"Smug" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... away a trifle inclined to that peculiar form of smug pity a hotel visitor who has been in a place a week feels for yesterday's arrival. He knew the ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... 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, worse ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... increasing apprehension upon the growing influence of obscure leaders who proclaimed the rights of the people. The prevalence of mobs; the entrance of the unfranchised populace, by means of "body" meetings and mass meetings, into the political arena; the leveling principles and the smug self-righteousness of the patriot politicians;—all this led many a conservative to consider whether his interest were not more threatened by the insurgence of radicalism in America than by the alleged oppression of British legislation. Boston is indeed mad, Hutchinson writes ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week, Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... body is almost bare, except a few 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 ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... 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 keep ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the room I am writing in—a pleasant room, and my own, yet how irresponsive, how smug and lifeless! The pattern of the wallpaper blamelessly repeats itself from wainscote to cornice; and the pictures are immobile and changeless within their glazed frames—faint, flat mimicries of life. The ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... authorities have insisted on keeping aboard us all the time that we have been in harbour; but of course I have not said a word to them about it. I have, however, watched them continually, and by their smug looks of satisfaction I am inclined to believe that they know something about it. And ever since then I have been on the prowl everywhere to see if I could find any trace of ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... this boy Matt's people and mine are all buried in the same cemetery back home. Yes, sir! And nearly all of 'em have the same epitaph—'Lost at Sea'—and—you idiot, Skinner! What do you mean, sir, by standing there with your infernal little smile on your smug face? Out of my office, you jackanapes, and call the dogs off this boy Matt. Why, there was never one of his breed that wasn't a man and a seaman, ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... been kindled, and ahead of him, massed above the housetops, the blue-grey clouds of evening hung. He watched the faces of the people as they passed, some eager, some jaded, some pleasure-seeking, some smug, and he strove to conjecture their aim in life. At the Circus he paused awhile, breathing deep and filling out his lungs with fragrance of violets and narcissi, which flower-girls clamoured for him to purchase. He bought a bunch and smiled faintly, contrasting the beautiful significance ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... and liberty are only the negative conditions for good political institutions. When they have been won, we need also the positive condition: encouragement of creative energy. Security alone might produce a smug and stationary society; it demands creativeness as its counterpart, in order to keep alive the adventure and interest of life, and the movement toward perpetually new and better things. There can be no final goal for human institutions; the best are those that most ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... the story of 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 ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... said Dick, bursting into a guffaw. "I wonder whether—yes—five!" he added, as he opened the case and saw five cigars tucked in side by side and kept in their places by a leather band. "What a game! I'll smug it and keep it for ever so long. He ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... 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 uncouth bills of fare, infamous by their gastronomical solecisms, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... pedantic, stilted, stagy, theatrical, big-sounding, ad captandum; canting, insincere. not natural, unnatural; self-conscious; maniere; artificial; overwrought, overdone, overacted; euphuist &c. 577. stiff, starch, formal, prim, smug, demure, tire a quatre epingles, quakerish, puritanical, prudish, pragmatical, priggish, conceited, coxcomical, foppish, dandified; finical, finikin; mincing, simpering, namby-pamby, sentimental. Phr. "conceit in weakest bodies ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... have a wife," quoth little Maurie, with smug assurance, "but she is not worrying about me, wherever she may be; nor do I feel especial anxiety for Clarette. A woman takes what comes—especially if she is ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... inaccurately employed. As the slightly censorious reader looks back upon these poems of the beginning of the War, he cannot resist a certain impatience. In the first place, there is a family likeness which makes it impossible to distinguish one writer from another, and there is a tendency to a smug approval of British prejudice, and to a horrible confidence in England's power of "muddling through," which look rather ghastly in the light ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... 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 ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Public Defence where they do nothing but feed like rats on the people's food! And I'll tell you now," he continued dropping his voice, for Hartman had started as though stung, "you might better keep away from that Alsatian Brasserie and the smug-faced thieves who haunt it. You know what ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... that paints the sky, And every splendid noontide high, All know the Glugs so well, so well. 'Tis an easy matter, and plain to tell. For, lacking wit, with a candour smug, A Glug will boast that he is a Glug. And they climb the trees, if it shines or rains, To settle the squirming in their brains, And the darting pains That are caused ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... 