"Self-satisfied" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Protestantism think that however learned they might be, still they are foolish and ignorant enough to be self-satisfied. It is doubtful whether the most elaborate sermon of a Protestant doctor smells more beautifully than incense. The most learned theologians in Germany and elsewhere have whole-heartedly supported the criminal enterprise of the ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... better than I supposed. She knew that behind your apparent kindness there lurked a cold and self-satisfied nature. She understood that she would be accounted a stranger and a sinner in your house the moment you discovered that she had a thought or a sentiment that was not ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... knows that there are evils feeding the furnaces of physical, mental, and moral destruction; that there are flourishing nurseries, common schools, and universities of crime, degradation, and death. Yet the great churches slumber on, their melodious chimes call the self-satisfied to cushioned seats where are heard expositions of ancient lore and legends of a vanished past, with incidental and general reference to the conditions of to-day, enabling the children of wealth, who vainly imagine they are the disciples of Jesus, to spend a comfortable ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... of the second day was about equal to that of the first; the result of the third a good deal better, and Bill, who was fortunate enough to discover a small nugget, returned to camp with a self-satisfied swagger that indicated elation, though his visage expressed nothing but stolidity, slightly tinged with surprise. On the fourth day the cradles were made, and a very large portion of their gains thereby swept away in consequence of the unconscionable prices charged for every article ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... judging of others. Indeed, I am inclined to think myself no blind or perverse judge even of my own actions. Hence, indeed, the greater part of my unhappiness. If my conduct had always conformed, instead of being adverse, to my principles, I should have moved on tranquilly and self-satisfied, at least; but, in truth, the being that goes by my name was never more thoroughly contemned by another than by myself.—But this is falling into the old strain,-irksome, tiresome, and useless to you as to me. Yet I cannot write just ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... left alone, shod a few of the difficult tears of age as she went over the little scene. She felt suddenly old; and for the first time in her busy, self-satisfied life ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... sentiments, the notions, the aspirations of the people. The cobbler of Natick rose above the rhetors, above the deliverers of prosy, classical, polished, elaborated orations, above young and above gray-haired Athenians, high as our fiery and stormy epoch towers over the epochs of quiet, self-satisfied, smooth, cold, elaborate ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the Banks I had been able to realise the virtue of struggle and the evils of the almost unlimited and quite indiscriminating power wielded by such landowners as old Jervaise. And in condemning him and his family, I must condemn myself also. We were all of us so smug and self-satisfied. We had blindly believed that it was our birthright to reap where we ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... to her Lord, to her father and mother and Aunt Nettie and little brother, to the Reverend MacGill with his fascinating smile and good works, to everybody—the whole town—the whole world. Even to Genevieve Hicks, though she seemed so self-satisfied with her white fox furs and giggling ways and utter worldliness—yet, there were many things likeable about Genevieve if you didn't let yourself get prejudiced. And Missy didn't ever want to let herself get prejudiced—narrow and harsh and bigoted like so many Christians. No; she ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although he differed from some of the author's judgments. "The French ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... intelligence; even if he failed to follow step by step the course of French development, must have anticipated that an unheard of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to hear the self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the Messieurs Democrats mutually congratulated one another upon the pardons of May 2d, 1852. Indeed, May 2d had become a fixed idea in their heads; it had become a dogma with them—something ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... shabby scarlet uniform and plumed hat with Bruno by his side. That was different. That was the only way he had ever hit upon by which he might honestly earn his food and shelter, such as it was. But from choice the dwarf had always avoided his fellow-creatures. Surrounded by the strong, the self-satisfied, the handsome, the gay, the consciousness of his own oddity and deformity was borne in upon his sensitive spirit in the keenest manner; but in the woods and fields, by the roadside and the hedgerows, he felt another person ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... that she did not much deserve to be loved by anybody. This granted—not without a pang—she felt the signs of weariness in her heart, but none of wavering. She resolved to be foolish in the eyes of the self-satisfied. ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... has known what it is to 'kick against the pricks' of legitimate Church authority. Legitimate Church authority is a fine thing! Half the Churchmen in the world don't use it, and a goodly portion of the other half misuse it. But when you've got a bumptious, purse-proud, self-satisfied old county snob like Sir Morton Pippitt to deal with, the pressure of the iron hand should be distinctly exercised under ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... the self-satisfied look upon the restaurant-keeper's face, that the hot-tempered man supposed that he had done a very smart thing in thus disposing of Matt's wares by throwing the bundle into the ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... the paper. "Beautiful, beautiful!" exclaimed he, with a self-satisfied smile. "My pen has shot nothing less than bomb-shells and grape, and my ink has turned into whole streams of the enemy's blood. And why should I not be bold, it being perfectly safe, since the king must certainly be victorious, and the enemy has no ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... Middle-age had passed over him like some fattening and solidifying process. He was healthy, he was corpulent, he was prosperous, conventional, and commonplace. If Gabriella had been seeking, with Hogarthian humour, to portray the evils of torpid and self-satisfied respectability, she could scarcely have found a better picture of the condition than Charley presented. And the more Charley expanded, the more bloodless and wan Jane appeared at his side. Her small, flat face with its yellowish and unhealthy tinge, its light melancholy eyes, and its look of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a deep crimson now, and her eyes were flashing with an angry light. Her heart was filled with disgust at these cool, self-satisfied schemers. Had they been less confident of their own importance they would have realized that they were treading on dangerous ground. They could not comprehend that back of Nellie's quiet, reserved demeanour there was a moral courage which would rise to any height of self-sacrifice ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... he continued in a comfortable, self-satisfied tone, as he expanded his great arms along the length of the bed to measure it, "the bunk's about five foot eight inches long. Well, I'm about six foot two in my socks—six inches short; that's a difficulty no doubt, but ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... Scott says, 'inclined to be exceedingly self-satisfied; we had accomplished our object with unexpected ease, we had done a record march, and we had endured record temperatures—at least, we thought so, and thought also how pleasant it would be to tell these things in front of a nice bright fire. As we approached the ship, however, Hodgson came out ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... deserto." Usually these voices have fallen on unheeding ears; but again and again some delver in books, some student of men, some inspired, self-effacing, or altruistic one has taken up the cry; and at last unthinking, unheeding, superficial, self-satisfied humanity has ...
— Sane Sex Life and Sane Sex Living • H.W. Long
... prized Clover Fairy would hardly fetch a hundred, yet here was a piece of varnished canvas, painted by his half-brother, selling for three times that sum. It was a cruel insult that went home with all the more force because it emphasised the triumph of the patronising, self-satisfied Laurence. The young farmer had meant to put his relative just a little out of conceit with himself by displaying the jewel of his possessions, and now the tables were turned, and his valued beast was made to look cheap and insignificant beside the price paid for a mere picture. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... sorrow the heart within the frock, and added a dangerous humidity to the glance under the sunshade. It did not occur to him that he was an object of pity, nor that a vast store of knowledge was waiting to be poured into him. The aged, self-satisfied wag-beard imagined that he had conducted his career fairly well. He knew no one with whom he would have changed places. He regarded Helen as an extremely agreeable little thing, with her absurd air of being grown-up. Decidedly in five years she had ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Abyedok. He laughs in a self-satisfied way. His laughter is impudent and insolent, and is echoed by Simtsoff, the Deacon and Paltara Taras. The naive eyes of young Meteor light up, and his cheeks ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... The missionary's work has, he tells me, been "abundantly blessed,"—he has baptised six converts in the last three years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant, sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:—"Those Chinese who have never heard the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty as He thinks fit"—a contention which does not admit of dispute—"but those Chinese who have heard the Christian doctrine, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... collecting bag, and he were about to take the offertory. For the rest, his costume was something of a mixture: a football sweater with broad stripes, a Norfolk jacket, dungaree trousers, and a fisherman's long boots made him a striking figure even in that company of mixed costumes. He was as self-satisfied and complacent as if he had never planned evil deeds and tried to carry them out, while the benevolence with which he smiled upon the wedding party might have led one to suppose they had no more tried ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... to see once—not oftener Polite hotel waiter who isn't an idiot Relic matter a little overdone? Room to turn around in, but not to swing a cat Saviour, who seems to be of little importance any where in Rome Self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America Sentimental praises of the Arab's idolatry of his horse She assumes a crushing dignity Shepherd's Hotel, which is the worst on earth Smell about them which ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger
... he had said; there was so much practical, but odious common sense in it, that he neither knew how to assent or to differ. If it were necessary for him to suffer, he felt that he could endure without complaint and without cowardice, providing that he was self-satisfied of the justice of his own cause. What he could not endure was, that he should be accused by others, and not acquitted by himself. Doubting, as he had begun to doubt, the justice of his own position in the hospital, he knew that his own self-confidence would not be restored because ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... with a self-satisfied air, "I knew at once by the way you looked at the angry crowd that you were innocent; but whatever I may have thought, any one who knows Issoudun must also know that the only way to protect you was to make the arrest as we did. Ah! you ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... his powerful breathing, General Lariviere approached with heavy state and sat between the two women, looking stubborn and self-satisfied, laughing in ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... demanded no originality of intellect, no greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could love, tenderly and truly, where they were not. But for a worldly character, however gifted, she felt and expressed something very like contempt. At this period, she had no patience with self-satisfied mediocrity. She afterwards learned patience and unlearned contempt; but at the time of which I write, she seemed, and was to the multitude, a haughty and supercilious person,—while to those whom she loved, she was all the more ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Elsewhere in the barn it was already half dark. On one side the hay rose up in a tremendous heap almost to the roof, where it vanished dimly in the dusky shadows. Opposite were the cow-stables, five of them in a row, each occupant munching her cud contentedly and now and then giving vent to a soft, self-satisfied low. From one of the stalls could be heard the rhythmical squirt of milk against the milking-pail, for David was engaged upon his evening work. On a rickety chair near the hay-loft sat Janet, holding a timid little barn cat in her lap and stroking it nervously. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Miss Addams, and I know all war to be wicked, wasteful, and unintelligent, and where Miss Addams can furnish one argument in favor of peace I will furnish a hundred. But against this insult, flung by a complacent and self-satisfied woman at men who gave their lives for men, I protest. And I believe that with me are all those women and men who ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... that she was very lucky, probably a great deal luckier than she deserved; and all the gossip about her which had been a favourite tea-time topic, before her losses at the Casino began to make her a bore, was revived again. The self-satisfied mother and bird-like girl who had travelled with her in the Paris train had a great deal to say. They wondered "if the poor Prince knew; but of course he couldn't know. He was simply infatuated. Very sad. He was such ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... doubted her stepmother's judgment; like all of the new Mrs. Breckenridge's friends, she was deeply, dumbly impressed with that lady's amazing efficiency. She had been a spoiled and discontented little rowdy. She became an entirely self-satisfied little gentlewoman. Clarence, jealously watching her progress, knew that Rachael was doing for his daughter far more than he could ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... on this earth a little New Yorker is the smallest. I've met ignorance in the South, sullen pigheadedness in New England; I've measured the boundless cheek of the West, my native heath; but for self-satisfied stupidity, for littleness in the world of morals, I have seen nothing on earth, or under it, quite so small as a well-to-do New Yorker. He has little brains, or culture, and only the rudiments of common sense, but, being from New York, he assumes everything. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... voice and self-satisfied demeanour, who had started them upon this adventure, was still ahead; but even she quailed when, upon laying her hand upon the panel of the door she was the first to reach, she felt it to be cold and knew it to be made not of wood but of iron. How great must be the treasure or terrible the secret ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... themselves were the wisest, the most virtuous, powerful, and perfect of created beings, as are at this present moment the lordly inhabitants of old England, the volatile populace of France, or even the self-satisfied citizens of this ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... tethered (Tony had attended to that), were innocently nibbling mountain herbs. There was no obvious reason why, as he lighted a cigarette and stretched himself on the parapet, Tony should not have been the most self-satisfied guide in the world. He had not only completed the expedition in safety, but had saved the heroine's life by the way; and even if the heroine did not appear as thankful as she might, still, her father had shown due gratitude, ...
— Jerry • Jean Webster
... Roundheads and Cavaliers in England. Though representative of a common movement, they were far from united in their beliefs or consistent in their political practices. There was always something of the inquisitor at Boston and of the monk at Plymouth, and in all the Puritan colonies there prevailed a self-satisfied sense of importance as the chosen of God. The controversies that arose over jurisdictions and boundaries and the niceties of doctrine are not edifying, however honest may have been those who entered into them. ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... in the year 1919, any intelligent and educated man would be inclined to maintain that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted with the nineteenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me in these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of the finality of my conclusions. I posit, as a fact not to be controverted, that our universe is an expression of an universal law, which the nineteenth century had discovered ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... would retire to his cubicle and examine his features in a looking-glass, and he would sigh and say, "It is a weak face. I shall never carve a place for myself in the world." But as years went on he became either less self-conscious or more self-satisfied. The world, he found, made a niche for him as it did for every one. Decision of character might come later—or he might have it without knowing. At all events he had got a sense of beauty and a sense of humour, two most desirable gifts. The sense of beauty developed first. ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... his hands in a self-satisfied way. "I think we have done all that can be done," he answered; "it's a queer case though, and I knew ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... smoother than I look," he suggested dryly. "You big, fat fellows get so self-satisfied sometimes that you let lots ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... with her frantic efforts the cord began to shorten. Just about now the He imp, who had come down from the locust top and fluttered over the scene in pained curiosity, realized what was happening. He was game, all right, however bumptious and self-satisfied. He set up a tremendous ca-a-a-ing, as a signal for all the crows within hearing to come to the rescue, and then made a sudden, savage ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... been strange if all this dangerous flattery, together with the pleasure the dear child had in bestowing kindnesses, which, after all, cost her but little, had not so worked on her mind as to make her vain and self-satisfied. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit, With the fantastic rock upon its side, Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze With wondering awe upon the mighty thing, Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied, The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond, A sea might roar around its base. Beyond, Might be the depths of the unfathomed space, This the earth's bulwark over the abyss. Upon its very point I have watched a star For a few moments crown it with a fire, As of an incense-offering that blazed ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He sometimes indeed looked "pale and wan;" but, rather than for love, it was more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... usually he was seen in the afternoon in the Place de la Bastille, or the Place de la Madeleine. On Sundays, his favorite locality was the Place de la Bourse. Mangin was a well-formed, stately-looking individual, with a most self-satisfied countenance, which seemed to say: "I am master here; and all that my auditors have to do is, to listen and obey." Arriving at his destined stopping-place, his carriage halted. His servant handed him a ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Giants, with very corpulent or very broad fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich family, of ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... prayer and the Holy Spirit was convincing men of sin. The Holy Spirit can convince men of sin. We need not despair of any one, no matter how indifferent they may appear, no matter how worldly, no matter how self-satisfied, no matter how irreligious, the Holy Spirit can convince men of sin. A young minister of very rare culture and ability once came to me and said, "I have a great problem on my hands. I am the pastor of the church in a university town. My congregation is largely made ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... to be self-satisfied and self-protecting. A religious institution especially is in danger of becoming content and resentful of criticism because, by its nature, it deals with matters that seem beyond the investigation that man prescribes for ordinary things, and therefore ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... else who gave himself up to sad thoughts, and found fault with himself, with no defendant to plead his cause at the bar of conscience. It was an altogether lonely hour. He had dreamed all his life, in a sentimental, self-satisfied fashion, of this return to Winby. It had always appeared to be a grand affair, but so far he was himself the only interested spectator at his poor occasion. There was even a dismal consciousness that he had been undignified, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... He therefore cultivates flippancy as a fine art, and becomes noted for a certain cheap cynicism, which he sprinkles like a quasi-intellectual pepper over the strong meat of risky conversation. Moreover, he is constantly self-satisfied, and self-possessed. Yet he manages to avoid giving offence by occasionally assuming a gentle humility of manner, to which he almost succeeds in imparting a natural air, and he studiously refrains from saying or doing anything which, since it may cause other men to provoke him, may possibly result ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... some wind out of the sails of Mr. Self-satisfied Prescott," Fred told himself jubilantly. "We shan't hear so much about Dick & ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... captain made no endeavor to check the boisterous merriment of his crew, but lighting his pipe, seated himself upon the companion-way, with a complacent smile expanding his sun-browned features, which developed itself into a self-satisfied and happy laugh as Mr. Williams appeared at the cabin-door, leading up his daughter to enjoy the pure morning air, fresh from the clear sky and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... jaunty air and a self-satisfied smile, he followed Mrs. Hamilton into her "private office," as she sometimes ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... dapper little half-caste of forty or so, in a blue flannel suit, with lively eyes, his round face the colour of lemon-peel, and with a thin little black moustache drooping on each side of his thick, dark lips, came forward smirking. He turned out, notwithstanding his self-satisfied and cheery exterior, to be of a careworn temperament. In answer to a remark of mine (while Jim had gone below for a moment) he said, "Oh yes. Patusan." He was going to carry the gentleman to the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... CHARACTER.—A few words must suffice to give a summary of his character, and will exhibit some singular contrarieties. He had varied but not very profound learning; was earnest, self-satisfied, overbearing in argument, or, as Sir Walter Scott styles it, despotic. As distinguished for his powers of conversation as for his writings, he always talked ex cathedra, and was exceedingly impatient of opposition. Brutal in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Isabelle. She works me up to the last pitch of endurance, until I feel sometimes as if I should go wild. It is no use saying anything, Mamma always takes her side, you know, but she does aggravate me so! Even her movements irritate me,—just the way she shakes her head and curls her lip,—she is so self-satisfied. She thinks no one else knows anything. It must be a puzzle to her how the world ever got along before she came into it, and what it will do when she leaves it ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... an air that would have carried comfort to the Colonel's soul—with a spring, a breeze, a lightness; a being at peace with all the world; and best of all with a self-satisfied repose that was in absolute contrast to the nervousness of the ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... folks get narrowed down living in a bum layout like the Fort." He smiled in a self-satisfied way. "I used to think Jose a wise guy one time. There's heaps of things you can't see right in a layout like that. I reckon Jessie ought to know Murray better. It's up to me. Don't you guess that ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... is, and mebbe it isn't," said Mr. Dimmidge, with a self-satisfied air. "I don't mind saying atween us that R. B. is the man as I've suspicioned as havin' something to do with my wife goin' away; and ye see, if he writes to E. J. D.—that's my wife's initials—at Elktown, I'LL get that letter and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... self-satisfied, almond-eyed Celestials. They would only be too glad of an excuse to mob you or to declare that you had insulted them, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... came up just then from the engine-room of the ship which they had been inspecting, the subject, of course, was dropped, and after a while Braxton strode away with a self-satisfied smile on his lips. ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... a fair degree of shrewd perception, an inviolable conscientiousness, a common sense frankly self-satisfied, are some of the qualifications which Mr. Purnell brings to the discussion of literature as seen in modern journalism, and in the lives of Giraldus Cambrensis and Montaigne,—of Roger Williams, the literary statesman,—of Steele, Sterne, and Swift, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... a stimulus to industry in the prosaic matter of getting a living, it doubtless has its value; but one will learn nothing of love or courtesy or reverence or loyalty to high ideals by reading it; neither will one find in its self-satisfied pages any conception of the moral dignity of humanity or of the infinite value of the human soul. The chief trouble with the Autobiography and most other works of Franklin is that in them mind and matter, character and reputation, virtue and prosperity, are for the ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the violets that sends the perfume high into the air. Then from the parted leaves come forth first a dirty wrinkled leg, then a dirty wrinkled head with gleaming eyes, and Monsieur Crapaud crawls with self-satisfied dignity on to Monsieur the ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... God, leaves us quite complacent, and with very slight and superficial conceptions of our own evil, and that if once we saw, in so far as it is possible for humanity to-day to see, God as He is, and heard in the depths of our hearts that 'Holy! holy! holy!' from the burning seraphim, the easy-going, self-satisfied judgment of ourselves which too many of us cherish would be utterly impossible; and would disappear, shrivelled up utterly in the light of God. 'I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear,' said Job, 'but now mine eye seeth Thee; therefore I abhor myself, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... The self-satisfied Bombiadi also overheard, and although he endeavoured to appear unconscious, a dull red flush crept up over his cheeks, and after shifting for a moment from one foot to the other, he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... forties,—indeed the room seemed as if it had been closed and laid away by a tidy housewife years before, and opened and aired for my reception but yesterday. An illumined text,—a "Jonah under his Gourd," elaborately worked in colored silks,—a smirking likeness of "The Father of his Country," and an equally self-satisfied looking portrait of Mrs. W. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... I know her better in an hour than you could do in a lifetime;" and Donald looked rather contemptuously on the plain man who was watching him with eyes that might have warned any one more suspicious or less confident and self-satisfied. ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... spectators rather than actors in the siege. I remember being seized with strange feelings when I saw their little air of derision and their sneers as they looked down towards the Palace in pleasurable anticipation. They imagined, these self-satisfied people who had done so little to defend themselves, that a day of reckoning had at last come when they would be able to do as they liked towards this detestable Palace, which had given them so many unhappy hours. It would all be destroyed, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that some of the best work that Dickens ever did, better than the work in his best novels, can be found in these slight and composite scraps of journalism. For instance, the solemn and self-satisfied account of the duty and dignity of a waiter given in the opening chapter of Somebody's Luggage is quite as full and fine as anything done anywhere by its author in the same vein of sumptuous satire. It is as good as the account which Mr. Bumble gives of out-door relief, which, "properly understood, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... impudence, you self-satisfied little moss-weaver;" saying which the thrush gave the new-comer such a dig in the back with his hard bill, that the finch flew off in a hurry, vowing that he would pass no more opinions ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn
... was prevented by the entrance of Mr. Blaisdell, with a fine lot of ore samples with their assay values attached, which he arranged on his desk, his thin lips drawn back meanwhile in his accustomed self-satisfied smile. When this was done, he turned to ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... to the temptation, never easily resisted by him, of displaying his wit at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently one of those officious, self-satisfied advisers, whom it was the delight of Lord Byron at all times to astonish and mystify. The tricks which, when a boy, he played upon the Nottingham quack, Lavender, were but the first of a long series with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense of all the numerous quacks whom ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... one," said Ralph Bingham, in his odiously self-satisfied voice, as he addressed his ball. He laughed jovially. A messenger-boy had paused close by and was watching the proceedings gravely. Ralph Bingham patted him on ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... struck four; M. Verduret, who was punctuality itself, appeared. He was more red-faced and self-satisfied, if possible, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... really lasting impression. Even when she left him alone, watching him, I fear, over the top of her novel, he disappointed himself. For five minutes or so everything would go well; he looked as dejected as possible; but as he fell he was succeeding he became so self-satisfied that he began to strut. A pleased expression crossed his face, and instead of allowing his head to hang dismally, he put it well back. Sometimes, when we wanted to please him, we said he looked as glum as a mute at a funeral. Even ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... an air of condescending arrogance, his thumbs bearing down heavily on his trousers pockets, his broad fingers beating a self-satisfied tattoo upon his thighs. Claire shrank nearer the table. "You mean, Mr. Flint, that you dismissed Miss Whitehead merely to give ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... it done by Laurence; half at your expense and half at mine, I think. I wish you had sent over to me some of your poems which you told me you were printing at Florence: and often I wish I was at Florence to give you some of my self-satisfied advice on what you should select. For though I do not pretend to write Poetry you know I have a high notion of my judgment ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... as these. Possibly the smug and self-satisfied do not care to; but men in distress—those who are worn, or old, or misunderstood—children, outcasts, those far from home and who long to get back, silently slip weak hands in theirs and ask, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... the past had been, I never allowed myself to become disheartened or in any way discouraged. The average man is too willing to let well enough alone. Instead of making his business a constant study with a view of devising some new method of conducting it, he is liable to sit down with a self-satisfied conviction that so long as he is holding his own he should be satisfied. No man can make a greater mistake than to adopt these old-fogy ideas. The idea of being satisfied with their lot, I believe has kept many men from ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... Under the arching dome are Robert Reid's mural paintings described in a later place. The Weeping Figures on top of the colonnade itself are also by Mr. Ellerhusen. They express the humility that ennobles the true artistic spirit and distinguishes it from the spurious. Instead of the self-satisfied Triumph or Victory that might be expected to crown this last of the Exposition palaces, these represent the spirit of Art weeping at the impossibility of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... and dry-washed them briskly. "We're in!" he said, with businesslike glee. "Image, gentlemen! That's what does it: Image!" He was a tall, rather bony-faced man in his early forties, and his manner was that of the self-satisfied businessman who is quite certain that he knows all of the answers and all of the questions. "Create an image that the public ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to speak in this congratulatory vein while the old man ate and drank; but though he occasionally muttered a word or two which would seem to endorse her statements, his countenance was far from wearing the joyful self-satisfied ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... punished; and the greatest rascal of all, who, when escape is impossible, turns traitor, and after deserving the cart and pillory a dozen times for his last and most utter baseness, is rewarded by full pardon, and the honour of addressing the audience at the play's end in the most smug and self-satisfied tone, and of 'putting himself on you that are my country,' not doubting, it seems, that there were among them a fair majority who would think him a very smart ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... up stairs to bed. Dotty, in her lofty pride, tried to make her little friend feel herself a sinner; while Jennie, ready to hide herself in the potato-bin for shame, was, at the same time, very angry with the self-satisfied Miss Dimple. She was awed by her superior goodness, but did not love her any the better for it. Why should ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... see. There will be a witness—an eye-witness, who was present, and whose evidence will be corroborated," she declared in due course with a self-satisfied air. "I have not resolved to reveal the truth without fully reviewing the situation. When the police know—as they certainly will—you will then find that I have not lied, and perhaps you will alter your opinion of the girl you now ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and I looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished by a master hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he had complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade to his niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by my ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... and see the man who has the flat to-morrow. He wants to buy our furniture. It's a piece of luck, isn't it? The only piece of luck I've had.... By God, Hinde, this serves me right. Eleanor always said I was selfish, and I am. I'm terribly self-satisfied and thick-skinned. I had no qualification for this work ... nothing but my conceit ... and I've been ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Tracy was put on. He stood up in his usual self-satisfied way, looking admiringly at his boots, and running his delicate white hand through his scented hair. Mr Paton watched him with a somewhat contemptuous expression, as though he were thinking what a pity it was that any boy should be such a little puppy. Henderson, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... tunes continually playing in one's head, and I suppose in one's heart too, would make one very wretched.' A good commonplace intellect satisfied with the homely food of law and 'greedily fond of pastry in the form of novels and the like, is—well, it is at all events, thoroughly self-satisfied, which I suppose no real poet or artist ever was.' Besides, genius generally implies sensitive nerves, and is unfavourable to a good circulation and a thorough digestion. These remarks are of course partly playful, but they represent a real feeling. A similar ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... herself in the water, under the roots of a tree, close to a ford where the Jackal always came to drink. By and by, sure enough, he came lilting along in a self-satisfied way, and went right into the water for a good long draft. Whereupon Miss Crocodile seized him by the right legs and held on. He guessed at once what had happened, and called out, "Oh! my heart's adored! I'm drowning! I'm drowning! If you love me, leave hold of that old root and get ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... passed (a) (3) in a self-satisfied manner through twenty years of office, letting things take their own course; to have (b) sailed with consummate sagacity, never against the tide of popular (c) judgement; to have left on record as the sole title to distinction among English ministers a peculiar art of (d) sporting ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... knew. Lucy's comments were very characteristic. She was equally hard on Daddy's ill-behaviour and Dora's religion, with a little self-satisfied hardness that would have provoked David but for its childish naivete. Many of the things that she said of Dora, however, showed real feeling, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... park from golf to tea that for a moment he was actually of a mind to kiss Aunt Alice when he got in, and perhaps even address her in the language of resuscitated passion, which in Uncle Arthur's mouth was Old Girl,—an idea he abandoned, however, in case it should make her self-satisfied and tiresome—the same knowledge that produced these amiable effects in Uncle Arthur, made his alien nieces cling very close together as they leaned over the side of the St. Luke hungrily watching ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... end of the earth to the other that I am a most cunning man," Muchini went on, stroking his muscular arm, a trick of self-satisfied men in their moments of complacence; "and whilst even the old men slept, I, Koosoogolaba-Muchini, the son of the terrible and crafty G'sombo, the brother of Eleni-N'gombi, I went abroad with my wise men and my spies and sought out devils and ghosts in places where even the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... a cordial note, I called upon John Hay one morning. He received me in a little room off the main hall of his house, whose spaciousness made him seem diminutive. He struck me as a dapper man, noticeably, but not offensively, self-satisfied. His fine black beard was streaked with white, but his complexion was youthfully clear. Though undersized he was compact and sturdy, and his voice was crisp, ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... we have, at present, nothing to do; it is only those who have begun to realize their bondage as such, or who suffer from it, that can take any steps toward freedom. The self-satisfied slaves must stay in prison until they see where they are—and it is curious and sad to see them rejoicing in bondage and miscalling it freedom. It makes one long to see them struck by an emergency, bringing a flash of inner ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... to think, girls, I would have you always prosaic, plodding, self-satisfied, unambitious? Oh, no! do not understand me so. Why, I believe that even dreaming about doing, and seeing, and having things is sometimes very helpful, and not at all inconsistent with the commonplace. It is almost necessary for some people to build air-castles. ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... a sudden flush on Philip's pale face that caused his sister to pause in her measured, self-satisfied speech, and ask ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smoothed and combed, on the outside wall, and when he left home he carefully put it away in a safe place. The skin became famous throughout the district, and many of the younger men made special trips to Bali to examine it. Arni would beam with joy and strut around with a knowing, self-satisfied expression on his face, and would tell of the patience, the agility, and the marksmanship he had to put into killing this monstrously clever fox. It certainly wasn't hard to kill all you wanted of these devils, if you just had the powder ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... restless zeal, the hunger and thirst after righteousness, which He gives in early youth! It is so easy to become more thick-skinned in conscience, more tolerant of evil, more hopeless of good, more careful of one's own comfort and one's own property, more self-satisfied in leaving high aims and great deeds to enthusiasts, and then to believe that one is growing older and wiser. And yet those high examples, those good works, those great triumphs over evil, which single hands effect sometimes, ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is time to change cars you will know it. You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to the invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... calm, and looks straight forward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the Italian incapable of rest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... were condescending enough to laugh at as pleasant extravagances, serving merely to relieve and set off the main stream of debate, they were often enough, it may be guessed, connected with the theme in hand by links not the less apt that they might be too subtle to catch their bedazzled and self-satisfied optics. There might be keener knowledge of human nature than was "dreamt of in their philosophy"—which passed with them for commonplace, only because it was clothed in plain familiar household words, not dressed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... more clapping of hands and exclamations of pleasure, while those who were seated near Ferrari raised their glasses and drank to his health with congratulations, all of which courtesies he acknowledged by a nonchalant, self-satisfied bow. I glanced at him again—how tranquil he looked!—reclining among the crimson cushions of his chair, a brimming glass of champagne beside him, the cigarette between his lips, and his handsome face slightly upturned, though his eyes rested half drowsily on the uncurtained ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... outre as to come into a dress reception with his coat off and his hat on, he did come into the circle of the poets without the usual poetic habiliments. He was not dressed up at all, and he was not at all abashed or apologetic. His air was confident and self-satisfied, if it did not at times suggest the insolent and aggressive. It was the dress circle that was on ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious an self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... proceeded to explain. He had ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more, pieces of ground of the kind required, at different prices and suited to different tastes. He talked just as a fountain flows, smiling, self-satisfied, wagging ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin like old ivory, which under the influence of Burne-Jones were cultivated at that time by ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with the consciousness, soul or self, of the individual when the latter rids himself of the illusion of a manifold universe and realises his unity with Brahma. Moreover, Brahma is bliss—the joy of wholly perfect and self-satisfied thought and being. Since Brahma as universal Soul is really identical with each individual soul or atma, and vice versa, it follows that each individual soul contains within itself, qua Brahma, the whole of existence, nature, gods, mankind, and all other ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... are not incapable of amendment. One presumes that the Roumanians, who have no lack of other international problems, will be wise enough to discard certain dicta of their Liberal party and of Bratiano, its self-satisfied leader, to whom all subjects seem great if they have passed through his mind. One particular dictum which the Roumanians ought to cast aside is that which insists upon the indivisibility of the Banat. Another Roumanian statesman, Take Jonescu, was more sagacious when he, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... that was respectable. He had hated the smug, self-satisfied merchants of Grand Avenue. He had writhed in torture at the sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed him with its load of well-groomed men and women. A clean, stiff collar was to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence, decency, spelled ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... And no man ever lived, I suppose, easier for every little creature crawling about the earth in self-satisfied futility to criticise and ridicule. For myself, I can do nothing but admire, revere, honour, and love this extraordinary old realist, who saved so many thousands of human beings from utmost misery; who aroused all the Churches of the Christian religion throughout ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... NARCISSUS, a self-satisfied youth who disdained the addresses of Echo, in consequence of which she pined away and died, and who, by way of penalty, was doomed to fall in love with his own image, which he kept beholding in the mirror of a fountain till ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... he can," said Moses with a self-satisfied nod. "See here, I'll tell you what to write. You begin, 'Dear fadder—or Dearest fadder'— I's not quite sure ob de strengt' ob your affection. P'raps de ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... in their art,—they would love a style that pleased but did not arouse them, that spoke to the senses rather than to the imagination—a school of art placid, precise, full of repose, and thoroughly material like their life—an art, in a word, realistic and self-satisfied, in which they could see themselves reflected as they were and as ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... German admires form, but he has no genius for it. He is the opposite of the Greek; he has critical instinct, aspiration, and desire, but no serene command of beauty. The south, more artistic, more self-satisfied, more capable of execution, rests idly in the sense of its own power to achieve. On one side you have ideas, on the other side, talent. The realm of Germany is beyond the clouds; that of the southern peoples ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had preserved the wholesome, eager spirit of his childhood, but the lifeless teaching, the compulsory religious exercises and the whole spiritless atmosphere of his new school soon changed him into an indifferent, sophisticated and self-satisfied cynic with little interest in his studies, and ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... a comparatively stupid man, an amazingly self-satisfied toiler who had chanced to specialize on crime. And even as he became more and more assured of his personal ability, more and more entrenched in his tradition of greatness, he was becoming less and less elastic, less receptive, less adaptive. Much as he tried ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... he has acquired articles of apparel and points of view. He is given to ragged khaki, or cast-off garments of all sorts, but never to shoes. This hint of the conventional only serves to accent the little self-satisfied excursions he makes into barbarism. The shirt is always worn outside, the ear ornaments are as varied as ever, the head is shaved in strange patterns, a tiny tight tuft on the crown is useful as fastening for feathers or little streamers or anything else that will wave ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... through the world, with a swing in his tread, Our hero self-satisfied goes; With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head, And the string of it ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... home to a mother large hearted and self-sacrificing, proud of her attractive daughter and doing so much for her that little remained for her to do for herself. On Sunday she went to a formal, dignified, self-satisfied church; she attended a Sunday-school where the teacher made the lesson interesting without requiring much from the girls; she spent the afternoon with a book, the piano, and the relatives and friends who came to call. Church, home, friends, seemed content with her just as she ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... stood by the threshold to take a look at the weather. A great soft feather of snow came sailing slowly down and nestled in his shaggy beard, and another fluttered on to the back of his hand. He looked up through the darkness and saw that it was already beginning to fall thickly, and then, with a self-satisfied glance of approval at his provident woodpile, went into the cabin and fastened ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... round me: foremost among them was the old chief Katchiba, whose self-satisfied countenance exhibited an extreme purity of conscience in having adhered to his promise to act as guardian during my absence. Mrs. Baker gave him an excellent character; he had taken the greatest care of her, and had supplied all ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... he rose, crossed the uneven floor, and looked in unmovedly on what was his own poor face come back to him: changed indeed almost beyond belief from the sleek self-satisfied genial yet languid Arthur Lawford of the past years, and still haunted with some faint trace of the set and icy sharpness, and challenge, and affront of the dark Adventurer, but that—how immeasurably dimmed and blunted and faded. He had expected to find it so. Would it (the thought vanished ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Man-in-the-Moon—looking right towards the combatants, as if he were standing in a trap-door of the sea, leaning forward leisurely with his arms complacently folded over upon the edge of the horizon—this queer face wore a serious, apishly self-satisfied leer, as if the Man-in-the-Moon had somehow secretly put up the ships to their contest, and in the depths of his malignant old soul was not unpleased to see how well his charms worked. There stood ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville |
