"Self-satisfaction" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mightiness to call again. Oh! and we—we women, poor things, must stand about with our mouths open, like mossy carp in a pond, and struggle and push for such crumbs of comfort as he will deign to throw us from the full larder of his self-satisfaction!" ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... is one that has been characteristic of the Anglican Church ever since. It has always been restless in the presence of a divided Christendom; the sin of the broken unity has always haunted it. It never has taken the smug attitude of sectarianism, a placid self-satisfaction with its own perfection. It has felt the constant pull of the Catholic ideal and has been inspired by it to make effort after effort for the union of Christendom. It has never lost the sense that it was in itself not complete but a part of a greater whole. It has never seen in the existing shattered ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... that it is Sewing well done; for anything well and thoroughly done, even if it be only boot-blacking on a street corner, or throwing paper torpedoes in a theatre orchestra to imitate the crack of a whip in the "Postilion Galop," gives to its doer the same sense of self-satisfaction. It would be folly now, as it may have been in old times, for our girls to spend their hours and try their eyes over back-stitching for collars, etc., when any one out of a hundred cheap machines can ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... from the library and reading many things hastily (that she might be a little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that self-satisfaction which was the last doom ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... idea from all that he has ever done before; and when I have opposed this inexhaustible knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by Claude and Poussin, I have been met by the formidable objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the part of my antagonist—"That is not painting general truths, that is painting particular truths." Now there must be something wrong in that application of a principle which would make the variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of intellect in the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... 3. Jonson's self-satisfaction and his critical sense of intellectual superiority to the generality of mankind produce also a marked and disagreeable lack of sympathy in his portrayal of both life and character. The world of his dramas is mostly made up of knaves, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... latter ventured to refer to a work of his, called An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, which has not a single ornament in it, as a specimen of his original studies and the proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, "It was amusing to see this person, sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!" The question was, whether the subject of Mr. Gifford's censure had ever written such a work or not; for ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... my thought at the beginning—the necessity for 'Sureness' in regard to religion, and especially in the experience of Holiness—let me ask, Where are we found? Have the testings confirmed that certainty of heart, or have my words disturbed self-satisfaction? Do not be afraid of facing the direct issue. If you have the evidences referred to, then be sure to go about proclaiming what God has done. But if not, then this unsatisfied and unsatisfactory condition cannot be persisted in when the Fountain which cleanses is open for all, and when the ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... where he demanded in marriage for his aide-de-camp Marmont, Mademoiselle Perregeaux, the sole child of the first banker in France, a well-educated and accomplished young lady, who would be much more agreeable did not her continual smiles and laughing indicate a degree of self-satisfaction and complacency which may be felt, but ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... son. Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when they ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... modesty, that devils were subject unto them, and that they could exorcize them at their pleasure. While they acknowledged that their power was due to the influence of His name, they evidently thought more of themselves than of Him. They were given to unseemly glorifying and self-satisfaction, and were met by the Master's words—half warning, half rebuke—"I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." He thus identifies their pride with that evil spirit which led to angelic ruin, and seeks to banish it from ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... he says, and down come the two pocket-books under your nose. 'I know better,' he will say, 'don't I? What will you bet—five, ten, fifty, hundred? Tush! you dare not bet, you know you are wrong:' and with an air of superiority and self-satisfaction, he will take long strides over his well-washed floor, repeating, 'I ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... business—whom you never see, except by sheer accident, as in the American hotel. She is an important and prominent personage in the English inn. She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself. No other subordinate official or servant trenches or poaches upon her preserves. She it is who precedes you up stairs with a candle, on a broad-bottomed brass candlestick, polished ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... of the undertaking that Mr. Pickwick, with many smiles and various other indications of great self-satisfaction, produced from one of his coat pockets a dark lantern, with which he had specially provided himself for the occasion, and the great mechanical beauty of which he proceeded to explain to Mr. Winkle, as they walked along, to the no small surprise ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... abstraction and dreams, wrapped in some pursuit, some hope, some absorbing preoccupation of his own. His mother was straining at her bonds like a greyhound in a leash. Minnie, who had been the chief example of absolute self-satisfaction and certainty that everything was right, had developed a keenness of curiosity and censure which betrayed her conviction that something had gone wrong. These three were all, as it were, on tiptoe, on the boundary line, the thinnest ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... pride may be common to all. True unity requires some common object, around which diverse interests may cling and crystallize. Nations, like families, need to look outside themselves, if they would escape, on the one hand, narrow self-satisfaction, or, on the other, pitiful internal dissensions. The far-reaching external activities fostered in Great Britain by her insular position have not only intensified patriotism, but have given also a certain nobility of breadth to her statesmanship ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... for the whole company were unanimous in their plaudits, after Mr. Supine had read two or three sentences: the alderman, to confirm his own critical judgment, drew out his purse, and counting out ten bright guineas, presented them, with a look of high self-satisfaction, to his son. "Here, Augustus, my boy," said he; "I promised you five guineas if you brought me home the prize medal; but I now present you with ten, to make you the amends you so richly deserve, for not having got their medal. Thank God, I am able to afford it; and I hope," added the alderman, ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... begun early that morning, when Gordon, the town sergeant, stepped from his door and started down the street with no little self-satisfaction. He had been arraying himself for a full hour, and after a tub-bath and a shave he stepped, spic and span, into the street with his head steadily held high, except when he bent it to look at the shine of his boots, which was the work of his own hands, and of which he was proud. As a matter ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... was simply in his glory! He was suddenly possessed by a feeling of pride. A victorious general, returning from the field of battle he has won, could not have looked about him with greater self-satisfaction. Sanin's demeanour during the duel filled him with enthusiasm. He called him a hero, and would not listen to his exhortations and even his entreaties. He compared him to a monument of marble or of bronze, with the statue of the commander in Don Juan! ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... pit. Mr. Mellor had very properly attempted to stop the disorderly discussion of the closure; but Mr. Chamberlain was not in the mood to respect the authority of the chair or the traditions of the House of Commons, and audaciously, shamelessly—with a perky self-satisfaction painful to witness—he proceeded to violate the ruling of the chair—to trample on the order of Parliament, and to flout the Chairman. And then the waters of the great deep were loosed. A hurricane of shouts, yells, protests arose. Member ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... Brentwick nodded, twinkling self-satisfaction. "I contrived it all," he said; "neat, I call it, too." His old eyes brightened with reminiscent enjoyment. "Inspiration!" he crowed softly. "Inspiration, pure and simple. I'd been worrying my wits for fully five minutes before Wotton settled the matter ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... approached on which Gunzelin, with the smiling self-satisfaction of an old roue, and decked out to give himself all the appearance of young manhood, was to lead the fairest maiden in the Rhineland to his stately castle. Gerda who possessed the mild disposition of her deceased mother had ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... will cry against them from the ground:—Ay, Woe!"—I went on, carried away by feelings for which I shall make no apology; for, however confused, there was, and is, and ever will be, a God's truth in them, as this generation will find out at the moment when its own serene self-satisfaction crumbles underneath it—"Woe unto those that grind the faces of the poor! Woe unto those who add house to house, and field to field, till they stand alone in the land, and there is no room left for the poor man! The wages of their reapers, which they have held back ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... habits of life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not as happy in perfect self-satisfaction and a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... man needs only to be careful—and lucky—to live a long time in the Solomons; but he must also be of the right sort. He must have the hallmark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable. Oh, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... anything. That is what he is suffering from. Until lately at least he refused to realise that many of his modern habits had been bad habits, the worst of them being contentment. For all the real virtue in contentment evaporates, when the contentment is only satisfaction and the satisfaction is only self-satisfaction. Now it is perfectly true that America and not England has seen the most obvious and outrageous official denials of liberty. But it is equally true that it has seen the most obvious flouting of such official nonsense, far more obvious than any similar evasions in England. And nobody ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... about a considerable rearrangement of Mr Arnold's own ideas as to the respective greatness of foreign nations. And finally the walls of another stronghold of British Philistia, its intense and apparently impregnable self-satisfaction with Free-trade and cheap money and so forth, were tottering and crumbling. A blast against them—indeed a series of blasts from Chartism to the Latter-day Pamphlets—had been blown long before by ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... seaweed about his middle, blowing water through, his conch. There are two statues, the one of a general who fought in the Indian Mutiny and afterwards lived and died in the Square, the other of a mid-Victorian philanthropist whose stout figure and urbane self-satisfaction (as portrayed by the sculptor) bear witness to an easy conscience and an unimaginative mind. There is, round and about the fountain, a lovely green lawn, and there are many overhanging trees and shady corners. ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the "new" men was to rouse and outrage their immediate predecessors. This end-of-the-century desire to shock, which was so strong and natural an impulse, still has a place of its own—especially as an antidote, a harsh corrective. Mid-Victorian propriety and self-satisfaction crumbled under the swift and energetic audacities of the sensational younger authors and artists; the old walls fell; the public, once so apathetic to belles lettres, was more than attentive to every phase of literary ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... then into the distance across the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection was pleasant ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... practically, some rent or service. The service might be merely nominal; in the case of noble lands in the eighteenth century, it generally was so; but nominal or real, the right to exact it was some one's property. If such a right did not put money in his purse, it yet added to his dignity and self-satisfaction. But such rights as this had come to be looked on with deep distrust by a large part of the French nation. Ideas of independence and of the abstract rights of man had struck deep root. It was felt that land should be owned absolutely,—by ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... of the Second Company beamed with a self-satisfaction that added splendor to his ruddy and somewhat chubby face. The halo of glory that a fortune made in business gives to a retired tradesman sat on his brow, and stamped him as one of the elect of Paris—at least a retired deputy-mayor of his quarter of the town. And you may be sure that the ribbon ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... scampered about from one place to another, simmering in perfect enjoyment. And the central figure of all was Esme Amarinth, who stood leaning upon an ebony stick with a silver knob, surveying his audience with the peculiar smile of humourous self-satisfaction that was so characteristic of ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... kind,—and then suspends the curious instrument over a forked stick at a considerable height from the ground, to which he fastens the other end of the rope. This done, he walks quietly away with an air of as much self-satisfaction as if he had just performed a ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... coast. Cuffy turned up what little nose he had. He plainly considered the east coast, and indeed Trinidad itself, as not worth looking at. 'Ah! you should go Barbadoes, sa. Dat de country to see. I Barbadian, sa.' No doubt. It is very quaint, this self-satisfaction of the Barbadian Negro. Whether or not he belonged originally to some higher race—for there are as great differences of race among Negroes as among any white men—he looks down on the Negroes, and indeed ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... affection had softened her and lessened her pride; there was more devotional temper, and a greater desire after a religious way of life. It might be that her fretfulness was the effect of an uneasiness of mind, which was more hopeful than her previous fierce self-satisfaction, and that her aberrations were the last efforts of old evil habits to re-establish their grasp by custom, when her heart ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a low hurried voice from a thick vellum book with large clasps. It was perfectly evident that the more the clerk read, the less the man with the blue apron understood about the matter. When the volume was first brought down, he took off his hat, smoothed down his hair, smiled with great self-satisfaction, and looked up in the reader's face with the air of a man who had made up his mind to recollect every word he heard. The first two or three lines were intelligible enough; but then the technicalities began, and the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... looks, but what did looks amount to down there? He had been proud of his money, but what privilege did money give him on that flood? He had rejoiced in his popularity and the attention women paid him, but the indifferent gaze of that smoking Amazon chilled his self-satisfaction. He cringed as he seemed to see Nelia's pretty eyes glancing at him, her puzzled face as she apparently tried to remember where she had seen him. The river wilted the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... long speech for the major, and he actually seemed fatigued when he concluded. He was, however, consoled for his exertions by seeing what pleasure his words had conferred on Kearney; and with what racy self-satisfaction, that gentleman heard himself mentioned as a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... did so, they were aware, with an emotion like shock, that his whole face mirrored forth a genuine and warm self-satisfaction. The thing was as plain as if he had spoken it aloud: he had gotten out of the interview what he wanted. Their recognition of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... carefully parted in the middle and smoothed back in rich dark waves. There was something almost irritating in their unnatural smoothness, in the perfect transparency of the man's healthy olive complexion, in the mouselike sleekness of his long arching eyebrows, and in the perfect self-satisfaction and confidence of his rather insolent reddish-brown eyes. His straight round throat, well proportioned, well set upon his shoulders, and transparently smooth as his own forehead, was thrown into relief by the exquisite gold embroidery that edged the shirt of finest Flemish linen. He wore ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... one time or other. I am obliged, however humbling it may sound, to except myself: as far as I was concerned, those blue eyes were guiltless, and calm as the sky, to whose tint theirs seemed akin. So it came to pass that I heard the others talk, wondered often at their gaiety, security, and self-satisfaction, but did not trouble myself to look up and gaze along the path they seemed so certain of treading. This then was no billet-doux; and it was in settled conviction to the contrary that I quietly opened it. Thus it ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... hope that to our praise Good God not only reckons The moments when we tread His ways, But when the spirit beckons,— That some slight good is also wrought Beyond self-satisfaction, When we are simply good in thought, Howe'er we ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... invariably wore, gave him an unmistakable air of prosperity. He stood now, the silk hat cocked a little to one side, one hand under the tail of his broadcloth coat, a pudgy finger of the other pointing to some new feature of the mechanism of the new carts, and he looked the personification of self-satisfaction ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... of the narrowness, the shallowness, the dishonesty which ages of false education have fastened upon her race. The lady in question is—and evidently knows herself to be—an exception among her countrywomen for ability and acumen: an extreme self-satisfaction and vanity are revealed in the recital of her most disreputable tricks. She passes for a white blackbird, a woman of intellect caught in the harem; and it needs but little ingenuity to guess the torment she must have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... Adolphe's self-satisfaction was completed by an ovation from the ladies, who bestowed upon him the most flattering epithets. From the prettiest lips I heard, "What! this Parisian! this pale and slender young man, with such delicate hands and rose-coloured nails, fought face to face with this terrible beast? Admirable! ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Castle through the beautiful domain of park and wood, Grimond was aghast at his pinched and drawn face and the gleam in his eye. "May the Lord hae mercy, but I doot sairly that he is aff his head, and that there will be wild work at Dudhope." And while Grimond had all the imperturbable self-satisfaction and unshaken dourness of the Lowland Scot, and never on any occasion acknowledged that he could be wrong or changed his way, he almost wished that he had left this affair alone and had not meddled between ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... excitement and hilarity. His expression was animated, and he was, as it were, overflowing with superabundance of spirit, very loquacious, and incessantly moving. He bore an air of great importance and self-satisfaction; said he felt perfectly well and happy, but abused the officers for keeping him 'confined unjustly in a lunatic asylum.' It was his habit almost daily, if not interfered with, to deliver a long harangue to his fellow-patients, during which he would become very excited and noisy. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... superabundantly. It was not easy to keep quite cool with Julie Le Breton; the self-satisfaction she could excite in the man she wished to please recoiled upon the woman offering the incense. The flattered one was apt to be ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... whose wish a royal summer villa had risen over the waters of the bay. Owing to this stroke of clever policy, a poor and discontented town was transformed into the most fashionable watering place of Spain, and surely if slowly disaffection merged into prosperous self-satisfaction. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... back to the woman selling air-balloons with restored self-satisfaction, and stood there in the high wind, diving into his pockets for the amount required. The air balloons blew about—purple, pink and white—all looking almost equally colourless by the faint light as they bobbed about the woman's head, impeding her view of the purchaser. A ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... the appearance of Madame La Tour, the outer door again clanked, and Klussman stepped into the hall. His big presence had instant effect on Le Rossignol. Her music tinkled louder and faster. The playing sprite, sitting half on air, gamboled and made droll faces to catch his eye. Her vanity and self-satisfaction, her pliant gesture and skillful wild music, made her appear some soulless little being from the woods who mocked at ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... essential an ingredient of Prussian character as conceit, indifference to the feelings of others, jealousy, envy, self-satisfaction, conceit, industry, inquisitiveness, veneration for officialdom, imitativeness, materialism, and the other national attributes that will occur to those who know Prussia, as distinct ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... sense of superiority was, never wanting in Nickie the Kid; the shabbiest clothes, a deplorable hat, fragmentary boots, shirtlessness, the most distressing situations all failed to wholly eliminate a touch of impudent dignity, a trace of rakish self-satisfaction which as a rule escaped the attention of his clients; but, here and there, a student of human nature found it delightfully whimsical. Sometimes it appeared that this spice of egotism sprang from a blackguardly sense of humour that found joy in the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... assumes control it easily degenerates into a mania. Acts are regarded as meritorious in proportion as they are painful, and they are pushed to greater and greater extravagances because what becomes familiar loses the subjective force from which the ascetic person wins self-satisfaction. Asceticism then becomes a mental aberration and a practical negation of the instinct of self-preservation. It leads to insanity.[2153] If it takes a course against other persons, it explains the conduct of great ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... prided himself a good deal on his triumph, at least in appearance, over the scruples which the persons who surrounded him had manifested against the re-establishment of worship. He read with much self-satisfaction the reports made to him, in which it was stated that the churches were well frequented: Indeed, throughout the year 1802, all his attention wad directed to the reformation of manners, which had become more dissolute ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... road wearing a Derby hat, a red blanket, tight-fitting white drawers, and straw sandals. The villager who sports a European hat or coat comes around to my yadoya, wearing an amusing expression of self-satisfaction, as though filled with an inward consciousness of inv approval of the same. Whereas, every European traveller deprecates the change from their ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... proper for your man of business to prepare a regular deed to carry this into effect, which I will sign with the greatest self-satisfaction, as soon as I ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... excellent people looked at one another with a certain self-satisfaction, for they had the fearless gaze of the king of birds in face of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... as he felt inclined for swagger at this moment, could not avoid showing his triumph, especially just after such humiliating remarks as those of Hippolyte. A smile of self-satisfaction beamed on his face, and Varia too was brimming ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... perceive what it was. He gloried in his performance. Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease, quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model of provincial journalese. George Cannon had to sit and listen,—to approve, or at worst to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... no law of man or God. To-day their self-satisfaction has made them indifferent to anything that elevates. I had led them into a morass, and deeper in the ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... hearts begun to entertain the best hopes for her. Charlotte was convinced that she would one day begin to speak again. She had latterly seen signs about her which implied that she was engaged in secret about something; a look of cheerful self-satisfaction, a smile like that which hangs about the face of persons who have something pleasant and delightful which they are keeping concealed from those whom they love. No one knew that she spent many hours in extreme exhaustion, and that only at rare intervals, when ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... other movement of reform. And this dead-weight of prejudice, this vis inertiae of old and traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This phrase you hear everywhere—in the parlors, in the streets, in conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books—"Woman's sphere is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... wont to indulge himself in a little brief repose, which he would take stretched out on the ground, with his shaggy head laid, lion-like, on his extended paws—betraying, in both attitude and look, a sober self-satisfaction so entire as made it seem that for him the world had nothing more to offer. But this morning, notwithstanding the successful, even brilliant, winding up of their great adventure, our war-dog, instead of ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... the British mother who ventures to protest. Now, we Englishmen have always felt a sort of national pride in the British mother. It has been a part of our patriotic self-satisfaction to pique ourselves on her icy decorum, on the merciless severity of her virtue. Colorless, uninteresting, limited as Continental critics pronounced her to be, we cherished her the more as something specially our own, and regarded the Channel as a barrier providentially invented for the isolation ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the useful office of Vice-Chamberlain. Next to him is Sir H. Selwin-Ibbetson, Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and whom I have heard genially described as "one of the prosiest speakers in the House." Next to him, with a paper in his hand and a smirk of supreme self-satisfaction on his face, is Mr. ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... far from satisfied with herself as she was; she would have liked to possess a great talent like Gora, or be an intellectual power in the world of some sort. She was far from stultification by the national gift of complacence, careless self-satisfaction—racial rather than individual...qualities that have made the United States lag far behind the greater European nations in all but material development and a certain inventiveness; both of which in some cases are outclassed in ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... of his infidelity—which she made by accident—destroyed such remnants of self-satisfaction as her life might yet possess. She broke down utterly and sobbed and cried in Perfetta's arms. Perfetta was kind and even sympathetic, but cautioned her on no account to speak to Gino, who would be furious if he was suspected. And Lilia agreed, partly because she was afraid of him, ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... this ignoble existence and called for higher aims and worthier exertion. He was not vicious, he never had been vicious, or, as somebody else said, his vices were all refined vices; but a life of mere self-indulgence although pursued without self-satisfaction, is constantly lowering the standard and weakening the forces of virtue,—lessening the whole man. He felt it so; and to leave his ordinary scenes and occupations and lose a morning with little Fleda was a freshening of his better nature; it was like breathing ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... speeding back to Dartmouth, while Doria spoke eagerly. But the passenger felt little disposed to gratify the Italian's curiosity. Instead he asked him a few questions respecting himself and found that the other delighted to discuss his own affairs. Doria revealed a southern levity and self-satisfaction that furnished Brendon with something to think about before the launch ran to the ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... more than that—I stop and reflect. Then I am humble, then I am properly meek, and for that little time I am 'only the Mary Ann' —fourteen hours out, and cargoed with vegetables and tin-ware; but all the other twenty-three my self-satisfaction rides high, and I am the stately Indiaman, ploughing the great seas under a cloud of sail, and laden with a rich freightage of the kindest words that were ever spoken to a wandering alien, I think; my twenty-six crowded and fortunate days multiplied by five; and I ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... it is an instance of the thoughtless and reckless conduct of midshipmen. We were pulling leisurely along the coast in one of the boats, when we perceived a very large Bengal tiger taking an evening stroll, and who, by the motion of his tail, was evidently in a state of much self-satisfaction. We winded the boat's head towards him, and were preparing to give him a round of grape from the gun, but before we could get the gun well pointed, he retreated majestically into the jungle, which was in the bight of ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... dignified way, her good humor having suddenly returned; and he looked up with a smile, pleased with himself. They sat for a time, talking of other matters, and he went to bed humming the defineless tune of self-satisfaction. But late in the night Mrs. McElwin awoke and found him standing ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... and determined on that account. At last the fascinating game took a strong hold on him. He enjoyed its risks and ventured, on a trifling hand, to bluff the company and secure a fair stake. To his self-satisfaction intense ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... to good-nature, Sir Edward, I lived with your honor ten years, and you must know somewhat of my temper," said Jackson, with the self-satisfaction of an approving conscience; "but Sam Daniels is a man who is never easy unless he is left quietly at the top of the ladder; however," continued the host, with a chuckle, "I have ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... out of his pocket with an air of importance and complaisance; and Katherine, glancing from them to her mother, thought she perceived a fleeting shadow of a feeling very much akin to her own contempt of the man's pronounced self-satisfaction. So when supper was over, and the house duties done, she determined to speak to her. Joris was at a town meeting, and Lysbet did not interfere with the lovers. Katherine found her standing at an open window, looking ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... be broken for a time. For, laden with consciousness, and not full of God, the soul will delight in itself as a benefactor, a regnant giver, the centre of thanks and obligation: and will thus, with a rampart-mound of self-satisfaction, dam out the original creative life of its being, the recognition of which is life eternal. But it grew upon Richard that, if there be a God, it is the one business of a man to find him, and that, if he would find him, he must obey the voice ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... character of which, I own to you, I find impossible to understand—culminated in a burst of raucous laughter which added the final horror to this amazing adventure. Then he went out, and in the last glimpse I had of him before the door shut he wore the same look of easy self-satisfaction with which he had entered this place of death some fifteen ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... getting low as the Rat sculled gently homewards in a dreamy mood, murmuring poetry-things over to himself, and not paying much attention to Mole. But the Mole was very full of lunch, and self-satisfaction, and pride, and already quite at home in a boat (so he thought), and was getting a bit restless besides: and presently he said, "Ratty! Please, I want ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... and slender; Gorby was short and stout. Kilsip looked clever; Gorby wore a smile of self-satisfaction; which alone was sufficient to prevent his doing so. Yet, singularly enough, it was this very smile that proved most useful to Gorby in the pursuit of his calling. It enabled him to come at information where his sharp-looking colleague ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... chose to caress me, I let her do so: I allowed her to think me utterly vanquished by the battery of her charms. Yet whenever I caught an occasional glimpse of her face as we drove along in the semi-darkness, I could not help wondering at the supreme vanity of the woman! Her self-satisfaction was so complete, and, considering her approaching fate, so ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... institutional, or geographical conditions in the early period of the settlements upon the Atlantic seaboard will find in this journal much of suggestive and pertinent contribution. Danckaerts viewed his surroundings through the eyes of a fanatical self-satisfaction. For this reason his criticisms or strictures upon persons and conditions are to be received with much discount. But he was an intelligent man, and a keen-eyed and assiduous note-taker; and the variety ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... mountain of pillows, would be a purely comic figure were it not for the terrible tragedy written in his face. A footman in brilliant livery is a comic figure. The splendour of this livery brings out the comic element by its contrast to, and yet its harmony with, the stupid self-satisfaction of the countenance and the curls of ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... of all evil sought not only to counteract the effect of the advent message, but to destroy the messenger himself. Miller made a practical application of Scripture truth to the hearts of his hearers, reproving their sins and disturbing their self-satisfaction, and his plain and cutting words aroused their enmity. The opposition manifested by church-members toward his message, emboldened the baser classes to go to greater lengths; and enemies plotted to take his life as he should leave the place of meeting. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... in their whole nature. We have no love for asceticism; but a few hours on the column of St. Simon Stylites, or a temporary diet of locusts and wild honey, might have purified Sir Charles's exuberant self-satisfaction. For all this, he is not without a certain solid merit, and the persons by whom he is surrounded—on whom we have not space to dwell—have a large share of the vivacity which amuses us in the real men and women of ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... will depart also the power over us of the evil things we have done, and so we shall be saved from them also. The bad that lives in us, our evil judgments, our unjust desires, our hate and pride and envy and greed and self-satisfaction—these are the souls of our sins, our live sins, more terrible than the bodies of our sins, namely the deeds we do, inasmuch as they not only produce these loathsome things, but make us loathsome as they. Our wrong deeds are our dead works; ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... their satisfaction, and somewhat to Dick's self-satisfaction, they heard a low noise ahead, which they knew must be ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... delighted to, but I've got one of these war-committees at six o'clock." Again he spoke with careful unconcern, masking a considerable self-satisfaction. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... sincere; his real character was on the surface; he made no effort to restrain himself; he was perfectly at home, in his element; and one cannot disguise his delight at being in his element. There is a carelessness in his movements that betrays his self-satisfaction; he struts and spreads himself with an air of confidence; he seems to float in the air, to swim on the crest of the wave ... People can conceal their delight when they have recognised an adored being among ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... She was now about fourteen, a half-blown beauty of the red and white, gold and blue kind. She had long been a vain little thing, approving of her own looks in the glass, and taking much interest in setting them off, but so simple as to make no attempt at concealing her self-satisfaction. Her pleased contemplation of this or that portion of her person, and the frantic attempts she was sometimes espied making to get a sight of her back, especially when she wore a new frock, were indeed more amusing than hopeful, but her vanity was not yet so pronounced as to overshadow her ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... blue, her flawless skin was of a brunette tone. A hint has been given as to Mr. Larcher's conceit—which, by the way, had suffered a marvellous change to humility in the presence of his admired—but it was a small and superficial thing compared with the self-satisfaction of Miss Edna, and yet hers sat upon her with a serenity which, taking her sex also into consideration, made ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a living picture of Paul and of his confidence before he was a Christian. All these grounds for pride and self-satisfaction were like triple armour round the heart of the young Pharisee, who rode out of Jerusalem on the road to Damascus. How little he thought that they would all have been pierced and have dropped from him before he got there! The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... look came into his mother's eyes and sent a glow of self-satisfaction through his whole being. The look was familiar to him and meant that his mother was annoyed by the question but pleased with his cleverness in thinking ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... climb, and slide down again with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... on, in that sober tone of decided self-satisfaction. "And I said a heap more. And didn't the boys jest laff. Will went red as a beet, and the boys laffed more. And I was real glad. I hate Will! Say, he was up here last night. Wot for? He was up here from six to nigh nine. Say, sis, I wish you ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... one end is a tall cypress-tree, and the sunlight touches the stem of it until it shines like fire against the green darkness of its boughs. On the worn old stone pavement white pigeons strut and preen themselves, puffing out their chests with the most absurd air of self-satisfaction. There are steps down from the terrace, and at the bottom there is a great bed of carnations, red and white and yellow, and their fragrance meets you like a wall of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... from the avowal, the confession. He knew that it would call forth quite a torrent of amazement and self-satisfaction; that he would be asked why he had concealed his full name and rank—and to-night, of all nights, he felt unequal to the scene which would most ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... incessantly talking about Souris, asking a thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb, recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his absurdities, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... into a discussion. Though he could not help seeing how small his attainments were beside the American's, his British pertinacity, his wounded vanity (perhaps they are the same thing), would not allow him to give up the struggle. Hayward seemed to take a delight in displaying his ignorance, self-satisfaction, and wrongheadedness. Whenever Hayward said something which was illogical, Weeks in a few words would show the falseness of his reasoning, pause for a moment to enjoy his triumph, and then hurry on to another subject as though Christian charity impelled him to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... destined to a perfect fulfillment, for poor Santron, who lay motionless and unconscious up to that moment, suddenly gave signs of life by moving his features, and jerking his limbs to this side and that. The doctor's self-satisfaction took the very proudest form. He expatiated on the grandeur of medical science, the wonderful advancement it was making, and the astonishing progress the curative art had made, even within his own time. I must own that I should ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... but somewhat shabby, suit of summer plaid, his straw hat was set a trifle over one ear, and he was smoking the stump of a not too fragrant cigar. Altogether he looked like a sporting character under a temporary financial cloud, but the cloud did not dim his self-satisfaction nor shadow his magnificent complaisance. He regarded the section of Eastboro before him with condescending scorn, and then, catching sight of the doleful figure on the baggage truck, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Napoleon, he would have made himself sure personally as to "the last gaiter button" and all other details, but with sublime self-satisfaction and inane blindness the Second Napoleon put himself at the head of this unready army, inspired apparently with the "on to Berlin" confidence ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... embroidered with steel beads. A small package neatly done up in leaves probably contained his lunch. He teetered along with a mincing up and down step, every movement, and the expression of his face displaying a fatuous self-satisfaction. When we looked back again this youth had magically become two. Then appeared two women and a white goat. All except the goat were dressed for visiting, with long chains of beads, bracelets and anklets, and heavy ornaments ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... misery and wretchedness from which they had been taken; —or whether it was the joy and exultation which were expressed in the countenances of the poor parents in contemplating their children all busily employed about them;—or the air of self-satisfaction which these little urchins put on, at the consciousness of their own dexterity, while they pursued their work with redoubled diligence upon being observed, that rendered the scene so singularly interesting,— ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in frag- ments before our eyes. Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethar- [20] gic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction; else, the con- tents of this cup of selfish human enjoyment having lost its flavor, we voluntarily set it aside as tasteless and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... his own pieces that he had no thought to spare? This he left to the dominion of chance, which blew together the atoms of Epicurus. But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely laboured to please the unlettered crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect, would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of his pieces. For does not the impression of a drama depend in an ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Gertrude White was at all times and in all seasons a precise and accurate house-mistress. Harassed, as an actress must often be, by other cares; sometimes exhausted with hard work; perhaps tempted now and again by the self-satisfaction of a splendid triumph to let meaner concerns go unheeded; all the same, she allowed nothing to interfere with ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction." ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... Ben's decent, well-controlled self-satisfaction, which almost amounts to dignity, is gone like a puff of smoke, at the word "Shanghai." Poor fellow! He once had the hen-fever badly, and he don't ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to so play the impassioned lover as to conceal the recreancy he had fostered in his own heart, Harry did not notice the coolness of this greeting. Then, too, his self-satisfaction had always done him the invaluable service of preventing a ready perception of the ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... as cold and impudent, but as heartfelt and instinct with feeling. He was studying theology, and cherished no dearer wish than eventually to become a priest. He constantly alternated between contrition and self-satisfaction, arrogance and repentance, enjoyed the consciousness of being exceptionally clever, an irresistible charmer, and a true Christian. It seemed to him that, in the freshman whom he had singled out from the crowd ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... seems real to me, very real, I can believe in it, until the metal chair-back gives to my shoulder blades, and Utopian sparrows twitter and hop before my feet. I have a pleasant moment of unhesitating self-satisfaction; I feel a shameless exultation to be there. For a moment I forget the consideration the botanist demands; the mere pleasure of completeness, of holding and controlling all the ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... not your sin—it is your self-satisfaction that crieth unto heaven; your very sparingness in sin crieth ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... sat and communed with his great monitor, the ocean, and only from his flashing eye and the firm set of his lips could the mother of Sweetwater see that the crisis of her son's life was rapidly approaching, and that on the outcome of this long brooding rested not only his own self-satisfaction, but the interests of the man most dear ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... lifted for a moment, we discovered the error, put about without more ado, and went around the block in a hurry. Meanwhile we had schooled our ears to detect the most delicate shades of sound; to measure or weigh each individual echo with an accuracy that gave us the utmost self-satisfaction. Perhaps Captain Carroll or Captain George, who was spying out the land with his ears, would not have trusted the ship in our keeping for five minutes—but ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... I going to prove it?" Hamilton repeated, with immense self-satisfaction. "Why, I'm going to sell ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... the Other Customer, as his natural self-satisfaction overcomes his reserve). 'Shtonishing how fast one's hair does grow. It's not three weeks since I had a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... in his mirror but himself, and himself in full perfection. Should he, perchance, at any time see another, it is in a manner that only enlarges the perception of his own personal excellences, and strengthens his consciousness of self-importance and self-satisfaction. ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... the whole, he had reached a high-water mark of self-satisfaction. He had found it easy to carry corruption into high places. A list of those who were in his power—willing or unwilling—would have horrified the whole nation. From O'Hagan in the West came reports that all went well with ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... pulled up by the porch and directed me to stand by the young mare's head, wore a look of extreme self-satisfaction. Beside him, also beaming, sat Mr. Goodfellow, with the corner cupboard nursed between ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... on the line, his face a leer. "We are offering you a three-way partnership, Mathers. You, with your Medal of Honor, are our front man. Mr. Demming supplies the initial capital to get underway. And I ..." He twisted his mouth with evil self-satisfaction. "I was present when the Kraden ship was discovered, so I'll have to be cut ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... was so touching that no one but a hardened monster could have withstood it; but the look, with the feelings which it implied, was short-lived. It passed like a summer cloud, and was replaced by an expression of supreme contentment and self-satisfaction when it became apparent that Master Jim was not going to awake, and that Mrs Langley's despair was vanishing. Indeed, that lady's despair was at all times remarkably short-lived. She had been trained in a school of dire adversity ever since the arrival of the coal-black ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... the undistinguished services of those who have fought in the war for the Union, and who have passed unchallenged through the fiery ordeal, will be cherished by their children, and transmitted to their remoter posterity with patriotic pride and pardonable self-satisfaction. Thus the glory of noble deeds in this memorable war will everywhere shed its lustre on the national character, and will tend to stimulate the loftiest virtues in the present ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fellow as this in his household Monceux felt that he would soon lay Robin Hood by the heels. So he strutted to his horse, and was lifted thereon in fine self-satisfaction. His daughter mounted her palfrey, and Carfax led the beast gently, whilst the maids had to hurry over the rough stones as best ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... and thumps on the table, that set all the glasses dancing), "not only was it the noblest and most legitimate, but it was the most profitable; and where was the man of high and honourable principle who did not feel when breathing the pure atmosphere of that Heath, a lofty self-satisfaction at the thought, that though he might have left those who were near and dear to him in a less genial atmosphere, still he was not selfishly enjoying himself, without a thought for their welfare; for racing, while it brought health and vigour to the father, also brought ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... Mahomet and Brigham Young receiving supplementary revelations, grim men babbling secrets to schoolgirls, enamoured errand boys, amorous old women, debauchees dreaming themselves thoroughly sensible men and going about their queer proceedings with insane self-satisfaction, beautiful witless young persons dressed in the most amazing things, all down the vista of history—a Vision of Fair Women—looking their conscious queenliest, sentimentalists crawling over every ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Poor Richard. Extravagance is not the way to self-satisfaction. The man who does not keep his feet in the old, honest way of thrift will some time sell himself, and then he will be ready to sell his friends or his country. By and by nothing is so dear to him as thirty pieces ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... "Welwyn-Baker and the Honour of Old England!"—"Vote for Quarrier, the Friend of the Working Man!"—"No Jingoism!" "The Constitution in Danger! Polterham to the Rescue!" These trumpetings to the battle restored Glazzard's self-satisfaction; he smiled once more, and ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... nearly nine years old, Mr. Havergal was appointed to the rectory of St. Nicholas, Worcester, and thither the family removed. Soon after their arrival, a sermon by the curate upon the text, "Fear not, little flock," aroused her from the feeling of self-satisfaction into which she had drifted. Having a favourable opportunity, she unburdened her heart one evening when alone with the curate, but he did not help the young seeker after peace. He said the excitement of moving and coming into new scenes was the cause most likely of her feeling ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... in love with her? Oh, but why not?" she demanded querulously. "It would do you so much good—as a man and as a writer. You'll never get rid of your self-satisfaction till then; and you'll never write a good play. It's such a pity, when you've everything except the psychology. Why don't you fall in love with me? I could teach you such a lot, and you'd never regret ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... precipitate a Man to chuse the Receipt of half his Demands from one whom he has undone, rather than the whole from one to whom he has shewn Mercy. This Benignity is essential to the Character of a fair Trader, and any Man who designs to enjoy his Wealth with Honour and Self-Satisfaction: Nay, it would not be hard to maintain, that the Practice of supporting good and industrious Men, would carry a Man further even to his Profit, than indulging the Propensity of serving and obliging the Fortunate. My Author ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had been taken, she emerged with her bundle and spread it out on the table for the third time. She was all smiles. She was not a bit angry with the foolish widower. This dogmatic attitude of mind, this wonderful self-satisfaction, were peculiar to the creature; he couldn't help it. But it had roused a mischievous spirit in her, and the temptation was too great to resist. The only thing she regretted was having let him kiss her, and she at once put up her hand to wipe the spot ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum |
