"Complacency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in minor points; and the only chance which now remained of preserving the established order of Christendom, was to terrify the Vatican court into submission by the firmness of his attitude. For the present complications, the court of Rome, not he, was responsible. The pope, with a culpable complacency for the emperor, had shrunk from discharging a duty which his office imposed upon him; and the result had been that the duty was discharged by another. Henry could not blame himself for the consequences of Clement's delinquency. He rather ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... phenomenon that those who have no visible basis for pride are likely to be the most consumed with it. The pride of Diogenes was visible through the holes in his carpet; the pride of liberalism is visible in its irritability whenever the subject of sin, especially original sin, is mentioned. Yet the very complacency of liberalism about the perfection of man, is but another evidence (if we needed another) of his inherent sinfulness, his weakness in the face of moral ideals. If we confess our sins we are on the way to forgiveness; but if we say that we have no sin ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... kissed her hand he bent his knee to the ground in reverence. Then he rose to go, pressing a little packet into her palm. Their eyes met, and the man saw, in that brief instant, deep in the azure depths of the girl's that which tumbled the structure of his new-found complacency about ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the struggle was lifelong, but it must be added that it was always unequal. The knowledge that in his secret heart he desired this quality, the imperfection of imperfections, only served to make Dale's attack on the complacency of his contemporaries more bitter. He ridiculed their achievements, their ambitions, and their love with a fury that awakened in them a mild curiosity, but by no means affected their comfort. Moreover, the very vehemence with which he demanded ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... not know if the reader will understand how a passionate lover, an immense admiration and desire, can be shot with a gleam of positive hatred. Such a gleam there was in me at the serene self-complacency of that "NOW!" It vanished almost before I felt it. I found no warning in it of the ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... seen the expression of her face in the darkness it would have satisfied him that she did not receive that style of compliment like many of the belles of his acquaintance, who would take the small change of flattery with the smiling complacency ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to the full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... the big room in the Rue Royer Collard, the thirty-six trades which he had taken up one after another, and the dainties which he had cooked at the stove, dressed all in white, while Florent was dressed all in black. To such talk as this, indeed, she listened placidly, with a complacency which never wearied. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... a sudden loss of complacency at this question, but even as it was asked, relief came in the person of Brooks, the laboratory attendant, who entered by the preparation-room door, carrying a number of freshly killed guinea-pigs by their hind legs. "This is the last batch of material this session," said the youngster ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... vanity, and a tongue that could not tire. She had caught the mingled cant of Enoch and her mamma, repeated the names of public people and public places much oftener than her prayers, and was ready to own, with no little self complacency, that all her acquaintance told ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... character—the sort with which he had had his way all through life. He thought I would fall in his arms, and confess him master. The words I spoke to La Barre shocked and startled him out of his self complacency. Nor was that all—even before then he had begun to suspicion my relations with ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... petition for the suffrage we shall put an end to an otherwise endless disputation. I am quite sure that as long as her votes are kept separate from the men's votes, and are not counted, no possible harm can come from a little complacency in the face of ... Personally I have no objection to divorce. If a man marries a woman under the impression that she is a good cook, and after the waning of the honeymoon finds that she does not know the difference between sponge-cake and a plain common garden sponge, why should he be forced ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... that Boston had been bombarded by General Thomas Gage. Complacency ended. Congress acted with dispatch to approve the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. In direct, defiant terms these Resolves restated the rights of the Americans ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... measure, either destitution, suspension or displacement, removal to an inferior parish, or, at least, a comminatory reprimand, while the bishop, whom the prefect may denounce to the minister, does not refuse to the prefect this act of complacency. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... been culpably, well-nigh criminally, remiss as a nation in not preparing ourselves, and if, with the lessons taught the world by the dreadful tragedies of the last twelve months, we continue with soft complacency to stand helpless and naked before the world, we shall excite only contempt and derision if and when disaster ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... world of his 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 ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... review of the current morality, is always unpopular with the great mass of mankind. Though the conduct of their own lives is the subject which most concerns men, it is that in which they are least patient of speculation. Nothing is so wounding to the self-complacency of a man of indolent habits of mind as to call in question any of the moral principles on which he habitually acts. Praise and blame are usually apportioned, even by educated men, according to vague and general rules, with ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... is encompassed by his own sphere of life, densely on the breast, and less densely on the back, it is manifest whence it is that husbands who are very fond of their wives, turn themselves to them, and in the day-time regard them with complacency; and on the other hand, why those who do not love their wives, turn themselves away from them, and in the day-time regard them with aversion. By the reception of the conjugial sphere by the husband only through the wife, love truly conjugial is known and distinguished from that ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... a doubt that the Moon has no air. Consequently, the common expressions, "the Moon was gazing down with an air of benevolence," or with "an air of complacency," or with "an air of calm superiority," are incorrect and objectionable, the fact being that the Moon has no air ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... people to be cannibals, for, during the long talks we used to have on the island, Yamba had described to me their horrid feasts after a successful war. Nevertheless, I awaited the arrival of the little flotilla with all the complacency I could muster, but at the same time I was careful to let Yamba's husband be ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... can hesitate between them, for Pat is so rough in his dress, and has such red hair, and straight at that; and Mike pushes his fingers through the bright curls, and gives another look at himself in the little mirror that hangs in his room in the stable. The self-complacency melts away, as the object becomes dearer, and there is a slight fear that some obstacle may spring up between him and his hopes. He'll risk but he can overcome it, though, but it would be pleasanter ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... in all his other works, the only end and aim of Goethe was to carry to perfection the art in which he was so great a master. Virtue and vice, truth and falsehood, are each portrayed with the same graceful complacency and the same exquisite skill. His immense and wide- spreading influence renders this singular indifference, which seems to confound the very sense of right and wrong, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... says that we are not an improvement on the English? An improvement in a happy combination of mental graces and Saxon force?" This sort of thing is especially entertaining in the youthful Page, for it is precisely against this kind of complacency that, as a mature man, he directed his choicest ridicule. As an editor and writer his energies were devoted to reconciling North and South, and Johns Hopkins itself had much to do with opening his eyes. Its young men and its professors were gathered ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... of selfishness; and they not only drew themselves up into the miserable rags of their own selfish aggrandizements as far as all competitors were concerned, but regarded slavery with imperturbable complacency. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... such as the foregoing—no misgivings suggested by them probably, troubled the self-complacency of most of these clever sculptors. Marble, in their view, had no such sanctity as we impute to it. It was merely a sort of white limestone from Carrara, cut into convenient blocks, and worth, in that state, about two or three dollars per pound; ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... light except what appears thro' the crevices of the window shutters. This head, however, does not seem characteristic of Christ; it wants the gravity, the soft melancholy and unassuming meekness of the great Reformer: in short, from the vivid fire of the eyes and the too great self-complacency of the countenance, it ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... manners in the commercial emporium, though not altogether intelligible to his fair auditor, were new and amusing, and in spite of the contagious effect of her father's contempt, and the troubled looks of poor Kelson, she could not help listening to him with complacency. It was evident to every body but Mary that the retailer of ginghams was most seriously smitten with her, as much so, that is to say, as his idolatry of himself left him capable of being with any person. And so it proved, for in less time than she ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... desires, of our castles, of our dreams! The complacency with which we jog along in what we deem to be our own particular groove! I recall a girl friend of my youth who was going to be a celibate, a great reformer, and toward that end was studying for the pulpit. She is now the mother of several ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, I suspect, you know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the London women ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I wonder—male and female? Take a woman ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a bedroom, and left there till it would be wanted. A short time afterwards a fire broke out in the room, and a heap of ashes was all that was found in the drawer, though little else in the room besides a few clothes was injured. "The McFauls appeared to accept their loss with a complacency, which could only be accounted for by the idea they entertained that the money was destroyed through spiritual intervention—that there were ghosts in the question, and that the destruction of the money was to be taken as a warning directed ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... double operation, incessantly repeated, of replacing the handle when it is worn out, and the blade when it becomes worthless. A precisely similar operation had been going on from time immemorial in the Van Tricasse family, to which Nature had lent herself with more than usual complacency. From 1340 it had invariably happened that a Van Tricasse, when left a widower, had remarried a Van Tricasse younger than himself; who, becoming in turn a widow, had married again a Van Tricasse younger than herself; and so on, without ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... laid in a box of sage and one of mixed dressing with, perhaps, some paprika and thyme, she views her foresightedness with much complacency. She ...
— Twenty-four Little French Dinners and How to Cook and Serve Them • Cora Moore
... were old bachelors, living by themselves in the old Whitman homestead about a mile away, and their fare was understood to be forlorn and desultory. To-day they watched with grave complacency while their ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... beauty. Finding herself thus ensnared, as she was a woman of strong mind, instead of indulging in unavailing complaint, she assumed a satisfied air; and as the only way to preserve her honour, received the addresses of the treacherous master with pretended complacency, and consented to receive him as a husband at the first port at which the ship might touch. With these assurances he was contented, and behaved to her with honourable deference, and affectionate respect. At length the vessel anchored near ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... by the pleasures of a gay world to forget your duties as a mother; there is nothing to supplant him in your heart; his presence endears every place; and you learn to love the spot that gave him birth, and to think with complacency upon the country, because it is his country; and in looking forward to his future welfare you naturally become doubly interested in the place that is one day ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... servants. But they are pleasant, kind, intelligent people to live with, if you have plenty of money, and dress well. I know nothing of Canada; it was too insignificant to awaken either interest or curiosity. I shall regard it with more complacency ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... world, with rosy face and simpering features, received me politely, nay kindly; listened with complacency to my remonstrances, though he scarcely heeded Mary's tears. I did not then suspect, that my eloquence was in my complexion, the blush of seventeen, or that, in a world where humanity to women is the characteristic of advancing civilization, the beauty ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... little habit of accepting anything and everything with the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating. It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... he thus acquired of his own worth made him credit the excessive and almost idolatrous adoration that was paid to his understanding; which but for this increased self-complacency, must have necessarily recalled him from his aberrations. For the present, however, this universal voice was only a confirmation of what his complacent vanity whispered in his ear; a tribute which he felt entitled ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... and on the principle of Ce n'est que la verite qui blesse, it may be worth while to recall it: "The Bishop was particularly playful on the morrow at breakfast. Though his face beamed with Christian kindness, there was a twinkle in his eye which seemed not entirely superior to mundane self-complacency, even to a sense of earthly merriment. His seraphic raillery elicited sympathetic applause from the ladies, especially from the daughters of the house, who laughed occasionally even before his angelic jokes were ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Nanking, taking the opportunity, while at Nanking, to visit the mausoleum of the founder of the Ming dynasty, who lies buried near by, and whose descendants had been displaced by the Manchus. Happily for K'ang Hsi's complacency, the book of fate is hidden from Emperors, as well as ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... State as Thomas Jefferson and Hamilton Fish; possibly such as John Quincy Adams, Seward, and John Hay. In Great Britain, having been evolved in conformity with its environment, it is successful; but it is successful nowhere else. I have always looked back with great complacency upon such men as those above named in the State Department, and such as Hamilton, Gallatin, Chase, Stanton, and Gage in other departments, sitting quietly in their offices, giving calm thought to government business, and allowing ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... is disposed, if one has any sense, to talk of oneself to people that inquire only out of compliment, and do not listen to the answer, the more satisfaction one feels in indulging a self-complacency, by sighing to those that really sympathise with our griefs. Do not think it is pain that makes me give this low-spirited air to my letter. No, it is the prospect of what is to come, not the sensation of what is passing, that affects me. The loss of youth is melancholy ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... up all that and doesn't get caught, I'll believe he's sure a close relation of the Old Nick," Steve gave as his opinion, after this labor had been completed, and they surveyed the trap with complacency. ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... There was a complacency in his nod which irritated her. It almost seemed to infer that she was not speaking the truth and that he was humouring her ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... with you, sir, perfectly," replied the other, with increased complacency. "A boy learns to value his money as he should, only when he has earned it ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... It was altogether a bright and beautiful world he had got into, and there was in it but one woman, beautiful beyond his dreams. To doubt her was to doubt all women. When he looked at her he forgot the caution and distrust and sardonic self-complacency his southern training had given him. He believed, and the world seemed to be filled with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... morning shone full upon the portrait, and, as I lay awake, my eyes continued to dwell upon it with growing complacency; its beauty crept about my heart insidiously, silencing my scruples one after another; and while I knew that to love such a woman were to sign and seal one's own sentence of degeneration, I still knew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pieces as you and I! there the creative power, or the principle of nature, or the soul of the world, or the mundane animal, or whatever title one chooses to give the thing, can look at its product with a certain degree of complacency and satisfaction. For it has your curved lines: it starts off into noticeable angles; it is jagged like corals; it darts forward like crystals; it agglomerates like basalt; nay, there is no conceivable line that does not hop, skip, and jump about our bodies. We, coz, are the spoilt, the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... mounting all the time, and were received in the day nursery by the old Rectory nurse, much increased in dignity, but inclined to be pathetic as she inquired after 'Mr. Mark,' while Annaple, like a little insensible being, answered with provoking complacency as to his perfect health, and begged Mrs. Poole to bring Master Alwyn to play in the garden at Springfield with her Willie. In fact there was a general invitation already to Alwyn to play there, but his attendants so much preferred the society of their congeners in the parks ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Outdated like a last year's almanac Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled fields, And yet so pinched and bare and comfortless, The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, The sun and air his sole inheritance, Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, And hugged his rags in self-complacency! ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... to her unfinished dinner, and then Mrs. Williams hurried her through, that she might get the kitchen made "tidy." In the meantime Miss Williams departed, in all the glories of a fashionable toilet, for her afternoon promenade, her mother regarding her with much pride and complacency. It seemed the one object of her hard-working, careworn life that her daughter should look "like a lady," and a large proportion of her earnings and savings went to ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... my nature," Kolya interrupted, not without complacency. "But it's true that I am stupidly sensitive, crudely sensitive. You smiled just now, and I fancied you ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... that brought playgoers to the small Blackfriars Theatre, and how strenuously from year to year they sought the expulsion of the King's Men from the precinct.[717] They certainly would not have regarded with complacency the erection in their midst of a ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon it. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... own remissions, of making an unnecessarily loud noise in drinking, of intoning a wrong antiphon as cantor, of spilling crumbs in the refectory; and then leaned back on his heels well content with the insignificance of his list, to listen with a discreet complacency to old Dom Adrian, who had overslept himself once, spilled his beer twice, criticised his superior, and talked aloud to himself four times during the Greater Silence, and who now mumbled out ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... dear, for Sir Charles thereupon represented to Bella that a man with a grievance is a bore to the very eye, and asked her to receive no more visits from his scowling cousin. The lady smiled, and said, with soft complacency, "I obey." ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... PLEASES THE EYE, a good woman, the heart. The one is a jewel, the other a treasure. Invincible fidelity, good humor, and complacency of temper, outlive all the charms of a fine face, and make the decay of it invisible. That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know to ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... with the instruments of the Passion. Beneath him in the second frieze stands the angel of justice with the scales; and on either side of him is the vision of the last judgment. The good prepare, with infinite titillation and complacency, to ascend to the skies; while the bad are dragged, pushed, hurled, stuffed, crammed, into pits and caldrons of fire. There is a charming detail in this section. Beside the angel, on the right, where the wicked are the prey of demons, stands a little ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... that seemed an eternity in passing. Carson's face worked convulsively, and the seeming complacency of the Chairman of the Finance Committee gave place to nervous apprehension as he watched the color surge through the cheeks and temples ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... air!" As he spoke, he rose in the boat, and lifting his leathern sea-cap from his head, stroked back the thick clusters of black locks which shadowed his sun-burnt countenance, while he viewed his little vessel with the complacency of a seaman who was proud of her qualities. "But it's close work, Mr. Griffith, when a man rides to a single anchor in a place like this, and at such a nightfall. What are ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to admiring his own skill, or airing his own powers, or imitating the choice touches of others, or heeding the breath of conventional applause; if he yields to any strain of self-complacency, or turns to practising smiles, or to taking pleasure in his self-begotten graces and beauties and fancies;—in this giddy and vertiginous state he will be sure to fall into intellectual and artistic sin. The man, in such a case, is no ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... rugged health, well to do and prosperous. They had got on for many years without so much as a shadow of difference between them. They had made the tour of Europe together, had engaged in many an outing and now as the evening of life was drawing on, they took matters with that complacency and comfort which was creditable to their good sense and which was warranted ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... of the traveller during the whole time he is occupied in cooking and eating his dinner, under a tree by the roadside, assured that he shall have at least a part of the last cake thrown to him by the stranger, instead of a stick or a stone. The stranger regards him with complacency, as one that reposes a quiet confidence in his charitable disposition, and flings towards him the whole or part of his last cake, as if his meal had put him in the best possible humour with him and all ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... beatific be anything more or less than a perpetual re-presentment to each individual angel of his own present attainments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking-glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction? ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... called "The Ruined Maid," his sympathy is so close as to offer an absolute flout in the face to the system of Victorian morality. Mr. Hardy, indeed, is not concerned with sentimental morals, but with the primitive instincts of the soul, applauding them, or at least recording them with complacency, even when they outrage ethical tradition, as they do in the lyric narrative called "A Wife and Another." The stanzas "To an Unborn Pauper Child" sum up what is sinister and what is genial in Mr. Hardy's attitude to the unambitious forms of life ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... fatigued little laugh, and looked around her again. The drawing-room had greatly changed since first we visited it with Admiral Buzza, and the local tradesmen regarded Mr. Goodwyn-Sandys' account with some complacency as they thought of payment after Midsummer. For the strangers were not of the class that goes to the Metropolis or to the Co-operative Stores; from the outset they had announced a warm desire to benefit the town of Troy. This pretty drawing-room ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of immortal names, or names which might be made immortal; Gibbon once contemplated with complacency, the very ideal of SENTIMENTAL BIOGRAPHY, and we may regret that he has only left the project! "I have long revolved in my mind a volume of biographical writing; the lives or rather the characters of the most eminent ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of good men. For first, what can be a greater honour than to be chosen one of the stewards and dispensers of God's bounty to mankind? What is there, that can give a generous spirit more pleasure and complacency of mind, than to consider that he is an instrument of doing much good? that great numbers owe to him, under God, their subsistence, their safety, their health, and the good conduct of their lives? The wickedest man upon earth taketh a pleasure in doing good to those he loveth; and ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... ministers of England, be they who they may, have a difficult task before them. The odd thing is that our present ministers seem totally unconscious of the difficulty and the dangers. I am told that they view the state of Ireland with great complacency. It is astonishing how ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... peroxide, And heart that is hard as a flint, Blue orbs of complacency ox-eyed, That light at the mark of the mint, Ears only for jingle of joybells, A conscience as light as a cork— You are wedded to follies and foibles, My Lady ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... advancement of art and industry in this life reaches no further than to a learned ignorance of the mysteries in the works of God, and yet there is a wonderful satisfaction to the mind in it. But how much sweet complacency hath Adam had, whose heart was so enlarged as to know both things higher and lower, their natures, properties, and virtues, and several operations! No doubt could trouble him, no difficulty vex him, no controversy ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the possible increase in the purchasing value of the dollar with entire complacency. Its selfish interests harmonized with sound theories of finance. But in the debtor West the process had so different an aspect that the financial obligations of the United States were obscured by ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... a people who are daily given to understand, by their own authors, that they are the greatest, the wisest, the most virtuous nation under the sun. Let a European author be never so well disposed towards them, his partial applause contributes but little to their full-blown complacency. But, when they hear that the Republic has been traduced by a foreign, and especially a British pen, their vanity is piqued, their curiosity excited, and their conscience smitten. Every one denounces the libel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... true in music one finds still truer in the other arts. One keeps coming on it everywhere—the egotism of cities, the self-complacency of the crowds swerving the finer and the truer artists from their functions, making them sing in hoarse crowd-voices instead of singing in their own and giving us themselves. Nearly all our acting ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he would rather lose half his lands than be separated from Agnes. Meanwhile he used pressure on his bishops to make them disregard the interdict, and vigorously intrigued with the cardinals, seeking to build up a French party in the papal curia. Innocent so far showed complacency that the legate he sent to France was the King's kinsman, Octavin, Cardinal-bishop of Ostia, who was anxious to make Philip's humiliation as light as possible. His labors were eased by the partial submission of Philip, who in September visited Ingeborg, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... novel, as unconcerned about the imminent return of the travelers as if it were nothing more than the daily visit of the milkman. Nothing short of an earthquake would ever shake Aunt Grace out of her settled complacency. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... Commissioners. I have in hand and will show you the authentic proofs of this, as well as of the horror, which the Americans have, of ever returning under the iron sceptre they have broken. This confounds the falsehoods, that have been uttered and kept up with so much complacency in this country. Will they never cease to give credit to such impudent assertions? I cannot forbear to transcribe what a friend[31] has written to me. This friend does not know in detail what I ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... and added praises of her own. Hildegarde's little ears would surely have burned if she could have heard the good lady. As for Roger, he listened with great complacency. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... had deserted their wives before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by HER in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his desertion—a sufficient cause in her own State—and re-married, he would at least be more secure. He began, without committing himself, by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... pleasure to wrest my words,' replied Philip, in his own calm manner, though he actually felt hurt, which he had never done before. His complacency was less secure, so that there was more need ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... new coat,' said Mr. Tupman, as the stranger surveyed himself with great complacency in a cheval glass; 'the first that's been made with our club button,' and he called his companions' attention to the large gilt button which displayed a bust of Mr. Pickwick in the centre, and the letters 'P. C.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... psychology have long been my hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and to be vain of it, are so commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same. I trust therefore, that there will be more good humour than contempt, in the smile with which the reader chastises my self-complacency, if I confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception of a truth new to myself may not have been rendered more poignant by the conceit, that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time, certainly, in which I took some little ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... soon as possible. But I dared say nothing. These Dyaks had killed our enemies, and were only following their own customs by rejoicing over their dead victims. But the fact seemed to part them from us by centuries of feeling—our disgust, and their complacency. Some of them told us that afterwards, when they brought home some of the children belonging to the slain, and treated them very kindly, wishing to adopt them as their own, they were annoyed at the little ones standing looking up ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... DOW a variety of casts and moulds and spread them on the table. His latest piece of work was a medal in high relief bearing the heads of the Prince and Princess of Wales surrounded with a wreath. Bob had no political convictions; with complacency he drew these royal features, the sight of which would have made his father foam at the mouth. True, he might have found subjects artistically more satisfying, but he belonged to the people, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... The complacency with which we are able to state without fear of contradiction that the body of intelligent and thoughtful women do want suffrage must not obscure our perception of the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept this verity and turn our energies toward the emancipation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... her mother's side, a woman of wealth and social position, who owned a large country home near Oakdale, and who was by no means inclined to view with the complacency of Mr. Davis the idyllic friendship of the two young people. Mrs. Roberts, or "Aunt Polly" as she was known to the family, had plans of her own concerning the future of the beauty which she saw unfolding itself at the ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... With what complacency will a young parson deduce false conclusions from misunderstood texts, and then threaten us with all the penalties of Hades if we neglect to comply with the injunctions he has given us! Yes, my too self-confident ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... evidently glowed in his breast with a consuming fervor, and when Velasquez, after due observation proposed the liberation of the whole expedition, with Vaalpeor himself, as its protected companion, the now consciously imprisoned pagan, horror-stricken at first, regarded the proposition with complacency, and finally, with a degree of delight, regardless of consequences. It was, however, mutually agreed that the design should be kept secret from Huertis, until ripe for success. A serious obstacle existed in his plighted guardianship ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... elation, born of his unexpected bit of good fortune, was still uppermost to lend complacency to his reflections, he yet found room for a compassionate underthought having for its object the man from whom he had lately parted. He was honestly sorry for Griswold; sorry, but not actually apprehensive. He had known the defeated ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... with something like pity. This was Nina in her before-the-party mood. Her confidence and complacency would all begin to ooze away from her, presently, and the words that came so readily to Harriet would refuse to flow at all to any one else. She would come home saying that she hated parties because people were all so ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... self-contemplative and self-conscious enough to perceive his superiority of talent, and it had been the struggle of his life to abase this perception, so that it was actually a relief not to be obliged to fight with his own complacency in his powers. He had learned not to think too highly of himself—he had yet to learn to "think soberly." His aid was Ethel's chief pleasure through this somewhat trying summer, it might be her ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... charming appearance, from the luxuriant vines which covered it and were beginning to get autumnal tints of red and russet. All the front of Lloyd's was covered with vines, which had grown with amazing swiftness. Mrs. Lloyd often used to look at them and reflect upon them with complacency. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... were regarding him with astonished looks. Mr. Shaw and the captain had left their tinkering, Cookie his saucepans, and Aunt Jane and Violet had come hurrying from the hut. Among us all stood Mr. Tubbs with folded arms, looking round upon the company with an extraordinary air of complacency ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... degree, to all his domestics, and all his dependents. You can scarcely imagine what a moving picture my palace—and must I call it mine? presented, upon my first arrival. The old steward, and the grey-headed lacqueys endeavoured to assume a look of complacency, but their recent grief appeared through their unpractised hypocrisy. "Health to our young master! Long life," cried they, with a broken and tremulous accent, "to the marquis of Pescara!" You will readily believe, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... that had ever shed glory on the name of Gryce, and the nephew took as much pride in his inheritance as though it had been his own work. Indeed, he gradually came to regard it as such, and to feel a sense of personal complacency when he chanced on any reference to the Gryce Americana. Anxious as he was to avoid personal notice, he took, in the printed mention of his name, a pleasure so exquisite and excessive that it seemed a compensation for ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... hand that he carried to his breast pocket dropped nervelessly to his knee again, and he did not smoke. Through his memories of disappointment pierced a self-reproach which did not permit him the perfect self-complacency of regret; and yet he could not have been sure, if he had asked himself, that this pang did not heighten the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... picture as possible, he accumulates these material images of bodily torment in order to excite the imagination to the utmost. We can conceive of his writing these sentences carefully in his comfortable study, in an easy chair, by the side of a cheerful fire, with a smile of self-complacency, as he selects each striking expression. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the dissensions that have even disturbed the serenity of their own nation on the mainland, have never reached them here. Left to themselves, they have created a blameless Arcadia and an ideal community within an extent of twenty square leagues. Why should we disturb their innocent complacency and tranquil enjoyment by information which cannot increase and might impair their present felicity? Why should we dwell upon a late political and international episode which, while it has been a benefit to us, has been a humiliation to them ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... The complacency of the Roman was superb. Mentor lecturing the young Telemachus could not have been more ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... bank respectively. If either castle were attacked, arrangements were made for getting word to the other, when the men in that other would cross the Rhine and fall upon the rear of the invaders, hemming them thus between two fires. The Count therefore awaited with complacency whatever assault the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... a knowledge with which love has nothing to do, and it is a knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered poppy-head; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... was much in want of small cordage for many purposes, and that he wished he and others might go ashore to lay some on the strand by the town wall, I sent to ask permission from the governor, with assurance of their safely. This was immediately granted with the utmost readiness and complacency, desiring that they might use the most convenient place for their purpose, and offering the use of a house in which to secure their things during the night Yet after all these fair promises, every man who went ashore was seized, stript of their ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... months before he had parted from Kelly Woodridge to learn his fate from her father. He remembered that interview to which Nelly's wafted kiss had inspired him. He recalled to-day, as he had many times before, the singular complacency with which Mr. Woodridge had received his suit, as if it were a slight and unimportant detail of the business in hand, and how he had told him that Kelly and her mother were going to the "States" for a three months' visit, but that after her return, if they were both "still agreed," he, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Indians in the neighbourhood, by whom it is believed that the tenure of the "Scots Company" was sanctioned. The Spaniards took offence at this alleged aggression, and angry complaints were forwarded to the court of St James's. To these King William listened with something like complacency, his policy at the time being to temporize with Spain, in order to prevent the aggrandizement of the French Bourbons. The new settlement was accordingly denounced, in proclamations issued by the authorities of Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... had not suspected that Pollen could be guilty of such clumsiness; she questioned if matters had reached a point where such an attitude on his part would be justifiable under any circumstances. At all events, her doubts concerning his complacency had been answered. It occurred to Mrs. Ennis that her dinner-party was composed of more inflammable material, presented more dramatic possibilities, than even she had divined. She ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... by solemn appointment to meet Johnson, so long the god of his idolatry. They had first met at the shop of Davis, the actor and bookseller, and afterwards near an eating-house in Butcher Row. Boswell describes his feelings with delightful sincerity and self-complacency. "We had," he says, "a good supper and port wine, of which Johnson then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power of his conversation, and the pride arising ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... There are operations of extreme length in which I have sometimes seen good geometricians lose themselves. Reflection, assisted by practice, gives clear ideas, and enables you to devise shorter methods, these inventions flatter our self-complacency, while their exactitude satisfies our understanding, and renders a study pleasant, which is, of itself, heavy and unentertaining. At length I became so expert as not to be puzzled by any question that was solvable by arithmetical calculation; and even now, while everything I formerly knew fades ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the Jew, with complacency. "You would find it hard to hit upon anything I do not know. Yes, I am a vain man, it is true, but I am very frank and open about it. Look at my complexion. Did you ever see anything like it? It is Trevi water that does it." I thought such excessive vanity very unbecoming in a man of his ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... entertained by the magistrates toward the Orange party was so great that, preferring to submit to France rather than to a native stadtholder, they hastened to deliver up their towns to the invader; on the other hand, the friends of the house of Orange looked not without some complacency on the misfortunes which threatened the state, and which they hoped would reduce it to the necessity of raising the Prince to the dignities of his family; while in those places where the Catholics were numerous, the populace, under the guidance of the priests, forced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Present, and the Future, and penetrates even to the inmost recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, merciful, and full of pity, he forgives the wicked ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... noble buildings, distinguished men and women. Boston is an old city—one must remember that it was settled almost three centuries ago—and old cities, like old people, become tenacious of their idiosyncrasies, admitting their inconsistencies and prejudices with complacency, wisely aware that age has bestowed on them a special value, which is automatically increased with the passage ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... gilding. Then, as she complained of the heat, he led her through the press to the congested cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were thrust at them between the shoulders of packed consommateurs and Darrow, lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive complacency of the man at whose companion ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... only constitute an entire drama betwixt them,—seems to have been a favourite with Dryden, as well as with the public. In the Essay upon Heroic Plays, as well as in the dedication, the character of Almanzor is dwelt upon with that degree of complacency which an author experiences in analyzing a successful effort of his genius. Unquestionably the gross improbability of a hero, by his single arm, turning the tide of battle as he lists, did not appear so shocking in the age of Dryden, as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... little repugnance to any revolution or any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the object of his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest of his native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency on the intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartan government, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution to its centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in the character or conduct of a man profoundly ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the father exacted as the ransom for the life of the son—such were the methods by which the Provveditori of the Most Serene and Christian Republic enforced its authority, and which are related, not only without reprehension, but with manifest complacency and approval, by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... that accept with all the complacency of an ancient Buddha the devotion of more worshipers than any church or creed can claim are Fashion and Pleasure. Not sane fashion which helps make men and women attractive and clothes them with neatness and care, protects them by courtesies, and shields them by conventionalities, ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... me; he included me in his bow—that was all. All my little day-dream of growing self-complacency was shattered, scattered; the old feeling of soreness, smallness, wounded pride, and bruised self-esteem came back again. I felt a wild, angry desire to compel some other glance from those eyes than that exasperating ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... up looking at dogs, alive or china, embroidered or painted. Fortunately most of my friends have "pets," griffons that look like tropical spiders, little shiny naked shivering animals, bloated prosperous Pekineses, exuding the complacency of their mistresses and seeming to be rather the last word of a dressmaker, or a furrier, than a creation ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... dominated by the idea that nothing of permanent value can come from medievalism, arrogantly proclaim that ours is the greatest of centuries because we have not only what all other centuries had, but something else distinctively our own—a vast contribution to the world's progress. This self-complacency makes us forget that whatever truth there may be in the great theory of evolution, certainly the validity of the theory is not confirmed by the intellectual history of the human race. As was said of the Patriarchal Age so we may say of Dante's times "there were giants in those days" which ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... about an hour ago," resumed Pinkie Bonn with undisturbed complacency. "Just as I was beatin' it out of there by the cellar, I hears some whisperin' as I was passin' one of the end doors. Savvy? I hadn't made no noise, an' they hadn't heard me. I gets a peek in, 'cause ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard |
