"Complaisant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these times there is no very great happiness in being pope and the so-called father of Christendom. The princes have become very troublesome and disobedient children; they are no longer willing to recognize our paternal authority, and if the holy father does not manifest a complaisant friendliness toward these refractory princely children, and wink at their independence, they will renounce the whole connection and quit the paternal mansion. We should then, indeed, be the holy father of Christendom, but ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... him obediently, as mildly complaisant as she had once been coldly aloof. Though the allurement of the remote had deserted her, she still possessed, in his eyes, the attraction of the beautiful. If the excitement of the chase was ended, the pleasure of the capture was still amply sufficient to ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... very citadel of its own vaunted liberties—in the Parliament whose prestige was its proudest possession and which he made it his aim to shatter, to ridicule and to destroy. He converted an Irish Party of complaisant time-servers, Whigs and office-seekers into a Party of irreproachable incorruptibility, unbreakable unity, iron discipline and a magnificently disinterested patriotism. He formulated the demand for Irish nationhood with clearness and precision. He knew how to bargain ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Complaisant historians express their admiring wonder at these "hundreds of thousands of men fighting with their eyes doggedly fixed upon the Holy Sepulchre and dying in order to conquer it." They pity these "multitudes of men who threw ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... nothing to do but be quiet and as complaisant as his captors wished, and await developments. And the irony of such a situation—happening in the most crowded and most popular hotel in the Capital, with hundreds of guests at hand, and scores of servants poised to obey one's slightest nod—struck him with all the force of its supreme ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... prophecy, by all preparation, to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no work for any one but the decorous and the complaisant. Young men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, inflated by ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and motionless on the ground, and when Jet had prepared a gag he was even so complaisant as to open ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of our most complaisant spectacles, to discover in his writings, his gentlemanly tone is undeniable, his pictures of French life, especially in Paris, are beyond praise. In the most natural and graphic style imaginable, he dashes off a portrait typifying a class, and in a page gives ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... only about 67 members had been added by June, 1886. The receipts for the year to March, 1886, were no More than L35 19s., but as the expenditure only amounted to L27 6s. 6d., the Society had already adopted its lifelong habit of paying its way punctually, though it must be confessed that a complaisant printer and a series of lucky windfalls have contributed to ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... here, and my spirit and my health, too. To be exposed to the blind hatred of an unhappy child whose sorrows drive him to insanity; to be the table companion of a priest without dignity or moral elevation, who silently swallows the greatest outrages; to become the intimate, the complaisant friend of a great lord, whose past is suspicious, of an unnatural father who hates his son, of a man who at times transforms himself into a specter, and who, stung by remorse, or thirsting for revenge, fills ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... forest, the heat of the southern day, the woodland fragrances of which the air was full, and the sense of being intimately alone with her, set up within him a turbulent vibration, half of delight, half of pained suspense. And the complaisant informality with which she met him played a sustaining counterpoint. 'What luck, what luck, what luck,' were the words which shaped themselves to the strong beating of his pulses. What would happen next? Whither would it lead? He had ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... grave, not so much perhaps at the difficulty of resolving the question, as at the probability of never obtaining a knowledge of the business so long as the duenna had the free use of her tongue; to quiet therefore her anger, the complaisant old cavalier kindly soothed her apparently wounded feelings, by allowing that she by no means deserved ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... to wish for anything so intensely. There are wishes the gratification whereof is fatal. There are a dozen old stories in the classics to show that; to say nothing of all those mediaeval legends in which Satan is complaisant to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... addressed, he answered, if at all, with a thunderclap. Since then he has ceased to reply. Zeus was more complaisant. One might enter with him into the intimacy of the infinite. The father of the Graces, the Muses, the Hours, it was natural that he should be debonair. But he had other children. Among them were Litai, the Prayers. In the Vedas, where Zeus was born, the Prayers upheld ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... grey-haired, good-looking man, who had once been very handsome. He had married, let us say for love;—probably very much by chance. He had ill-used his wife, and had continued a long-continued liaison with a complaisant friend. This had lasted some twenty years of his life, and had been to him an intolerable burden. He had come to see the necessity of employing his good looks, his conversational powers, and his excellent manners on a second marriage which might be lucrative; ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse de Lesdiguieres, who said to him one day, "I wish to have esprit."