person's deposits. To Him it is better by far to die facing the right than to live in smug content with borrowed merits. This world will never be content with a gospel that offers only vicarious virtues; at its heart it knows too well its need of the genuine usable ones; it has at least the dormant faculties of ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... the most remarkable company that ever was seen proceeded down the Via Ripetta towards the Porta del Popolo. All eyes were turned upon them, and people asked each other if these were maskers left from the Carnival. Signor Pasquale Capuzzi, spruce and smug, all elegance and politeness, wearing his gay Spanish suit well brushed, parading a new yellow feather in his conical hat, and stepping along in shoes too little for him, as if he were walking amongst eggs, was leading ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... I have never yet seen a chaplain refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... Clare Kendall and her frank way of handling a ticklish yet most important subject without fear or prudishness. There was a refreshing newness about her method. It was neither the holier-than-thou attitude of many religionists, nor the smug monopoly of all knowledge of the social worker, nor the brutal wantonness of the man or woman of the world who excuses everything "because it is human nature, always has ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... organized even there. If the noblesse had woven themselves into a network over the country, they could have held their own; but cooped up in their Faubourg, with their backs against the Chateau, or spread at full length over the Budget, a single blow cut the thread of a fast-expiring life, and a petty, smug-faced lawyer came forward with the axe. In spite of M. Royer-Collard's admirable discourse, the hereditary peerage and law of entail fell before the lampoons of a man who made it a boast that he had adroitly argued some few heads out of the executioner's clutches, and now forsooth must clumsily ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green grass, that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug, smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three hundred feet of water, as we stood among ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of immense importance both for Germany and Europe. He is typical of the change that begins to appear about the middle of the century. Reacting from the optimism of the idealists (which seemed to him both smug and false), Nietzsche welcomed Schopenhauer's more Spartan view with a kind of fierce delight. But his criticism of Schopenhauer was fierce too, and he gave a strangely different turn to such parts of the doctrine as he did accept. To Schopenhauer, since it was ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... luck! She's promised to go to church with that smug cousin of hers, and she's busy all the rest of the day. But she's promised to give me next Saturday if I can get off!" His ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... anything like that battle. He never talked like this, until to-day. Oh, he's told me a little, from time to time. But to- day, to-day, he just poured out his heart to me—ME!—and there are so many who need just that message to stir them from their smug complacency—men who could fight, and win: men who WOULD fight, and win, if only they could see and hear and know, as I saw and heard and knew this afternoon. And there it was, wasted, WASTED, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... against it. The kennels had, therefore, to be either on wheels or floating. Furthermore, not being able to replenish its gas, a Zeppelin had always to return to its base for supplies. But the gas balloon suited the smug character of the German. Unlike the aviator who threw himself into the air on a bundle of steel rods and rubber, a propeller and a petrol engine, the phlegmatic German took no risks with a balloon. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... long talking with pleasure with my wife, and so up and to the Office with Tom, who looks mighty smug upon his marriage, as Jane also do, both of whom I did give joy, and so Tom and I at work at the Office all the morning, till dinner, and then dined, W. Batelier with us; and so after dinner to work again, and sent ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... indeed appear beautiful outside, but are within full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness!" The first half of the, sermon was a denunciation of the morality of men. We made clean the outside of the platter, but the so-called purity of England was a smug sham built upon rottenness and sin! There were men among us, damned sensualists, left untouched by the idleness of the public conscience, who did not even know where their children were to be found. Let ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... might be conceived from a perusal of the late Lord Castlereagh's speeches! We should here have Parliamentary eloquence under a most fantastic yet captivating phase. Who, for instance, but the artist to PUNCH could paint CASTLEREAGH'S figure of a smug, contented, selfish traitor, the "crocodile with his hand in his breeches' pocket?" Again, does not the reader recollect that extraordinary person who, according to the North Cray Demosthenes, "turned his back upon himself?" There would be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... checked herself, aware of something almost ludicrously pitiful in the smug tearful countenance and stumpy would-be fashionable figure. Hit a man your own size, or bigger, by all means if you are game to take the consequences. But to smite a creature conspicuously your inferior in fortune—past, present, and prospective—is unchivalrous, not to say downright mean-spirited. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... hard-driven fist in the palm of an instantly extended hand and then let drive with his own right a neat, short-arm uppercut that got Bert just where he had meant to get Gus, was a needed lesson to the smug conceit that too often goes with added school years. Bert, from a seat on the floor, which he had taken without choice of the spot, regarded his opponent through half-closed eyes with a certain nonchalance, his anger fled. He slowly got to his feet, climbed ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... overbearing to his inferiors in rank, this fledgling soldier—our comrade of a few days since, and presently the subordinate of most of us, through standing still while we went ahead—used to think the perfection and essence of the military system. And then that smug-faced, smooth-tongued, dirty-looking chaplain, with his second-hand shirt collars and slopshop morality—was it whiskey or brandy that his breath smelt oftenest of? He was the first chaplain I had seen, and I confess his rank ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on," he said in a satisfied way—"only got to smug a couple of krises, and there we are. I say, my leg smarts, and I should like to have a look at it; but I won't light a match, because it would be risky in amongst these leaves—and I ain't got one. Well, that will do for to-night, so good-night. I am beginning ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... 'Don Juan,' they contain a great deal of what was best in their author, of his frank, ebullient, sensuous nature, lighted up here at least by a genuine if scarcely delicate humor. Of direct suggestion of vice Balzac was, naturally, as incapable as he was of smug puritanism; but it must be confessed that as a raconteur his proper audience, now that the monastic orders have passed away, would be ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Press; in this country of compromise it was pointed out by many that as each party knew that the other had abated something of his desires the Treaty would probably remain in operation for a long time to come. And column after column of smug comment was written in various newspapers by the "Diplomatic Correspondent," whose knowledge of diplomacy may have been greater than his acquaintance with the Adriatic, since they followed one another, like a procession of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... the platform. The United States Senator, smug and now satisfied that he had chosen aright for his personal interests, sat in the chairman's central seat, and studied his people from under eyelids half lowered while ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... whiskers curl so tight? My cheeks grow smug and muttony? My face become so red and white? My ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my fiancA(C)e had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... so much the things they say, as the way they say them! Do you not recall the smug, confident look, the assurance of having said a particularly happy thing? They come inevitably as the alarm clock; when the hands of circumstance touch the hour, the bromidic ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... this little incident of a woman's death is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon it and rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years of age should die of SELF-NEGLECT is the most optimistic way possible of looking at it. It was the old dead woman's fault that she died, and having located the responsibility, society ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... out of it like a box of bad goods for which there was no more use. And as he speculated, they met, and Vickers saw at once that the old fellow's mood had changed during the night. An atmosphere of smug oiliness sat upon Chatfield in the freshness of the morning, and he greeted the young solicitor in tones which were suggestive of a ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... any of these matters and to keep silent in the presence of armed outsiders, then it can abandon its navy and agree to arbitrate all questions of all kinds with every foreign power. In such event it can afford to pass its spare time in one continuous round of universal peace celebrations, and of smug self-satisfaction in having earned the derision of all the virile peoples of mankind. Those who advocate such a policy do not occupy a lofty position. But at least their ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... there was any wholesome feeling missing in his heart hitherto, it was what theologians call the sense of sin. He had no sense of sin whatever, and no sense of any need of pardon. His masters soon proceeded to humble his pride. He was introduced as a smug little Pharisee, and they treated him as a viper. Of all systems of school discipline, the most revolting is the system of employing spies; and that was the system used by the staff at Halle. They placed the young Count under boyish police ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... generations, our flappers, bi-product of inhibition, are promptly appropriating the husbands. This one item of the flapper raid on the married men has done more than the entire twentieth century put together to change the smug structure of American society, and bring ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... quarter-deck—all these marked him as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray trousers, a tailed coat, and had ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... he so loved and honored. It was bad enough to have to flatter Clayton's opponent, to picture him as a noble, disinterested character, ready to sacrifice himself for the public weal. Into his pictures of this man, attired in the long black coat of conventional respectability, with the smug face of pharisaism, he could get nothing but cant and hypocrisy; but in his caricatures of Clayton there was that which pained him worse—disloyalty, untruth, and now and then, to the discerning few who knew the tragedy of Kittrell's soul, there was ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... bonnie as roses, and at their necks aglow wi' every color juist like the wonderfu' wood ducks. Oh, the bonnie, bonnie creatures, they beat a'! Where did they a' come fra, and where are they a' gan? It's awfu' like a sin to kill them!" To this some smug, practical old sinner would remark: "Aye, it's a peety, as ye say, to kill the bonnie things, but they were made to be killed, and sent for us to eat as the quails were sent to God's chosen people, the Israelites, when they were starving ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... in all its forms had inspired Average Jones with a profound contempt and dislike for the cruelest of all forms of swindling medical quackery. And this swollen, smug-faced intruder looked a particularly offensive specimen of his kind. Therefore the ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... room and down the broad marble stairs to the hotel foyer as though fearing something was behind them to seize and hold them prisoner. The smug, well-dressed men and women who were lounging there staring listlessly at the rain, glanced up with a quicker interest in life at sight of their flushed cheeks and eager eyes. They caught in them the living fire which in their own breasts ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of the heart," at the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth century a cold, formal piety was frequently the covering of indifferent living and of a smug, complacent Christianity, wherein the letter killed and the spirit did not give life. This was true all over New England, and elsewhere. Nor was this deadness confined to the colonies alone, for the Wesleys were soon to stir the sluggish current of ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... the little storekeepers, with their smug pretensions to homely honesty, were profiting by some of the vilest, basest forms of fraud, such as robbing the poor by the light-weight and short-weight trick, [Footnote: These forms of cheating exist at present ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... story-tellers do our talking under a heavy handicap. Homer, long ago, found us garrulous, and compared us to cicadas chirping unprofitably in the city-gate. In the modern time, too, Dr. Holmes, ensconced in smug youth, could "sit and grin" at one of ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... fluttering rags of shirt that still remain about him. The other day I saw Tama at the township, elaborately attired in black broadcloth and white linen and all the rest of it, looking a perfect picture of smug respectability and aged innocence. Now here he is, grasping a tomahawk in his sinewy hand, with a knife held between his teeth, and—albeit 'tis only a boar he is attacking—with a fire dancing in his eyes like that which shone there in his hot youth, when, here in these ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... succeeded, but unfortunately a potent factor in my case was the terror with which in some way Mr. Parsons still succeeded in inspiring me. I have found myself since those days in positions of some peril, but never have I known such fear as of that old, smug-looking man. This dread had an almost paralysing effect, nor could I fail to forget the terrible penalty I should certainly have to pay if my bid for liberty were not to succeed. So that Mr. Parsons held ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various |