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 ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the girl 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, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... girls, sitting, with arms encircled, in low dresses, on the seashore before a grey and angry sea, and Uncle Mathew as a small, shiny-faced boy in tight short blue trousers, carrying a bucket and spade, and a smug, pious expression. The room was lit with gas that sizzled and hissed in a protesting undertone; there was a big black cat near the fire, and this watched Maggie with green ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... convenient shorthand, to save the trouble of thinking. But Shakespeare always thought. Every question that he treats is brought out of the realm of abstraction, and exhibited in its relation to daily life and the minds and hearts of men. He could never have been satisfied with such a smug phrase as 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. His mind would have been eager for details. In what do the greatest number find their happiness? How far is the happiness of one consistent with the happiness ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... faw, fum! bubble and squeak! Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week. Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough, Stinking and savory, smug and gruff, Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime Gives ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... department of her social organisation, it required both courage and discernment to raise the warning voice and to apply the wet blanket. But Nietzsche did both, and with spirit, because his worst fears were aroused. Smug content (erbrmliches Behagen) was threatening to thwart his one purpose—the elevation of man; smug content personified in the German scholar was giving itself airs of omniscience, omnipotence, and ubiquity, and all the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... "stirrings 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 ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... Billy interposed, for he saw Theodora's color come, and he knew that the rug, his own contribution to her college room, was one of her dearest possessions. He shook his head at the six-pound culprit who stood before him, waggling his stumpy tail in smug satisfaction over the success ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... regions of the moon. It is necessary here to mention a proposal of J. T. Maston's. When the secretary of the Gun Club found that Barbicane and Nicholl accepted the proposal of Michel Ardan, he determined to join them, and make one of a smug party of four. So one day he determined to be admitted as one of the travelers. Barbicane, pained at having to refuse him, gave him clearly to understand that the projectile could not possibly contain so many passengers. Maston, in despair, went in search of Michel Ardan, who ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... sixteenth century, and which Tintoret has made unspeakably mean in its unclean and dramatically impotent suggestiveness: the Saviour parleying from a kind of rustic edifice with a good-humoured, fat, half feminine Satan, fluttering with pink wings like some smug seraph of Bernini's pupils. After this it is scarce necessary to speak of whatever is dramatically abortive (because successfully expressing just the wrong sort of sentiment, the wrong situation) in Tintoret's ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... southern-western counties of Wiltshire and Hants as Hardy chose Wessex for his peculiar venue, he described the clerical life of his land as it had never been described before, showing the type as made up of men like unto other men, unromantic, often this-worldly and smug, yet varying the type, making room for such an idealist as Crawley as well as for sleek bishops and ecclesiastical wire-pullers. Neither his young women nor his holy men are overdrawn a jot: they ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... the Psalms (Ps. vii. 17); as little was 'noddle', which occurs in one of the few poetical passages in Hawes. The same may be said of 'sconce', in this sense at least; of 'nowl' or 'noll', which Wiclif uses; of 'slops' for trousers (Marlowe's Lucan); of 'cocksure' (Rogers), of 'smug', which once meant no more than adorned ("the smug bridegroom", Shakespeare). 'To nap' is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif's Bible it is said, "Lo he schall not nappe, nether slepe that kepeth Israel" (Ps. cxxi. 4). 'To punch', 'to thump', both of which, and in serious ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... eyes beseechingly. Now, as she saw the smug mockery on her captor's face, she fell silent. The futility of any pleading was too plain. Her eyes shifted to the ground again. But the first wild fear was past, and she began to think with some clearness. At once, it occurred to her that she must guard ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... source, the idea of interplanetary spaceships was becoming more popular. During 1948 the people in ATIC were openly discussing the possibility of interplanetary visitors without others tapping their heads and looking smug. During 1948 the novelty of UFO's had worn off for the press and every John and Jane Doe who saw one didn't make the front pages as in 1947. Editors were becoming hardened, only a few of the best reports got any space. Only "The Classics" rated headlines. "The Classics" ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... 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
... less than four months after we'd started. And we hadn't much to show, except a shift in the roadbed of the SF & D RR. The opposition, growing stronger each day, could sit back and rest the case, with nothing more than a smug, needling, I-told-you-so look. ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... your 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 before! That is revolution—going ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... excitedly as eunuchs and as wives of eunuchs (they have their excuses, of course, and who knows but the masquerade is somewhat unnecessary); to the pedantic ones who barricade themselves heroically behind their own belchings; to the smug ones who walk with their noses ecstatically buried in their own rectums (I have nothing against them, I swear); to the righteous ones who masturbate blissfully under the blankets of their perfections; to the righteous ones who finger each other in the ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes of a vacation in Japan, boastful of their possessions, smug in their Dutch self-complacency, and somewhat gluttonous in their manner ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... though a garland of red roses Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun, In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, Upon Victoria's formal middle time His leaves of ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... Braun's ultimate end as a citizen had caused the smug dealer to always avoid Braun at the jolly Restaurant Bavaria, where the good-natured foreign convives often joined each ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... shut out by the adjoining extensions, prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the scrap of a yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his master's guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and who had never been known to crack a smile of any kind, long or short, during his five years' sojourn with the ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... "Smug it!" said Mercer, with a comical look, "when he knew. Look! see that open ground there with the clump of fir-trees and the long slope of sand going down ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... but he got no rejoinder to that. He looked at the company, and his small, smug, fatuous face, which was somewhat pale and haggard, frowned with astonishment. Again he looked for information into Carroll's unanswering face. He looked at an empty chair near him; then he looked ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 their lives ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... pines whirled monotonously by, and by and by the hills began to crop up. Off against the horizon Stark mountain loomed, veiled, with a purple haze, and around another curve Economy appeared, startlingly out of place with its smug red brick walks and its gingerbread porches and plastered tile bungalows. Then without warning Billy sat up. How long had that young scamp been awake? Had he slept at all? He was like a man, grave and stern with business before him. The doctor almost felt ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... lot." She did not intend her tone to be smug; but if she had glanced sidewise at her husband, she might have seen the pained red mount from chin to brow. She did not seem to sense his hurt. They went on, past the plaza now. Only a few blocks lay between them and their home; the old brownstone house that had been New York's definition ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... they were all very stiff, but glad of the sun on sagebrush and river, and the boy and girl sang over breakfast. While Milt was gathering fuel he looked up at Claire standing against a background of rugged hills, her skirt and shoes still smug, but her jacket off, her blouse turned in at the throat, her hair blowing, her sleeves rolled up, one hand on her hip, erect, charged with ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Eighteen Hundred 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and reproachful. I got a clear picture of him—short, balding, mean little eyes in a smug, self-righteous little face. "Michael, after all she's twenty-three years old. She's certainly out ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... 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
... Lingard, who wrote, after 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 the Catholic ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... beauty of the country played the very vengeance with me. I could not mount my fancy into the termagant vein. I could not conceive, amidst the smiling landscape, a scene of blood and murder; and the smug citizens in breeches and gaiters, put all ideas of heroes and bandits out of my brain. I could think of nothing but dulcet subjects. "The pleasures of spring"—"the pleasures of solitude"—"the pleasures of tranquillity"—"the pleasures ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... it wearisome the way the army remained so smug in its assumption that God stood right behind it. When worsted on economic grounds—and perhaps driven also from "survival of the fittest" shelter—a pompous retreat could always be ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... 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 cakes. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... Colombian revolution! How surprised the people of these United States would be some day to learn that this tropic struggle was in essence an American war! The smug and unthinkingly contented in this great country of ours regarded the frenzied combat in the far South as but a sort of opera bouffe. What fools, these Americans! And he, when that war should end, would control navigation on the great Magdalena and Cauca rivers, and acquire a long-term ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... on which he stood, looked over my shoulder. Dinner was about to be served. The women had come out. The table-lamps threw their rosy glow over white necks and uncovered arms, and revealed, higher in the shadows, the faces of the men, smug, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the 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 duet in ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... Generally speaking, it is desirable that the characteristics of an old book should be preserved, and that the new work should be as little in evidence as possible. It is far more pleasant to see an old book in a patched contemporary binding, than smug and tidy in ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... rises, leans 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
... day this; the jubilee of man. London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer: Then thy spruce citizen, washed artizan, And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair, And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl; To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking envious gibe ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... 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! ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... it! A spirit as wild, as reckless, as ranting, as defiant as ever devil indulged in! The humility of my presentation letter to his Majesty was beautiful! The reply of the flunkey-secretary was equally beautiful in smug courtesy: 'Sir, I am commanded by the King to thank you for the book of poems you have kindly sent for his acceptance!' I say again, Thord, do you know ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... revelations might pass between this dead scion of the Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and the obscure, nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault below! The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover—the cause of all—even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him with horror. And when added to this was the consciousness that Sibyl ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... select some common, smug-faced Clergyman, capable, no doubt, if he were left alone, of guiding his flock quietly into the strait paths of goodness and humility. You turn him into a loud-voiced Clerical quack, vending his wretched patent medicines of salvation in a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... particularly after they have passed it, that they might be brothers in blood as in caste. Their moustaches and what little hair they have left turns the same shade of well-bred white. Their fine old Nordic faces are generally lean and flat of cheek, their expression calm, assured, not always smug. They are impeccably groomed and erect. Stout they may be, but seldom fat, and if not always handsome, they are polished, distinguished, aloof. They no longer wear side-whiskers and look younger than their fathers did at the ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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 an ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... in person; Ledantec really, as Hyde immediately saw, in spite of the smug, smooth exterior, the British-cut whiskers, and the unmistakable ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... 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 ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... sight of the villa, which looked as tidy, as smug and non-committal as it had done when she first approached it some weeks ago. Alighting quickly from the car, Esther rang the bell and waited, expecting momentarily to see the friendly Jacques answer the summons. There ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... 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 humus. Anyone who thinks of themselves ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... throughout the colony. That he would plant the King's standard, and summon all loyal gentlemen to rally round it, had been a measure agreed in countless meetings, and applauded over thousands of bumpers. I have a pretty good memory, and could mention the name of many a gentleman, now a smug officer of the United States Government, whom I have heard hiccup out a prayer that he might be allowed to perish under the folds of his country's flag; or roar a challenge to the bloody traitors absent with the rebel army. But let bygones be bygones. This, however, is matter of public history, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... maternal uncle, and Paul had often wondered if there could have been anything in common between his mother—whom he had never known—and this smug Pharisee. His father, who had died whilst Paul was at Oxford, had rarely spoken of Paul's mother; but Paul had chanced to overhear an old clubman refer to her as having possessed "the most fascinating ankles in London." The remark had confirmed ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the travesty of the somewhat pedantic narrative, interspersed with fairly amusing anecdotes, that Thomas Day published in 1783, is superb. No matter how familiar it may be, it is simply impossible to avoid laughing anew at the smug little Harry, the sanctimonious tutor, or the naughty Tommy, as Mr. Sambourne has realised them. The "Anecdotes of the Crocodile" and "The Presumptuous Dentist" are no less good. The way he has turned ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... coercion boldly claimed for the embargo the credit of having brought about this happy consummation. Some misgivings were excited, to be sure, by the report of a new order in council which substituted a blockade of Holland, France, and Italy for the order of November, 1807; yet weeks of smug satisfaction were enjoyed by the Administration before it was bewildered by the tidings that Canning had recalled Erskine and repudiated all his acts. Madison had to submit to "the mortifying necessity" of issuing another proclamation reviving the ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... wan domestic drudge Scuttering across a smug suburban lawn; Tired with the nightly watch, the morning trudge, The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • 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. ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... paper was a page out of a fashion book, and there were pictures on it of horrid little smug-faced boys in sky-blue suits bowling hoops in a way no real little boy ever bowled a hoop in his life, and simpering little girls in lace frocks holding dolls or sun-shades in ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... second time, and was then rewarded by the sight of the respectable-looking butler. His face appeared—or I imagined it,—even more smug than before in its expression, and there was something suggestive ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... sweat from his forehead. His lips were working nervously. All suavity and polish were gone now; there were only viciousness and fear, each struggling with the other for the mastery in the man's smug face. ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... tears 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 fiancee 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. To tell you the truth I had come down off ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... places along the shore. It was because of this that his aunt could not get him to go to church—which was a horror to her orthodox soul. He told her he would like to go to church if it were empty but he could not bear it when it was full—full of smug, ugly people. Most people, he thought, were ugly—though not so ugly as he was—and ugliness made him sick with repulsion. Now and then he saw a pretty girl at whom he liked to look but he never saw one that wholly pleased him. To him, the homely, crippled, poverty-stricken Roger Temple whom they ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... from a Methodist or a Presbyterian. He and his wife arrived to noon dinner, and I 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 ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... laws I would complain of," she said. "It is your individuals. Look at him—a poor, shivering, starved creature, watching a constant stream of well-fed, well-clothed, smug men of business, passing always within a few feet of him. Why does he not help ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... smug, a swaying object which we had not observed till then, took monstrous form before our eyes and in it we recognized an old friend, the Channel boat Elfrida, which lay basking in the velvet shadows like a dozing cat and gently pulling on her cables. Why not? We did! Nothing prevented ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... shapeless, work-distorted, maybe bibulous-looking mother, exchanging that resounding and ungraceful kiss at the hospital gate. I have heard Bert shout "Mother!" from a hundred yards off, when he spied her coming through the gate. No false shame there! No smug "good form" in that—nor in the time-honoured jest which follows: "And 'ave you remembered to bring me a bottle of beer, mother?" (Of course visitors are not allowed to introduce alcohol into the hospital—otherwise I am afraid there ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... fourth 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... 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
... Europe on his vacation when the coal cases first came up.... Besides, it would have made no difference. I think I see in it the fine hand of our good friend the Senator,—smug-faced old fox!" ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... a college senior is a highly edifying and imposing business, but the 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 is ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... aspect as it had worn in the seventeenth century, and remains to the present day perhaps the best example in the world of an old-fashioned city business house of the honest time when merchant-princes were content to live above their office, instead of seeking solace in smug suburban villas. The place has been preserved exactly as it stood, and even the present attendants are correctly clad in the sober brown garb of the servants of three hundred years since. It is interesting, not only in itself, but as ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... his house to meet him on his return. It was a rash vow, I am ready to admit. Yet rash as it was, I do not find it in my heart to be severely critical of him. I rather join with Dr. Peck in my admiration. You know what is the matter with a great many of us smug church members? We are so prudent. We have such admirable possession of all our faculties. We are in danger of dying of self-control. This man in the white heat of his enthusiasm made a solemn pledge to the Lord of that which was destined to be infinitely the most precious thing in his life. But ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... 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 remark will surely ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... you singers and players have a smug little fashion of forgetting that there is a composer back of you. You don't sing extempore, Thayer, make up the song as you go along. You're nothing more than a species of elocutionist, you know, trying to show the people who weren't on the spot what the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... inclines me to the opinion that one of the detached wings was used for the kitchen offices, there being large fireplaces in both of them, very suitable for the getting up of good dinners.[3] The grounds about the house have been much altered of late years—the gardens long since destroyed. A smug, close-shaven turf replaces the old-fashioned flower-beds and shrubbery, amid which I love to fancy sweet Peggy Arnold trailing her French brocades and flowered chintzes, her rosy ear attuned to the high-flown compliments of the men of fashion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... even complaint against the bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear; that the rascally acts of others are perhaps, in the queer webwork of human relations, due to some calousness of our own. Who knows? Some man may have robbed a bank in Nashville or fired a gun in Louvain because we looked so intolerably smug in Philadelphia! ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... 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 Ad-Visor ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... find such a competitor in Dick Derosne. In fact, neither of the young men was capable of appreciating the attractions of the other: Dick considering Norburn very doubtfully a gentleman, and very certainly what in his University days he dubbed a "smug"; Norburn regarding him with the rather impatient contempt that such a man is apt to bestow on those for whom dressing themselves and amusing themselves are the chief labours of a day. Moreover, Norburn did not frequent dances, and young men who do ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... is so." The man of knives and tinctures pulled his side-whiskers with smug satisfaction as he looked into a small mirror on the wall. "Do you chance to know if madame has any cordials or spirits?" he added, straightening his waistcoat ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... roused himself from all these gloomy thoughts to observe his companions. The boys at the upper end, near Mr. Blinkhorn, were fairly attentive, and he noticed one small smug-faced boy about half-way up, who, while a class-mate was faltering and blundering over some question, would cry "I know, sir. Let me tell him. Ask me, sir!" in a restless agony of ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... was too self-complacent, too comfortable, too secure in its social and political alliances; and he was bent on shaming people into severer notions. "We will have a vocabularium apostolicum, and I will start it with four words: 'pampered aristocrats,' 'resident gentlemen,' 'smug parsons,' and 'pauperes Christi'. I shall use the first on all occasions; it seems to me just to hit the thing." "I think of putting the view forward (about new monasteries), under the title of a 'Project for Reviving Religion in ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... the Piccadilly entrance of the restaurant touched his hat ingratiatingly, with the smug confidence of a man who is accustomed to getting sixpence a time ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... promise was there before me of reward or honor? I was no longer "an officer and a gentleman," I was a copying clerk, "a model letter-writer." I could foresee the end. I would become a nervous, knowing, smug-faced civilian. Instead of clean liquors, I would poison myself with cocktails and "quick-order" luncheons. I would carry a commuter's ticket. In time I might rise to the importance of calling the local conductors by their familiar names. "Bill, what was the matter with ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... does not make him less interesting as a figure in that amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he "issues smug, ornate, with his well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking, his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... lock. On the way, thinking about Sattell, he suddenly recovered a completely new memory. On their first wedding anniversary, so long ago, he and his wife had gone out to dinner to celebrate. He remembered how she looked: the almost-smug joy they shared that they would be together for always, with ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... almost cordial in comparison with the cold salutation which the two colleagues exchanged at the Chamber, an "I was expecting you," uttered with a purpose perhaps, the advocate waved the Nabob to the chair near his desk, bade the smug domestic, dressed in black from head to foot, not to "tighten the sack-cloth with the scourge," but to stay away until the bell should ring for him, arranged a few scattered papers, and then, crossing his legs, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... his mother gives him lolly, cake, piece of beef or mutton, In a corner he'll eat it by himself, he's such a nasty, greedy glutton. And he'll smug from his playmates a marble, top or button, That scarcely any one can with him have any fun, Because—He's a wicked, rude, bad, naughty, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... in scented sheets a-loll! Rich fare and rosy wine have lapped his soul In a bon-vivant's slumbers. His pen lies there, the ink is scarcely dry With which he sketched the smug philosophy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... to contemplate such a thing. No; don't contradict me! It's rude. I'm that, and several other things besides. I'd no idea I was so much in the grip of the East. It's a curious thing. One feels it in the blood. It's six years—more—since I climbed on to the shelf, and I've been quite smug and self-satisfied most of the time. There's been a twinge of regret every now and then, but nothing I couldn't whistle away. But now—" his words quickened; he spoke them whimsically, yet passionately, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... the First Communion. Intoxication with the music of chants and organ, drowned in the scent of incense and flowers, hung about with scapularies, rosaries, consecrated medals, and holy images, he, like his companions, assumed a certain air of self-importance and wore a smug, sanctified look. He was cold and unbending towards his aunt, who spoke with far too much unconcern about the "great day." Though she had long been in the habit of taking her nephew to Mass every Sunday, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... 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 ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... old man, it's expected. Jest fancy me slinging my 'ook For old Turmutshire, going out nuttin', or bobbing for fish in a brook! Not der wriggle, dear boy, I assure you. Could stars of Mayfair be content To round upon Rome or the Riggi, and smug up in Surrey ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... the fire from heaven, henceforward 'pontificals' are humbug, and the wearer thereof but charlatan, despite—'the master yonder in the isle.' Pegasus must pack in favour of a British hunter, and even the poet at last wear the smug regimentals of mediocrity and mammon. Ye younger choir especially have a care, for, though you sing with the tongues of men and angels, and wear not a silk hat, it shall avail you nothing. Neither ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... always has been and always will be free. If you chain love down under smug rules you only kill it or distort it. I am not arguing against marriage, but against hypocrisy. We may as well recognize that sex desire is so strong a force ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... guest. "The big one might shut off some of you from my devouring eyes." He was mixing ingredients in a chafing-dish as he spoke, and he wore the trying air of smug complacency that invariably ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... 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 pretty Marianna on his arm; her slender figure could not be seen, still ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... he came among his fellows their constraint and silence were far from reassuring. Nor, when the sitting had begun, did he like the enigmatic smile with which the well-dressed Paige stood and swung his watch-chain. How he distrusted and feared this smug, self-complacent young man! Yet the state's attorney's first words brought him ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... whose appearance and 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... while 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
... little solidity and composure of character or mind for that. He is brilliantly clever, of course, and he is honest enough, but he is passionate, and in no way great, I think." In Religion—obscurantism, resistance to the light, the smug endeavour to make the best of both worlds, offended Arnold as much on the one hand, as insolence, violence, ignorant negation, "lightly running amuck at august things," offended him on the other. He loved a "free handling, in a becoming spirit, of religious matters," ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... 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, ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... instant, I would stoop to seek your protection? I would die first! You have had things your own way too long, Mr. Brute MacNair! You think yourself secure, in your smug egotism. But the end is in sight. Your petty despotism is doomed. You have hoodwinked the authorities, bribed the police, connived with the Hudson Bay Company, bullied and browbeaten the Indians, cheated them out of their birthright ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... charge. He moved slowly, half crouched, long arms held slightly forward. Kennon backed away, watching the humanoid's eyes for that telltale flicker of the pupils that gives warning of attack. The expression on George's face never changed. It was satisfied—smug almost—reflecting the feelings of a brute conditioned to kill and given an opportunity to do so. The Lani ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... trembling figure upon the divan. My brother's nickname was given to him at school in virtue of his great size and strength. Standing now above Jasperson, his proportions seemed even larger than usual. The little dandy in his smug black garments with his diamond stud gleaming in the ivy-bosomed shirt (his rings had been given to Miss Birdie), with his features wilting like the wild pansies in the lapel of his coat, dwindled to an amorphous streak beneath the keen ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... without taking his eyes from the smug face of the man, swung one of the buckets and let drive at him. It missed. But he had got his range, and the next bucket knocked off the scoop hat. When the Cap'n scrambled to his feet, loaded with the bed-wrench for his next volley, the man turned and ran for his team. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... But, to change the subject, I saw you chatting with Kruse, plainly, also your familiar actions, and in fact I think you were going to paint a moustache on his lip. That I call pretty far advanced. A little later you will be jilted. You are still a smug person and have your charms. But beware, that is all I have to say to you. Just what was your experience the first time? Was it such that you can tell me ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... nothing worse in the Old Bachelor and Double Dealer, Congreve might pass for as pure a writer as Cowper himself, who, in poems revised by so austere a censor as John Newton, calls a fox-hunting squire Nimrod, and gives to a chaplain the disrespectful name of Smug. Congreve might with good effect have appealed to the public whether it might not be fairly presumed that, when such frivolous charges were made, there were no very serious charges to make. Instead of doing this, he pretended that he meant ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Depew; not the good-natured-looking great cat whose "I-have-eaten-the-canary" expression and smug whiskers had suggested his name, but a jungle tiger who had "gone bad," as the animal trainers call it, and who stood for a moment in the doorway, wrathfully surveying his frantic companions and selecting a victim. Froth was dripping from his snarling lips, his small eyes ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... and equals, and 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 breath, dirty linen, and ranker ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sat there as smug as smug, little knowing how the agony was being piled on his bald head; and just when Iosefo was making him cow the lions with a glance, Old Dibs took the specs off his nose and wiped them, while ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... in a bitter 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
... bein' out all night with a total stranger, I feel it my dooty to remark that in Grub City there is a justice of the peace." He bowed and made a gesture which either indicated his whole person, or that smug and bulging portion of it to which the gesture was more ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... skirted. Dozens of other similar tales were teeming in his brain, only waiting to know the fate of this one. And it had come back! It was the best he had to offer, and his best was not good enough! He looked at the shabby, dog-eared sheet, and the folded enclosure that doubtless set forth the editor's smug regrets, then with an impatient gesture he flung the envelope and its contents into the scrap-basket, cursing himself and his conceit in thinking he could write, and editors and their conceit in thinking ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of all cities upon the farms and mines is to-day exemplified in Europe with such appalling tragedy, that even the smug isolation of the American farmer and the American business man is broken down, not only by human sympathy but by the necessity of a better adjustment of their own economic system to the world crisis from which they ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... more famous sculptor. The walls, quite improperly, were adorned with paintings of former presidents, but the largest painting of all—it was fairly Gargantuan—was of the pork merchant, a large, ruddy gentleman, whom the artist, a keen observer, had painted truly—complacently porcine, benevolently smug. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... creature who looks as if he came from that mining camp and who has at least the prizefighter's cauliflower ear which results from the smashing of the ear cartilage. If he needs the fat bartender with his smug smile, or the humble Jewish peddler, or the Italian organ grinder, he does not rely on wigs and paint; he finds them all ready-made on the East Side. With the right body and countenance the emotion is distinctly more credible. The emotional expression ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... Mac-pherson's house, and every trader and trading skipper detested this teacher above all others. Macpherson liked him and said he was "earnest," the other white men called him and believed him to be, a smug-faced and sponging hypocrite. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... this—the Jubilee of man! London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer: Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan, And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl, Provoking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Englishmen bear the stamp of the Public Schools upon them and have made England what she is. Smug-faced missionaries grow fat on the spoils they have collected from smug-faced church-and-chapel-goers at home. Labour Members are in the pay of Germany and frequent infamous flats in the West-End. Liberal Cabinet Ministers—sometimes, more shame to them, of decent birth—wince ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various |