—"Eh bien, Madame," replied the complaisant chevalier, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... out his purse to look for the halfpence: 'Fifteen shillings, sir, if you please,' said the shopman. Now do write soon, and speak particularly of your health, and take care of it and don't be too complaisant to visitors. May God bless you, my very dear ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... who sat ready to begin where he left off, turned to his complaisant listener and resumed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... cried the creature, "what has led you so many thousand miles from your own kingdom? What is it you look for, and what induces you to travel into the kingdom of the Emmets?" The prince, who was excessively complaisant, told her the whole story three times over, for she was hard of hearing. "Well," says the old fairy, for such she was, "I promise to put you in possession of the white mouse with green eyes, and that immediately too, upon one condition." "One ...
— The Story of the White Mouse • Unknown
... how glad I was of their absence, they would not have seemed so complaisant," he thought, recalling the happy day he had spent with Dainty; while he resolved to make sure of more like it by inviting some other fellows to Ellsworth, so that Olive and Ela might be provided with escorts, and not keep him from ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... yellow press shrieked and lied. The saloon-keepers and the sharers of their illicit profits wriggled and squirmed. But the saloons were closed. The law was enforced without fear or favor. The Sunday sale of liquor disappeared from the city, until a complaisant judge, ruling upon the provision of the law which permitted drink to be sold with a meal, decreed that one pretzel, even when accompanied by seventeen beers, made a "meal." No amount of honesty and fearlessness in the enforcement of the law could prevail against ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... and make the first dash, that they may profit by her pretended fault. I know who will not be the last to come and station herself amongst the furniture of your apartment. The marechale de Mirepoix was too long the complaisant friend of madame de Pompadour not to become, and that very soon, the friend of the comtesse du Barry." "Good heaven," I exclaimed, "how delighted I should be to have the friendship of this lady, whose wit and ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... very complaisant towards my lady's gentlewoman, the immaculate Mrs. Hannah, whom he used to speak of in a way that I do not choose to mention. Whether she has the same suspicions with Master Simon or not, I cannot say; but she receives his civilities with no better ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... was that the proud King flung himself to earth and kissed the dust in abject submission,—then Sah-luma, carelessly complaisant, bent the knee and smiled to himself mockingly as he performed the act of veneration, ... then the enormous multitude with clasped hands and beseeching looks fell down and worshipped the glittering beast of the field, whose shining, emerald-like, curiously sad eyes roved ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... proceeded to organise a complaisant Senate, a mute legislative body, and a Tribunals which was to have the semblance of being independent, by the aid of some fine speeches and high-sounding phrases. He easily appointed the Senators, but it was different ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... reaction—relief that she should be so reasonable, so complaisant—and a sort of holiday spirit after the day's hard work. Oddly enough, and not so irrational as may appear, Sidney formed a part of the evening's happiness—that she loved him; that, back in the lecture-room, eyes and even mind on the lecturer, her ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... added Anaides (impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal), interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable, and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny attacks on his perfections with only ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... squire, of the Squire Western type. The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers, the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the Tory Commons and the Whig Lords. An attempt was made by the Commons to impeach Walpole on his fall in 1742, but the Lords threw out a Bill proposing ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... in my travelling closet, which Glumdalclitch held in her lap, in a kind of open sedan, after the fashion of the country, borne by four men, and attended by two others in the queen's livery. The people, who had often heard of me, were very curious to crowd about the sedan, and the girl was complaisant enough to make the bearers stop, and to take me in her hand, that I ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... sleeve reminded him of a thoroughbred horse stepping on to turf, so full of life, of electric thrill, of excitement was it. But then, Karl Steinmetz was a cynic. No one else could have thought of comparing Etta's self-complaisant humor to that of a horse in a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... in a complaisant manner, and gave some order, when half a dozen of the courtiers darted off as fast as their legs could carry them, eager to obey it. On seeing Hendricks, he desired him to approach. The hunter advanced without considering it necessary to make a salute in the style the black king's subjects adopted; ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... relapse of what he termed the "Warlock dyspepsia," was waging dire war with the remains of the beef and pudding, which he tearfully assured his physicians "were lurking in his constitution." As Mauleverer, though complaisant, like most men of unmistakable rank, to all his acquaintances, whatever might be their grade, possessed but very few friends intimate enough to enter his sick-chamber, and none of that few were at Bath, it will readily be perceived that he was in blissful ignorance of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here comes a difference. Fortune is blind, but the poet has his eyes open, and is besides as complaisant as fortune is capricious. He makes every thing turn out exactly as we would wish it. He gratifies us by representing those as hateful or contemptible whom we hate ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... personally obsequious, lent her recitations an attentive ear, and was ever ready with the expected commendation. It is not likely that her ladyship found much, difficulty in collecting around her a crowd of critics more docile than Thomson and quite as complaisant as Shenstone. ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... can snare them without being too intrusive," assented Collins, who, since the success of his stratagem of the afternoon before, had been in an unusually complaisant mood. ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... too complaisant. I hope I shall have de pleasure to make your acquaintance. Je m'appelle Monsieur Auguste de Poivre. J'ai l'honneur de vous presenter une carte d'adresse. I live on de top of my mother's,—sur l'entresol. My mother live on de ground—rez-de-chaussee. Madame ma mere ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace—she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... complaisant mood: "I once hinted my mind to her on a few things, as nearly as a battered frame dared to do so to such a froward piece. You all know, neighbours, what a man I be, and how I come down with my powerful words when my ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... not better, nor wiser in their generation (forbid it, Manchester!), nor even more daring in confronting danger than the thousands whose grandsires are creations of a powerful fancy or of a complaisant king-at-arms. In that terrible charge which swept away the Russian cavalry at Eylau, three lengths in front of the best blood in France rode the innkeeper's son. The "First Grenadier" himself was not ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... described to her the Continental latitude (the good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed to form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to understand that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and friendly life with him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... didn't Satisfie me, yet I soon found I must have him or none; For having been brought up too high to make a working Tradesmans Wife, that Portion now was gone that should have helpt me to a better Husband. And therefore making a vertue of Necessity, I began to be more Complaisant to my Inamorato then I had been formerly; which quickly won his heart to that degree, that in a short time after we were married—And tho the first Night that I went to Bed with him, I was a Maid, and so knew nothing of that which a new Married couple ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... of the natural and complaisant steps of the sentry who came to relieve me brought me completely back to myself. I detached myself from the spot where I had seemed riveted and went ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... difficulty as to the ceremonies to be observed in welcoming his family home. For he had no notion of leaving the house in possession of his suspicious uncle while he went down to the station. Nor could he bear the idea of not being at the station to meet them. So he compromised matters by taking his complaisant relative with him, much to that ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... matter," said the complaisant Mr. Price; "you say what you like. I sha'n't interfere ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... on and so on, until at last the brothers pluck up determination, and make choice of an employer. So our Caledonian friends begin to gather together their traps and make preparations to accompany their complaisant and well-satisfied boss to his farm on the banks of the Waikato. And an indescribable joy is in their hearts, for they are to receive six shillings and sixpence a day, and to be provided with comfortable lodging and lavish "tucker" withal; and though, no doubt, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... shelf broke its neck. "Hand me yonder cup," he said easily, "and we'll drink to his home-coming. Good fellow, I am Mr. Marmaduke Haward, and I am glad to find so honest a man in a place of no small trust. Long absence and somewhat too complaisant a reference of all my Virginian affairs to my agent have kept me much in ignorance of the economy of my plantation. How long ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... sang out the complaisant Perk, cheerfully, "on'y I wanted to let you know I was over there in the same line and had the good luck to send down a few o' you Hun pilots in a blazin' coffin. Wondered now if me'n an' you mightn't a had a private scrap o' our own in them bully times. Allers did hanker ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... equally complaisant on the Mount of Olives. He would willingly have avoided the ascent could he have done so without displeasing his son; but George made a point of it. A donkey was therefore got for ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... this: let me ask you, is Mr. B.'s conduct to you as respectful, I don't mean fond, when you are alone together, as in company?—Forgive me—But you have hinted two or three times, in your letters, that he always is most complaisant to you in company; and you observe, that wisely does he act in this, as he thereby does credit with every body to his own choice. I make no doubt, that the many charming scenes which your genius and fine behaviour furnish out to him, must, as often as they happen, inspire him with joy, and even ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... had doubts, they were dissipated by a certain constraint in his manner, and the importance he seemed to be attaching to his departure, and she was warned to go within her defenses. Even the most complaisant women like at least the appearance ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... spent most of his evenings at the Blights', who took compassion on his loneliness and were complaisant of his obvious attachment to Honor. Mrs. Bright, in her tactful way, gave him many opportunities of having Honor to himself in the drawing-room while she betook herself to her husband's own particular sanctum to indulge in confidential ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... dear," Mrs. Ambler answered, complaisant as always, and when Betty triumphantly declared, "You feel better now—you know you do, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... friend behind phenomena"; that Anglican deity had been rather a vague flummery behind court and society, wealth, "respectability," and the comfortable life. And even while he had lived in lipservice to that complaisant compromise, this true God had been here, this God he now certainly professed, waiting for his allegiance, waiting to take up the kingship of this distraught and bloodstained earth. The finding of God is but the stripping of bandages from ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... oblivious of the ceremony of installation. Poised upon a chair, she idly thrust her fingers through the gilded bars of the cage that hung from the rafters and gently stroked the head of the now complaisant bird. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... been so kind and complaisant with my humble self as to grant me the use of a few words before any one else of those here present, I shall take advantage of this permission, so generously granted, and shall talk. In imagination I fancy myself in the midst of the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... buckle, was slipped on over the headstall of the so-called watering bridle, whose toggled and detachable snaffle bit was generally "toted" from start to finish of a field scout in the saddle bags,—a twist of the flexible lariat, Indian fashion, between the complaisant jaws of his pet, being the troop's ready substitute. Add to this that, full, free and unmutilated, in glossy waves the beautiful manes and tails tossed in the upland breeze (for the heresies of Anglomania never took root in the American cavalry) ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... And so the complaisant but still considerate valet bowed himself out of a dilemma, that he found, as he muttered to himself, while ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... that it did not for a moment tolerate that a father should kill his daughter, no matter how guilty she was; and in all our records of that period no instance occurs. As to husbands, we have repeated complaints in the literature of the day that they had grown so complaisant towards erring wives that they could not be induced to prosecute them.[92] A typical instance is related by Pliny.[93] Pliny was summoned by the Emperor Trajan to attend a council where, among other cases, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... anybody would far rather sit and chatter with him, or hear him play a valse on the piano, or a bit of the "Boheme," than bend over a table all by himself. And Artois always welcomed him. He liked him. But it was not only that which made him complaisant. Doro was a type, and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... among unequal as well as among equal things. Moreover, when a democratic State, athirst for liberty, is controlled by unprincipled cupbearers, who give it to drink of the pure wine of liberty and allow it to drink till it is drunken, then if its rulers do not show themselves complaisant and allow it to drink its fill, they are accused and overthrown under the pretext that they are traitors aspiring to an oligarchy; for the people prides itself on and loves the equality that confuses and will not distinguish between those who should rule and those who should obey. Is ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... malice and revenge were the predominant passions with him; and that he was determined but to settle his affairs, and then take his resolutions, as you phrase it.—Yet, if we are to meet [for I know what my option would be, in his case, on such a letter, complaisant as it is] I wish he had a worse, I a better cause. It would be a sweet revenge to him, were I to fall by his hand. But what should I be the better ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... du Chatelet he fled to Civey, where was the tumbledown chateau of the Marquis—the Madame's complaisant husband. Voltaire advanced the Marquis sixteen hundred pounds to put the place in order, and then on his own account fitted up two sumptuous apartments, one for himself and one for Madame. The Marquis went away with his regiment, and occasionally came ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... referred to Cissy's new hat, and to the young girl the coherence was perfectly plain. Miss Tibbs looked at "it" severely. It would not do for a protegee to be too complaisant. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... then it is surely by dress; if a woman never does a foolish thing in any other way, yet at least she errs in her habiliments; if she be fickle at all, (and speak to the fact, ye disappointed bachelors and ye complaisant husbands!) in what is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with changing colours, water on a windy day, the wind itself in the month of March, the much-desiderated perpetual motion; all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... differently in the two Houses. Still the Senator was tranquil, for he knew that there is an esprit de corps in the Senate which does not exist in the House, the effect of which is to make the members complaisant towards the projects of each other, and to extend a mutual aid which in a more vulgar body ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... restraint, and eager for independence. By a bold stratagem, an ambitious prelate, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, carried off the young king, and assumed the guardianship over him. He had a rival in the person of Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, whom Henry liked best, as being more indulgent and complaisant, and who at length became his chosen guide. But in 1066 the princes caused Adalbert to be banished from court. They obliged Henry to marry Bertha, the daughter of the margrave of Turin, to whom he had been betrothed by his father. The union ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... evil. Accordingly, if a man were to wish always to speak pleasantly to others, he would exceed the mode of pleasing, and would therefore sin by excess. If he do this with the mere intention of pleasing he is said to be "complaisant," according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 6): whereas if he do it with the intention of making some gain out of it, he is called a "flatterer" or "adulator." As a rule, however, the term "flattery" is wont to be applied to all who ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the theater that day at an unusually early hour, and seemed to be in excellent spirits and in an excellent humor. He was very complaisant to all around him, and very lively, affable, and gay. After performing certain ceremonies, by which it devolved upon him to open the festivities of the day, he proceeded to his place, with his friends and favorites about him, and Chaerea, with the other officers ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... growing late, and people had begun to leave, when it struck him that, through no active fault of his own, other than a certain complaisant indolence, he had as yet exchanged only the briefest of greetings with Lady Garnett, while of Miss Masters only a glimpse had been vouchsafed to him, at the further end of the crowded supper-room. He wandered into the studio, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... don't affect surprise; you know very well whom," continued the Abbe. "But, faith, I fear I have been too complaisant with them, though these two children are really interesting in their love. I fear for him more than for her; I doubt not he is acting very foolishly, judging from the disturbance this morning. We must consult together ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... being a polite Nation; and indeed those amongst them who have travell'd, are very complaisant, full of their Professions of Friendship, and Offers of Service, tho' it's the first time they ever set Eyes on the Party to whom they make them; but if he takes this for any more than the Effects of good Breeding, and reminds a Courtier of his Promise, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... establishment, for I am exceedingly fond of fine linen," he observed, casting a complaisant glance on the embroidered folds of his shirt. "I therefore found frequent occasion to admire you god-daughter; I think her beautiful ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... come to those corpses full of fluid blood, and whose beard, hair and nails had grown again. One may dispute three parts of these prodigies, and be very complaisant if we admit the truth of a few of them. All philosophers know well enough how much the people, and even certain historians, enlarge upon things which appear but a little extraordinary. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... imaginary woes, which never fail to grow up in minds unexercised and unemployed. To get rid of these, it is said, there are who betake themselves to distilled spirits. And it is not improbable they are led gradually to the use of those poisons by a certain complaisant pharmacy, too much used in the modern practice, palsy drops, poppy cordial, plague water, and such-like, which being in truth nothing but drams disguised, yet coming from the apothecaries, are considered only ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... and very likely Pius IX. had not voluntarily disappointed his countrymen, who may have expected too much. But then the French had been there fifteen years, and were to be there another fifteen years yet. Now they are gone, with the archbishop's red coach, and the complaisant grocer, and the young man of twenty-seven in Via del Gambero, and the rest of the things that the sun looked on and will look on the like of again, no doubt, in our monotonous ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Vance, taking up the dis course. "Mr. Rugge, this morning, was willing,—I understand that your grandchild refused. We are come here to see if she will be more complaisant under your own roof, or Under Mr. Merle's, which, I take it, is the same thing for the present."—Sophy had sidled up to Lionel. He might not have been flattered if he knew why she preferred him to Vance. She looked on him as a boy, a fellow-child; ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not complaisant, it is the cad the canaille adore. In spite of everything, Nero had been beloved by the masses. For years there were roses on his tomb. Under Vespasian there was an impostor whom Greece and Asia acclaimed in his name. The memory of his festivals was unforgetable; regret for ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... though not without great difficulty, and much bloodshed, either to suppress altogether, or to obstruct very much, the progress of the reformation in their dominions. It was well enough inclined, too, to be complaisant to the king of England. But from the circumstances of the times, it could not be so without giving offence to a still greater sovereign, Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany. Henry VIII., accordingly, though he did not embrace himself the greater ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... other acts collaterally and accidentally affecting the See of Rome; for the repeal of which the court was no less anxious than for the repeal of the Act of Supremacy, where the parliament were not so complaisant. ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... disposition. This opinion, which had been long entertained of him, Vitellius confirmed by some late practices; having kissed all the common soldiers whom he met with upon the road, and been excessively complaisant in the inns and stables to the muleteers and travellers; asking them in a morning, if they had got their breakfasts, and letting them see, by belching, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... seeing in a Carnaval but one Theatre provided with eminent Performers, without Hopes of[98] an approaching Remedy. Let them take it for their Pains. Let the World learn to applaud Merit; and (not to use a more harsh Expression) be less complaisant to Faults. ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor booms, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... complaisant conductor of the most accommodating special train could not wait any longer for us, and we must hurry on through Lamokin, where the Baltimore Central, a tributary road, turns off and traverses a most picturesque country, round by Port Deposit to Perryville, where it again reaches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... went by easy Stages to Cologne, a dirty, foul-smelling place, but very Handsome in Buildings, and saw all that was to be seen, that is to say, the churches, which Abound Greatly. The Jesuits' Church is the neatest, and this was shown us in a very complaisant manner, although 'tis not the custom to allow Protestants to enter it. Our Cicerone was a bouncing young Jesuit, with a Face as Rosy as the sunny side of a Katherine Pear; but it shocked me to hear how he indulged in Drolleries and Raileries in the very ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... letters of the sixteenth century. Perhaps Buchanan's temper was less compliant, his character less easily adaptable to the society in which he found himself, than most; but it may be doubted whether this was the cause of the very small advancement in life to which he had come, since he was complaisant enough to indite many fine verses in praise of people who gave him a banquet or a shelter, and he seems to have gone nowhere without making friends. He had got abundant reputation, however, if not much else, and was known wherever he went as the celebrated poet, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Catherine (for we may now call her by the name she made so famous) was removed from his favourite's household and installed in the Imperial harem where, for a time at least, she seems to have shared her favours indiscriminately between her old master and her new—"an obscure and complaisant mistress"—until Menshikoff finally resigned all rights in her to ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... principles; what a shame, then, for her, that the Countess could not have been guaranteed against the effects of it! Now, the Marquise has a strong reason the more for contributing to the defeat of her friend; she has become positively ugly, and consequently obliged to be more complaisant in retaining a lover. Will she suffer another woman to keep hers at a less cost? That would be to recognize too humiliating a superiority, and I can assure you that she will do the most singular things to bring her amiable widower ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... the name of Cogia Houssain, and, as a new-comer, was, according to custom, extremely civil and complaisant to all the merchants his neighbours. Ali Baba's son was, from his vicinity, one of the first to converse with Cogia Houssain, who strove to cultivate his friendship more particularly. Two or three days after he was settled, Ali Baba came to see his ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... said nothing that night, and she had to wait for a while. The weather, which had certainly shown the most graceful politeness to the Surrey week, was still in a complaisant frame of mind when Monday morning dawned, and the tents were put up for the school children, and the Aunt Sallies and other instruments of amusement were posed in their places about the garden, without any ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a befitting dogmatism of morality, which, like every well-bred system of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the most complaisant indulgence in the details.(9) Its practical results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare to please ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of extreme carefulness to treat the hand. The other knaves fell into the joke, and the Spaniard had no option but to submit; though his scowling face showed that he bore Maignan no good-will, and that but for my presence he might not have been so complaisant. La Trape was bringing his surgery to an end by demanding a fee, in the most comical manner possible, when the King returned to our part of the court. "What is it?" he said. ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... fluttered by their leave-taking that I thanked God that Jim was not in my place. There would have been division in our ranks at once; for it seemed to me that her conduct to Cornish was too complaisant by far. ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... If these sex-complaisant women were really filled with remorse, burdened with a sense of shame, we should all know it. Their eyes, their voices, their daily lives would reveal it. Could a million women be in physical pain, say ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... hand, we must not deceive ourselves as to the real value of this complaisant bill. Let it transform itself as it pleases into all manner of forms for the better fulfilment of its task, it makes, at the best, but a very poor instrument for mastication; nay, to say the truth, it ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... year, the C-C ranch had changed hands. All day long Craig and the prospective buyer had driven about the place. One by one the cowboys had given testimony of the fraction of the herd intrusted to their care. At first resignedly complaisant, as the hours drifted by Craig had grown cumulatively impatient at the inevitably dragging inventory. Nothing but necessity absolute in the shape of an imminent foreclosure had brought him back to this land at all. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... deceived. Her "American" might be a British assassin in disguise. She had had to make herself responsible—she, Felice!—for my innocence and honor. She had also been obliged to show Gaston the piece of gold I had given her and to assure him there would be another for him if he were complaisant. I judged, also, that she had found it necessary to offer him a bribe quite as tangible as the gold piece but less mercenary, for her face was rosier and her eyes brighter and her hair a little more disheveled than when I had first ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... my Laura, you will never be satisfied till I have ceased to be Babylonian," said the duchess, smiling and fondling Vittoria, to whom she said, "Am I not a complaisant German?" ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her attention was really bent upon her critic—her only critic in this assembly; and he discovered various attempts to draw him into conversation. And when Lord Lackington, discomfited by Meredith, had finished discharging his literary recollections upon him, Sir Wilfrid became complaisant; Julie ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with a smiling face. He felt unusually complaisant, having succeeded in his designs against ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Isabel where she lived, and since her father would never consider moving to any other locality nor rebuilding the rather patriarchal homestead which he had occupied for twenty-five years, it was just as well that the daughter was so complaisant. She, moreover, was the only person who looked upon John M. Hurd with a clear understanding of his habits of thought. She could herself accomplish things with him, when her way did not conflict too directly with his own, but she gained her points first by concentrating her attack ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... not knowing what to say in answer to this charge brought against her,—thinking, perhaps, that the questioner would allow his question to pass without an answer. But Vavasor was not so complaisant. "If there be any reason, Alice, I think that I have a ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... in a state of convalescence, I became more ardent than before, in search of an immediate opportunity of embarking. My complaisant doctor introduced me to the captain of a running felucca, and I hired his vessel for ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... Bill,—very generous in its enlargement of the franchise,—but no ballot. Mr. Turnbull expressed his doubt whether this would be satisfactory to the country; but even Mr. Turnbull was soft in his tone and complaisant in his manner. As there was no reporter present,—that plan of turning private meetings at gentlemen's houses into public assemblies not having been as yet adopted,—there could be no need for energy or violence. They went to Mr. Mildmay's ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... conscious man among them that here was something uncommonly like the Golden Age, unless that epoch had been flattered. There had been reading and praising of odes and sonnets the whole blessed afternoon, and now he cried out to the complaisant, canorous company, "Behold Arcadia ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... from my friend. I look round at the translucent opal of the bay, the glittering white of the surf on the reef, the downward swoop on an albatross, and I listen to the dull roar of the breakers, to the solemn tang-tang of the bell-buoy on the bar, and the complaisant "ah-ha-a-a" of some argumentative penguin. Even the drab-coloured African hills in the distance, and the corrugated Catholic church (shipped in sections) with the sun blazing on its windows, are beautiful to me to-day, for ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... not to be blamed so much as Tom Faggus himself was. Annie was very grateful to me, and kissed me many times, and begged my pardon ever so often for her rudeness to me. And then having gone so far with it, and finding me so complaisant, she must needs try to go a little further, and to lead me away from her own affairs, and into mine concerning Lorna. But although it was clever enough of her she was not deep enough for me there; and I soon discovered that she knew nothing, not even the name of my ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... have had spirits enough to go and see all that is curious in the town, that is to say, the churches, for here is nothing else worth seeing. This is a very large town, but the most part of it is old built. The Jesuits church, which is the neatest, was shewed (sic) me, in a very complaisant manner, by a handsome young Jesuit; who, not knowing who I was, took a liberty in his compliments and railleries, which very much diverted me. Having never before seen any thing of that nature, I could not enough admire the magnificence of ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Square, and esteemed themselves fortunate in picking up a cruising taxi-cab with a driver sufficiently complaisant to drive them in the direction they ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... motives. And now, let us talk of something more amusing. You see that woman in old rose brocade—she is sitting with a bald-headed man at the third table on your left. Well, that is the Countess of Porthcawl, and the man with her is Roger Ducrot, the banker. Porthcawl is a most complaisant husband. He never comes within a thousand miles of Millicent. She is awfully nice; clever, and witty, and the rest of it—quite a man's woman. We are sure to meet her in the lounge after dinner and ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... discoverer's name partly that schoolboys may remember him, or not, in their prayers. It was Al-Khalil Ibn Ahmad who, at Mecca, had besought Allah to bestow upon him a science hitherto unknown. Allah being in a complaisant mood, it followed that not long after, walking in the bazaar, Al-Khalil invented prosody as he passed a coppersmith's and heard ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... venture to love them, except, perhaps, the two eldest; I no longer venture to look at them, to call them to me, to kiss them; I cannot take them onto my knee without asking myself: 'Can it be this one?' I have been correct in my behavior towards you for six years, and even kind and complaisant; tell me the truth, and I swear that I ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... is he that is complaisant to his wife's humours; Ring and Dinn's is he whom his wife scolds; John Knox's is he whom his ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... glad to find your lordship is so close an observer," returned the complaisant Dutton; "a certain sign, my lord, that your lordship will make a ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... loveless life had turned in another direction at the signpost of a woman's face, and down the new vista the lover saw flowering meadows, silver streams, bowers of roses, and all the landscape of Arcadia. He was a piping swain and Diana a complaisant shepherdess; but they had not yet entered into the promised Arcadia, and might never do so unless Diana was as kindly as he wished ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... and all are ridiculously remote from real life. It was bad enough that boys' time should be wasted thus, but the evil was further emphasized by the practice of recitation. These exercises, duly corrected and elaborated, were often recited by their youthful authors to an audience of complaisant friends and relations. Of such training there could be but one possible result. 'Less and less attention was paid to the substance of the speech, more and more to the language; justness and appropriateness of thought came to be less esteemed ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... a change of sentiment prevailing. Although failing in no observance of courtesy, Mrs. Briscoe had been a little less than complaisant toward the departed guest. This had been vaguely perceptible to Briscoe at the time, but now she ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the house whenever possible; avoided their father with an almost physical effect of dodging an expected blow; when with him, watched his mood to forestall with hasty attention or divert with strained wit, with timorous hilarity when he proved complaisant. The possibilities for harm to them were numberless. She and Sam were losing the children, and the children were ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... parables, but the nature and purpose of which is overt enough in all respects but the nomenclature. It is not unlikely that even this Japanese usufruct and tutelage runs on somewhat less humane and complaisant lines than a well-advised economy of resources would dictate for the prospective German usufruct of the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... "After his first communion, we saw disappearing little by little all the faults which, in his infancy, caused us great misgivings as to the future," writes Madame de Maintenon. "His piety has caused such a metamorphosis that, from the passionate thing he was, he has become self-restrained, gentle, complaisant; one would say that that was his character, and that virtue was natural to him." "All his mad fits and spites yielded at the bare name of God," Fenelon used to say; "one day when he was in a very bad temper, and wanted to hide in his passion what he had done ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rights and feelings of his quarry than the gunner gives to the rights and feelings of his birds. From the beginning of the prohibition campaign, for example, the principle of compensation has been violently opposed, despite its obvious justice, and a complaisant judiciary has ratified the Puritan position. In England and on the Continent that principle is safeguarded by the fundamental laws, and during the early days of the anti-slavery agitation in this country it was accepted as incontrovertible, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... ought to be very complaisant, or else very much ashamed of yourselves. You send in an order: "The kind of girl that I like is a Methodist without bangs." And some nice girl begins to look up Methodist tenets and buys invisible hairpins and side combs. Or you say, "Give me an athletic girl." And, presto! some girl who would ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell |
