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Complacently   /kəmplˈeɪsəntli/   Listen
Complacently

adverb
1.
In a self-satisfied manner.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Complacently" Quotes from Famous Books



... he admitted complacently. "From your records and drawings, of course, George, for I have not yet had the ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe

... appeal to conscience was primarily the pressing on the heart of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. When the heart is melted, the conscience will not long continue indurated. We cannot look lovingly and believingly at Jesus and then turn to look complacently on ourselves. Not to believe on Him is the sin of sins, and to be taught that it is so is the first step in the work of Him who never merits the name of the Comforter more truly than when He convicts the world ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... that seemed to belong to another world and another life. What he craved now was to be like this envied and enviable son of good fortune, who wore his Sunday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... Satisfied, however, at length, that he was a white man, and perhaps a person of more importance than his costume might betoken, he set diligently to work to boil the kettle and fry some buffalo meat; the old hunter, who had taken a seat on a pile of wood near the fire, looking complacently on. ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston

... hardly doubt. Virginia then had deceived me. I had trusted her in all things and she had played me false. Designing to do her honour, I had done her the greatest dishonour—but through her means. Blind fool that I was! Playing the husband, complacently accepting her play of the wife as serious. O Heaven, and she had let me ruin her, and now was gone! I own that I was angry at being made the victim of a trick, indignant at having been forced into a thing which I should never have dreamed of doing. But when I turned severely to Miriam ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... believe that one man in a million would guess what happened!" He looks round him again, and has time to note complacently that the son of his host, who has risen, and whose hands grip the back of the chair from which he has risen, is staring, fascinated, across ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... will find out," said Miss Custer complacently; and Hugh flung away his apple-core and walked on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... must look complacently on this land. Politics have been a fruitful source of quarrels, misrepresentation, alienation, and division. The opposition parties are locally designated "snatchers" and "snarlers," and no love is lost between the ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... She is smiling complacently as she looks into a mirror in her lap. Her robe is embroidered with roses, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... curtains of the west were tinged with the varied dyes of sunset, and nature seemed revived by the cool, fresh evening breeze, and smiled complacently beneath the sun's last ray. The full orbed moon arose in the east, and the crystal streams reflected myriads of diamonds beneath her silver beams, and the stars, those golden lamps of night, shone bright in the blue chambers of the sky. An aged man was ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... some neglect of Nature. And then he is such a splendid success, so hardy and vigorous. I think he enjoys the cold and the snow. His wings seem to rustle with more fervency in midwinter. If the snow falls very fast, and promises a heavy storm, he will complacently sit down and allow himself to be snowed under. Approaching him at such times, he suddenly bursts out of the snow at your feet, scattering the flakes in all directions, and goes humming away through the woods like a bomb-shell,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... small entertainment, and will be pleased if you will come to my mean abode to have a glass of wine. But I wonder whether you will entertain favourably my modest invitation?" Yue-ts'un, after listening to the proposal, put forward no refusal of any sort; but remarked complacently: "Being the recipient of such marked attention, how can I presume ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... has recently been formed by the Jewish Board of Guardians to sit on all "anti-Semitic" movements in this country. At a meeting of this body it was complacently announced that "the Committee had obtained the removal of the posters of an anti-Semitic paper from the walls of an important establishment, and steps had been taken to get others removed."—Jewish ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... to compose some phrases; he looked about him in the room, considering where would be the most appropriate spot for the interview. Then he went over to a looking-glass to see if his face were as pale as befitted the occasion, and his gaze rested complacently on his forehead, just where the hair began at the temples and where, in the old days, Elena was often wont to press a delicate kiss. In matters of love, his vitiated and effeminate vanity seized upon ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... a true son of Israel,' he murmured complacently to himself. 'He will trust his gold ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... and only recently a river steamer had gone down with all hands in one of the sudden and violent squalls peculiar to this region. To-day, however, a brazen sun blazed down upon a liquid mirror, and I sat on the bridge under an awning with a cool drink and a cigar, and complacently watched the glassy surface where five years before we had to battle in an open skiff against a stiff gale, drenched by the waves and worn out by hard work at the oars. To-day the White Horse accomplished the passage from river to ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... start, when he bounded across the chasm with the ease of a chamois. Jack had sauntered a rod back, as if with no special purpose in mind, when his object was to secure the impetus that would land him far in advance of his comrade. Standing thus, he complacently watched Fred, as his body rose in air, gracefully curved over, and landed at a safe distance beyond the edge of ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... well known that those fight hardest who fight in vain," remarked Lord Ronald Prior complacently. "But I should have thought a woman of your intellect would have known better. It's such a rank waste of energy to struggle ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... two inches taller, and probably a long year older than his opponent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and shoulders; "peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form boys, the amateurs, say; who stand outside the ring of little boys, looking complacently on, but taking no active part in the proceedings. But down below he is not so good by any means; no spring from the loins, and feebleish, not to say shipwrecky, about the knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the arms, is good all over, straight, hard, and springy from ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... I answered, much nettled by her tone, "I do not think anybody can properly regard me as a fool. As for the other qualification," I went on complacently, "I ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... popular cry in the country. He forced the "Whig" Convention—for such was the name which the very composite party opposed to Jackson had chosen—to put it in the forefront of their programme, and he seems to have looked forward complacently to a complete victory ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... to look slightly Japanese. The child held a toy, and had a regular shock head of hair. The frizzed hair of many foreign children appeared very odd to Yoshi-san. He thought their mothers must be very unkind not to take the little "western men" more often to the barber's. He complacently compared the neatness of his own shaven crown ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... of all that,' responded Mr. Joseph Tuggs, complacently. He was, at that very moment, eating ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... got whin Moore left the switch open at the Junction, an' the pain at me heart over losin' Jennie, I'm as fit as iver," she answered, complacently. "Ye heard ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... a man examine himself rather than his neighbour. When Peter saw the young man refusing to make a sacrifice for Christ, he complacently remembered his own sacrifices, and thought he had done remarkably well. Ah, Peter, Satan desires to have thee that he may sift thee as wheat; but what by the Master's rebukes addressed to him, and what by prayers poured out for him, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... who do not weep,—I raise the dirge for Manuel. For I must henceforward be reasonable in all things, and I shall never be quite discontented any more: and I must feed and sleep as the beasts do, and it may be that I shall even fall to thinking complacently about my death and glorious resurrection. Yes, yes, all this is certain, and I may not ever go a-traveling everywhither to see the ends of this world and judge them: and the desire to do so no longer ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... looks down into the arena, and peoples the Coliseum with the criminals and the innocent martyrs, shut out from hope by its merciless walls and by a populace more merciless, and slain by thousands by wild beasts and swordsmen and spearsmen, to make a Roman holiday. How complacently he felicitates himself upon the assumption that modern times present nothing like this. But less than one hundred years ago, the pen of a lawyer erected in France a statute which inclosed a kingdom with its architectural horror, made one arena of an empire, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... ourselves upon the wealth and prosperity of our country and complacently contemplating every incident of change inseparable from these conditions, it is our duty as patriotic citizens to inquire at the present stage of our progress how the bond of the Government made with the people ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... was not: and now is; with the speed, if not the brilliancy, of lightning, we have added a handful to the intellectual dust-heap of an oppressed nation. From this bad eminence Sampson then looked down complacently, and saw Mrs. Dodd's face as long as his arm. She was one that held current opinions; and the world does not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... said Jimmy Silver complacently, as he walked to the other end. "We're a powerful combination, Kennedy. Where's Fenn? Does anybody know? ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... as complacently as he could; and Jill, having exhausted her conversation with this outburst, put her hand apologetically into her father's, and remained silent the ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... dishes, and then came out with the milk-pails to the corral where the cows, puffing and chewing, complacently awaited her arrival. But she had not reached the gate when the hired man was at her side and had slipped one of the pails from ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... forty-six, and Richard Shackford, aged four. Lemuel Shackford had laid up a competency as ship-master in the New York and Calcutta trade, and in 1852 had returned to his native village, where he found his name and stock represented only by little Dick, a very cheerful orphan, who stared complacently with big blue eyes at fate, and made mud-pies in the lane whenever he could elude the vigilance of the kindly old woman who had taken him under her roof. This atom of humanity, by some strange miscalculation of nature, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... brutal profit-greed of the bourgeoisie a hypocritical, civilised form, to restrain the manufacturers through the arm of the law from too conspicuous villainies, and thus to give them a pretext for self-complacently parading their sham philanthropy. That is all. If a new commission were appointed to-day, it would find things pretty much as before. As to the extemporised compulsory attendance at school, it remained wholly a dead letter, since the Government failed to provide good schools. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... getting awfully popular as a matter of fact," said Bones complacently. "The last time I was up the river, Bosambo came ten miles down stream to meet me ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... wedding of his rival, the President felicitates himself hugely over the late presidential election. He considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones. He says the people did it. He forgets that the "people," as he complacently calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the whole people by about four hundred thousand votes—one full tenth of all the votes. Remembering this, he might perceive that the "rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think—that the majority may not choose to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... lots," said Chris, complacently. "She didn't tell me nothing, hardly. But I told her lots. My apple fritter got cold whilst I was telling it. She sent it away, and had two hot ones, new, on purpose ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Competition between them, indeed, was about an end. Amelia claimed Mr. Sponge, should he be worth having, and should the Scamperdale scheme fail; while Emily, having her mamma's assurance that he would not do for either of them, resigned herself complacently to what ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... is true more or less, but Antony is always the person who holds the cheek, hardly even complacently—generally with perfect indifference. I have never known him, for years, put himself out an inch for ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... said Doris complacently, throwing a glance at the large mirror near. It was still the white tea-gown, for she had firmly declined to sample anything else, in truth well aware that Arthur's eyes approved both ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... afore supper," explained Mrs. Lem, "but to-day she couldn't very well." She looked complacently at her child's toilet. "You ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... turned down the companion-way to the main saloon. The tables had been cleared of the breakfast belongings, but on one of the small tables a white cloth had been laid, and at this spot of purity in the general desert of red plush sat Miss Brewster, who was complacently ordering what she wanted from a steward, who did not seem at all pleased in serving one who had disregarded the breakfast-hour, to the disarrangement of all saloon rules. The chief steward stood by a door and looked disapprovingly at the tardy guest. ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr

... old-time foe, Aunt 'Phrony, and the banjo was in the hands of Tim, a plow-boy, celebrated as being the best picker for miles around. Lastly, there were Aunt 'Liza and her latest conquest, Sam, whose hopes she could not have entirely quenched or he would not have beamed so complacently on ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... as it appeared, the familiar room, which had just heard the romance of her youth, had come to have a dismantled and desolate look. The agent of this destruction, who saw in her mind's eye a new scene, altogether surpassing the old, looked complacently upon her work, and piled the abstracted articles on the top of each other, with ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... think I had, poor old buffer!" her husband answered complacently, his temper restored. "By the way, I've brought in the last number of Dickens. Shall I read it ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... Patty, complacently. "They don't catch 'em like me very often. But, I say, Mona, wasn't Susan just a peach? Though if Jack Pennington hadn't helped, I don't know how she would have behaved at ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... to each responsible keeper. White caps are over! Behold the parish school of St. Wulstan's. Here is fashion! Here are hats, polkas, and full short skirts, but pale faces and small limbs. The country mothers cry 'Oh!' and 'Poor little dears, they look very tuly,' and complacently regard their own sturdy, sunburnt offspring, at whose staring eyes and ponderous boots the city mice ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... but I'm rather good at thinking of things," Virginia owned complacently. "And then," she continued, "I poked around the rose bush, and peeped in at the window, and sure enough she was there, brushing the hearth. She saw me and came to the window, and when I ran away, 'cause I thought maybe she was mad, she rapped, and then opened ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard

... Kent summat these three years," he answered complacently. "And I never forgets to pay back. I owed you summat, too, Miss Tennant. I haven't forgot how you spoke up for me ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... some nerve," he said complacently, "and I'm free to confess that to begin with I always had a beastly feeling that some one was watching me and spotting something that didn't look quite right, but, good Lord, keeping my head the way I kept it, there was nothing ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... in no mood to regard this vanity complacently, went up on deck and declined to have anything to do with the matter. He maintained this attitude of immovable virtue until tea-time, by which time Flower's entreaties had so won upon him that he was reluctantly compelled to admit that it seemed to be the only thing possible in the circumstances, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... wife and daughter were almost wild with joy when he brought home this news. Never, surely, did so rich a capture swim so complacently into the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... her injunctions to be absolutely obeyed; at any rate, a certain amount of whispering went on among the girls, who collected in little groups to take the required repose, while a low laugh every now and then did not indicate sound slumber. Avis piled up a pillow of sand, and closed her eyes complacently, until she found Winnie was tickling the end of her nose with a piece of seaweed; Enid lay curled up under the shadow of a rock, looking at her watch every few minutes; and Jean and Patty played a silent game of noughts and crosses on slabs of ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... all too unconcerned looking young Adonis, and the gleam of a napoleon shone out in the grave faced Figaro's hand. "Now for our cafe noir, a good pousse cafe—and—a dash at the painted beauties. I can't play very long," was Anstruther's salutation, as he complacently twisted his mustache en hussar. Major Hawke ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... sort of woman to break one's heart in the witness box,' he said as he passed out into the deserted street, and Senora Barenna, in the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English lord had ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... Daniel complacently accepted this testimony to his monetary worth and jogged out of the yard. Fortunately appearances do not count for much in Orham, except in the summer, and the spectacle of five in a carryall is nothing out of the ordinary. ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the scholar seems great, there is nothing surprising about it; for the scholar's relation to an author is substantially the same as that of any adult to other persons with whom he has dealings. If you go to a store to purchase a pair of rubbers, you cannot surrender yourself complacently to any clerk who happens to wait upon you. He is very likely to be satisfied to sell you rubbers that are too long or too short, too wide or too narrow, or at least not of the shape of your shoes. Or he may want to sell you storm rubbers when you prefer low ones. Unless, therefore, ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry

... "Old wiseheads, complacently smoothing the brim, May jeer at my velvet, and call it a whim; They may think in a cap little wisdom there dwells; They may say he who wears it should wear it with bells; But when Broadbrim lies flat, I will answer him pat, Oh! who but a crackskull would ride ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... cannot imagine himself any better than he is. A creative genius makes for his own person a 'self' which he thinks he is, or desires other people to believe him to be. It makes little difference whether he succeeds or not, so long as he flatters himself he does. He complacently takes all his images from the other animals, or from natural objects and phenomena, depicting himself bold as an eagle, brave as a lion, strong as an ox, patient as an ass, vain as a popinjay, talkative as a parrot, wily as a serpent, gentle as a dove, cunning as a fox, surly as a bear; his ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... fraternity was so struck with her persistent good fortune that he christened her Madame Midas, after that Greek King whose touch turned everything into gold. This name tickled the fancy of others, and in a short time she was called nothing but Madame Midas all over the country, which title she accepted complacently enough as a forecast of her success in finding the Devil's Lead, which idea had grown into a mania with her as it already was with her faithful ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... that the robbery was a slight one, with little or no loss to the company. The clamor subsided almost as suddenly as it had arisen; the wiser passengers fashioned their attitude on the sang-froid of Yuba Bill, and the whole coach load presently rolled away as complacently as if ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... the words: "This view of life is not mine." The solemn declaration does not seem to me to be so annihilating to the said "view" (really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, with some rather gross instances of the suggestio falsi in his article, of "Mr. Hardy refusing consolation," the "dark gravity ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... do well," she said complacently as we went on again. "Last time I was up this way that tree was kind of drooping and discouraged. Grown trees act that way sometimes, same's folks; then they'll put right to it and strike their ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett

... thinks you have met with 'a change of heart.' I am sure yon can prove it in no better way than by a docile acquiescence in the wishes of one who has a natural right to control you, and whose teachings," she added complacently, "had they been followed, would have enabled you to hold up your head to-day among ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... coals he had for his supper," thought Davy; but, as the Goblin continued to smile complacently and seemed to be feeling quite comfortable, he did not venture to ask any questions, and went on with his thoughts. "I suppose he'll soon have smoke coming out of his nose, as if he were a stove. If it were a cold night I'd ask him to come ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl

... an aspiring memory here made him boast of crimes that were not his. He was assiduous in the Eton practice of working a small boat, whether skiff, funny, or wherry, single-handed. In the masquerade of Montem he figured complacently in all the glories of the costume of a Greek patriot, for he was a faithful Canningite; the heroic struggle against the Turk was at its fiercest, and it was the year when Byron died at Missolonghi. Of Montem as an institution he thought extremely ill, 'the whole thing a wretched ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... speaking. She was about to answer when the carriage stopped at the door of the Melbourne Club. Brian, anxious to escape any more remarks about the murder, sprang quickly out, and ran up the steps into the building. He found Mr. Frettlby smoking complacently, and reading the AGE. As Fitzgerald entered he looked up, and putting down the paper, held out his hand, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... very unhappy if I frown upon him," she said to herself, complacently. "It's a great responsibility to make a fellow being unhappy. It's a sacrifice, I know, but it's our duty to deny ourselves. I don't know but I ought to go ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... been members of the Corinthian church, what inferences must they have drawn from this exhortation to their servants? That the apostle regarded slavery as a Christian institution?—or could look complacently on any efforts to introduce or maintain it in the church? Could they have expected less from him than a stern rebuke, if they refused to exert themselves ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... my darling," he said complacently. "Ship aho-o-o-y! Stop crying, Hetty, for God's sake. You lacerate my ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... limp morning-glory may always be counted upon to slouch familiarly over everything in sight, window-blinds preferred. But, bless you dear urban soul, what do you know about the relative values of flowers? When Mrs. Overtheway brings your wife a bunch of her superbest gladioli, you complacently return the compliment with a half-bushel of magenta petunias, and you wonder that she does not show more ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... to know later that an impression existed in the neighbourhood that the Chitlings had left entirely too much of the bringing up of their eleven children in the hands of Providence, who in turn had left them quite as complacently to ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... not supposed to have heard of it," explained its owner complacently. "It is a very exclusive name, a family name. My mother's paternal ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... assure you—if he had made you any other answer. I do feel injured—at your having been willing. If you were to go to papa, my dear, you would have to stop coming to me." Marian put it thus, indefinably, as a picture of privation from which her companion might shrink. Such were the threats she could complacently make, could think herself masterful for making. "But if he won't take you," she continued, "he ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... a slight grimace, and Kilshaw smiled complacently. He had great hopes of Puttock, and was pleased when ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... John Bull, a courier coming from Germany—'encore! to be sure she does; we have her yet, I assure you, monsieur.' 'Though neither very safe, nor very sound,' interposed an officer of the Irish Brigade, who happened to be present, looking very significantly at O'Leary, and not very complacently at the courier. 'And pray, monsieur,' rejoined John Bull to the Frenchman, 'why encore?' 'Pardon, monsieur,' replied the Frenchman, 'I heard it had been worn out (fatigue) long ago, by the great number of people that were living ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... ancestors to whom so many take off their hats. Some of our forefathers in Europe were little less than pirates and buccaneers. Their descendants today knowing that they can make great claims with little fear of contradiction, extol the virtue of their forefathers and complacently take on a superior air. They have thought over the matter of birth so much that they really think they ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... blame the poor creatures! Oh! let us not despise those generous souls, who in the excitement of their patriotism are always prompt to identify the voice of their chiefs with the truth. Let us encourage rather their simple credulity, enlighten complacently and tenderly their precious sincerity, and reserve our shafts for those vain-glorious spirits who are always admiring their genius, and, in different tongues, caressing the people in ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... with instant and delighted appreciation. The tiger gathered up the rest of himself upon his pedestal, wiped his face with his paw, like a cat, and settled down complacently with a pleased assurance that he had ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... Cut off from regular schooling, herded often in the poorest substitutes for homes, moving about from place to place with fathers and mothers unskilled or handicapped by weak character, these children are defrauded of every right of a child at every turn. It is not true, as some complacently assert, that all is done that should be to prevent the sacrifice of young life to the industrial demands for large returns for investment. It is not true that such organizations as the Child-labor Committee can rest content with ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... a common practice in this part of Ireland. The kitchen, with its red-tiled floor, is a capital smoking room, warm and cosy, and while tobacco is leisurely puffed, and that eternal subject, "the state of the country," discussed, the eye reposes complacently on the treasures suspended from the hooks on the ceiling, plump hams and sides of well-fed bacon giving assurance that the garrison is far from being reduced to extremities. But there are in the kitchen other objects less suggestive of festivity. On ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... seem strange that William, Taillebois, Guader, Warrenne, short-spoken, hard-headed, hard-swearing warriors, could allow, complacently, a smooth churchman to dawdle on like this, counting his periods on his fingers, and seemingly never ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... physical, and to call attention to a pestilence, latent, as it were, which incessantly acts upon the faces of the porter, the artisan, the small shopkeeper; to point out a deleterious influence the corruption of which equals that of the Parisian administrators who allow it so complacently to exist! ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... style which the average American worker found exceedingly difficult. The great classics of Socialism were not available to any but those able to read some other language than English. "Socialism is a foreign movement," said the American complacently. ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo

... a blush: "I ought to speak it well. I learned it when I was a child." And he added, complacently, "I can even ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... an office to give his language all the precision and exactness which science requires when monopoly is in question. What he so complacently calls a MODIFICATION OF ECONOMIC FORMULAS is but a long and odious violation of the fundamental laws of labor and exchange. It is in consequence of monopoly that in society, net product being figured over and above gross product, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... set off for the Malibou Ranch the next Sunday morning rather complacently, however. She had seen to it that Carter was of the party. To be sure, he was in the tonneau with Stephen Lorimer and the young Carmodys and Lorimers and the heroic-sized lunch box and the thermos case, while Jimsy and Honor sat ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... important details of clothes, noting that his sack coat was properly loose at the waist and that the buttons were sufficiently large to pass muster, but also detecting that the trousers lacked breadth at the ankles and that the hat had a high crown and a broad brim, from which he complacently concluded the other was somewhat behind ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a book, for I miss that small soft ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... will not yield itself up to long-continued, steady heat. But the difficulty with almost any of the common servants who call themselves cooks is that they have not the smallest notion of the philosophy of the application of heat. Such a one will complacently tell you concerning certain meats, that the harder you boil them the harder they grow,—an obvious fact, which, under her mode of treatment, by an indiscriminate galloping boil, has frequently come under her personal observation. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... man as in woman. It is an outrage to make that meek submission to wrong, which shows so divinely in her, a duty; and it is equally an outrage to make that autocratic authority of man over woman, which he so complacently assumes, a right. The progressive emancipation of woman, revealed in history, will go on until she ceases to be, in any sense, "a mere appendage of man," and they become mutually as independent ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... listened to Britt with growing pain and indignation—pain at thought of Viola's undoing, indignation that the mother and her physician could so complacently join in the dark proceedings. "Of course, you ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... the Isle of Orleans; twenty ships of the line, twenty frigates, and a swarm of transports, bearing in all about nine thousand men. But Quebec, so often threatened in the past, and ever fortunate in resistance, gazed complacently down upon this imposing fleet. Montcalm feared but one contingency, the co-operation of Amherst with Wolfe from the west; and this, as we have seen, was a needless anxiety. Disembarking, Wolfe pitched his camp at the western end of the Isle of Orleans, four miles from Quebec. Before ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... acts the most is the happy man, the contented man, because he's nearly always pleased with himself. If he fails at anything he can usually excuse himself on the grounds of somebody else's damnfoolishness. If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did it out of his own greatness. Action—that's the thing. The contemplative, analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal until he began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden of thought is laid on him, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... he, as he complacently filled the blackened bowl, and calmly stuffed down the glowing tobacco with the end of that marvellously callous little fingers, "it's a wonderful thing that baccy. I don't know what ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... in some way put her foot in it, but as the two men walked away together she nodded complacently to herself, with the words, 'I ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... who accompanied him to the door; and, when seated in his carriage, he read again the paragraph of Puck—that Puck, who, in the course of the same article, referred many times to the brilliancy of "our colleague Jacquemin," and complacently cited the witticisms of ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... He took the tribute complacently. "What was I saying before you interrupted me? Oh yes. About the wisdom of your proposed action. Are you sure ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... same, will Vngngn, or some one else of my folk get it," Ngurn complacently assured him. "And just the same will it turn here in the and turn devil-devil house in the smoke. The quicker you slay me with your Baby Thunder, the quicker will your head turn ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... she came to get tea, she tied the white fleecy rolls together, a great bundle of them, and hung them up in the cellar-way, over the stair, to be out of the way. They were extra fine wicks, being made of flax for the company candles. "I've got a good job done," said Mrs. Dorcas, surveying them complacently. Her husband had gone to Boston, and was not coming home till the next day, so she had had a nice chance to work at them, without as ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... this sentence the contrary is immediately demonstrated by the appearance of a very corpulent elderly lady with three well-grown daughters, who come down looking about them most complacently, entirely regardless of the unchristian looks of the company. What a mercy it is that fat people are ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... and lean, walked complacently and condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills, and Bonaparte, his ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... complacently, "I can rise to a terrifying ferocity when aroused. A noble strain of fighting blood courses through my veins. Not that I go out of my way to seek quarrels, you understand. On the contrary. 'Peaceful' could well describe my general attitude. Meditative. I am usually to be found ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd

... is, and very decent, too, being decorously clad in a brown suit turned up with red, and cut in the fashion of the time of Maximilian I., or thereabouts. A perpetual smile mantles over his broad face, and complacently he pats his huge rotundity of stomach as he rolls from side to side on the barrel astride which he is seated. Is he drunk, or does he only feign? If it be a piece of acting it is decidedly the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... P.M. he had reached the right and rear of the Union line; while Hooker complacently viewed the situation from his comfortable headquarters at the Chancellor house, apparently in a semi-torpid state, retaining just enough activity to initiate manoeuvres, which, under the circumstances, were the most ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... them. But Dr. Walsingham, who was an absent man, and floated upon the ocean of his learning serenely and lazily, drawn finely and whimsically, now hither, now thither, by the finest hair of association, glided complacently off into the dim region of visionary prognostics and warnings, and reminded him how Joseph dreamed, and Pharaoh, and Benvenuto, Cellini's father, and St. Dominick's mother, and Edward II. of England, and dodged back and forward among patriarchs and pagans, and modern Christians, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... The province had so prospered under his sway, and was so flattered by the greatness of the sovereign, who was born in the town he so severely punished, that his acts of despotic harshness were borne without a murmur. But in the north the people did not view his measures so complacently; and a wide separation in interests and opinions became manifest in the different divisions of ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... hand in his pocket, chewing his quid, and complacently viewing the operations of the boy, who was not a little surprised to understand how he ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis

... house on the right, and a weeping family gathered in front of it. The mortgage was depicted as a cross between a fiend and an ogre, and held an axe uplifted in his red right hand. A figure with streaming black locks was staying the blow, and this, Rebecca explained complacently, was intended as a likeness of herself, though she was rather vague as to the method she should ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... complacently assented Lawyer Ball. "How long did you remain with Captain Thorn in London—upon that little ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly

... waking hours were made clear to me in sleep, and I frequently felt myself blindly impelled to do or to avoid doing certain things. The members of my family, who found it impossible to understand my motives of action,—because, in fact, there were no motives,—complacently solved the difficulty by calling me "queer." I presume there are few persons who are not occasionally visited by the instinct, or impulse, or faculty, or whatever it may be called, to which I refer. I possessed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... then shut it again. His red eye-cells beamed down at me complacently; his eight-foot body towered above me, shoulders flung back and feet planted apart in a very striking pose. He probably thought of himself as the heroic liberator ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf

... iron-clamped doors stand open on rusty hinges, and the court-yard has that look of placid cheerfulness which goes with the varied peaceful activities of farm labour and farm life. Chickens and ducks wander about it chattering complacently, an aged goat of a melancholy humour stands usually in one corner lost in misanthropic thought, and a great flock of extraordinarily tame pigeons flutters back and forth between the stone dove-cote rising in a square tower above the farm-house ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... popular voice amongst the most cultivated and accomplished women of the day, is fixed by some verses printed in the "Morning Herald" of March 12th, 1782, which attracted much attention. They were commonly attributed to Mr. (afterwards Sir W.W.) Pepys, and Madame d'Arblay, who alludes to them complacently, thought them his; but he subsequently repudiated the authorship, and the editor of her Memoirs believes that they were written by Dr. Burney. They were provoked by the proneness of the Herald to indulge in complimentary allusions to ladies ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... to show the world "the order of [their] understanding." What was grammar fifty years ago, some of these have not thought it worth their while to inquire! And the reader has seen, that, after all this, they can complacently talk of "the censure so frequently and so justly awarded to unfortunate innovators."—KIRKHAM'S Gram., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... proposition would be accepted. It was only a feeler, and he had noticed a wince of regret in his landlord. He sat down on the porch and lit a strong cigar. His wife did not bother him. She gazed complacently at the flaming foliage opposite, and allowed him to think. Getting impossible things was his business in life, and she had confidence ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... confessed, is sad stuff even for a laureate of twenty, and is jesting with difficulty. Every man, says Johnson, has at one time or other of his life an ambition to set up for a wag, but that a man who had completed the Life of Johnson should in after years complacently refer to this character of himself and 'traits in it which time has not yet altered, that egotism and self-applause which he is still displaying, yet it would seem with a conscious smile,' is scarcely credible were it ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask

... the nerves and brain are excitable from over tension and exertion, and anxiety and constant worry and wear, little matters are magnified. But already I feel myself so much stronger in nerve and courage that I look now complacently upon much which in the last two years would have cut me ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... castle of dry-goods, whose battlements of flannel and linen cambric frowningly encircled her, was Malinda Jane. Before it, like an investing army, with colors flying, and a face radiant with defiant triumph, was Mrs. Mountchessington Lawk. She had complacently opened the siege with the mixture of a hot gin-toddy. My appearance upon this warlike scene was the signal for a salute both loud and watery (in short, tearful), entered into with a mutual heartiness by besieger ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... a very fine picture; perhaps the nose is a little large, and the mouth, too. But it's quite a pleasant picture," said Samuel Quirk complacently. ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... pleasure," she said, complacently, "to be wife and mother to two such fine specimens of humanity! She grows more and more like you ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... can't stand," she said to me in Tiny's presence, "it's a shabby rich woman." Tiny smiled grimly and assured me that Lena would never be either shabby or rich. "And I don't want to be," the other agreed complacently. ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... back complacently, and Miss Alan began as follows: "It was a novel—and I am afraid, from what I can gather, not a very nice novel. It is so sad when people who have abilities misuse them, and I must say they nearly always do. Anyhow, she left it almost ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... complacently at the handsome furniture which surrounded him, the choice engravings which hung on the walls, and the full-length mirror in which his figure was reflected. "Ten years from now Frank Frost will be only a common laborer on his father's farm—that is," he ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... in your failure," Lady Caroom said, complacently. "Three seasons, Arranmore, have I had to drag that girl round. I've washed my hands of her now. She must look after herself. A girl who refuses one of the richest young men in England because she didn't ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... nodded complacently. "I've sort of got a feelin' that way, an' if I ain't mistaken, them's his pony's hoofs comin' now—someway they sound different from what yours ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... and enables the fribbler or dolt who can not see beyond his nose to give an offhand summary of the infinite. There is 'an aping of the devil' in this flippant assumption of our immutability, which strangely combines the pitiful and painful. Oh! if the ne plus ultra which antique Ignorance complacently inscribes on the gates of its world should ever be worn away, let it be replaced by this owlish credo in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... in with her bucket and kneeler. "Those steps do pay for a bit of extra doing," she remarked, complacently. "Since I've been able to give more time to them, they've improved ever so. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... The next minute saw Dr. Mossy departing hurriedly from the place, while the editor complacently resumed his pen, assured that he would ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... day I got me a ranch mineself alreatty," remarked Hans Mueller. "Den I could raise all mine own meats for mine delicatessen stores, not so?" and he smiled complacently. ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... whiskers being concluded, he was arranging his toilet before the glass in an agreeable attitude: his neck out, his enormous pin settled in his stock to his satisfaction, his eyes complacently directed towards the reflection of his left and favourite whisker. Eglantine was laid on a settee, in an easy, though melancholy posture; he was twiddling the tongs with which he had just operated on Walker with one hand, and his right-hand ringlet with the other, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... eyes so very particularly open, that it seemed as if, in her case, Macbeth or some other wonder-worker had effectually "murdered sleep". By slow degrees, however, her eyelids began to close; she grew less and less "wide awake," and ere long was fast as a church; her next move was to nod complacently to the company in general, as if to demand their attention; she then oscillated gently to and fro for a few seconds to get up the steam, and concluded the performance by suddenly flinging her head back, with an insane jerk, over the rail of the chair, at the imminent risk ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... "I am mistaken if Mazarin is not laying a snare for this amorous boy. Mazarin, this evening, gave an address, and made an appointment as complacently as M. Dangeau himself could have done—I heard him, and I know the meaning of his words. 'To-morrow morning,' said he, 'they will pass opposite the bridge of Blois. Mordioux! that is clear enough, and particularly for a lover. That is the cause of this ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... old man ejaculated, as he closed the door and stood for a moment contemplating the scene before him. James smiled complacently at the look of mingled surprise and admiration his father so plainly showed, as his eye roved from the new pieces of gaudy furniture to the box of cigars upon the table, particularly noting the attitude which the son assumed as the nearest he could imagine to ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... responded, complacently. "Which reminds me. I've got a noospaper, an' only four weeks' old, the ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You wondered how he had time to manage so many ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... you've told a fib, which only makes things worse." He smiled complacently at having beaten her in argument, and Myra thought she had never met such an ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... title complacently. She was quite contented to be called almost anything, so long as she was permitted to stay with her new friend. Already the bos'n had taken charge of the deck and the rest of the ship's company; Captain Cy and "Lonesome," the cat, obeyed ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... exclaimed, "we are close to that place where they make the cups and saucers. Herr von Walden said we weren't to forget to go there—and you all would have forgotten, you see, if it hadn't been for me," he added complacently. ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth

... shoes had the flattened and battered condition which is the natural consequence of a long and weary tramp. He walked as if he had no particular objective point, and looked like one of those peripatetic gentry who toil not neither do they spin, the genus "tramp." He complacently puffed a short clay nose-warmer, with his hands in his pockets, and taking first one side and then the other of the road, as his fancy dictated, found himself near the old distillery at the outskirts of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... opportunity to visit the Court again; for the young Queen was educated at Windsor, and very rarely visited London. And Lady Marnell, tired of the hollow glitter of high life, and finding few or none in her own sphere with whom she could complacently associate, went back with fresh zest to ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... Bainton complacently; "But if one of the names of a man 'appens to be Putwood an' the man 'imself is as fat as a pig scored for roastin' 'ole, what more natrul than the pet name of 'Putty' for 'im? No 'arm meant, I'm sure, Passon!—Putty's as good ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... to sleep till half-past three in the morning once in a while," Mrs. Stilwell said complacently. "Why, Mr. Morgan, that man didn't sleep under a roof once a month the first five or six years we were on this range! He just laid out like a coyote anywhere night overtook him, watchin' them cattle like they were children. Now, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... 'always asking people to do what they can't.' But to point out, as the philosophical critic would, that poetry itself must inevitably languish if the more comprehensive kinds are neglected, or if a non-poetic age is allowed complacently to call itself lyrical, is not to urge the real masters in the less comprehensive kinds to desert their work. Who but a fool would ask Mr De la Mare to write an epic or Miss Mansfield to give us a novel? But he might be a wise ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... Flavia," he said complacently. "The gods will, when the time comes, speak through my mouth and make known their will through my dictates even as they have done hitherto—even as they do at this moment when I tell thee that I ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... period, fifteenth of September; for it is found that the earlier the seed is sown, the stronger is the plant by the critical time of its existence, and the better able to withstand frost and rust. Complacently he looked over the broad brown space, variegated with charred stumps, which occupied fully a twelfth of the cleared land; and stimulated by the pleasures of hope, he calculated on thirty-five bushels an acre next summer as the probable yield. Davidson had raised forty per acre ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... prodigious lie!" cried Colonel Belford, in a fury. "Sir, can you sit so complacently and be made a fool of by so extravagant ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... observed Tommy complacently. "There's nothing so good as a little excitement to stop ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges

... the latter, complacently, "if it interests you at all I can tell you that whales, wounded in Davis Strait, have been found afterwards on the coast of Tartary, still carrying a European harpoon in ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... these parts, friend?" observed Hubbard, complacently, for by this time his "whittling-piece" was reduced to a shape, and he could go on reducing it, according to some law of the art of whittling, with which I am not acquainted. "We are not so particular in such matters as in some of your countries ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... whether that vessel could call for the prisoners. As General Otis did not reply within the prescribed period General Jaramillo went to see him personally and ineffectually opened his heart to him in very energetic terms, which General Otis complacently tolerated but persisted in his negative resolution, and the interview ended with the suggestion that General Jaramillo should obtain Aguinaldo's consent for a vessel carrying the American flag to enter the ports and bring ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... Widow Keswick gazed cheerfully at the blue sky above her, and the pleasant autumn scenery around her; sniffed the fine fresh air, delicately scented with the odor of falling leaves; and settling herself into a more comfortable position on her seat, she complacently said to herself: "Well, I reckon the old scapegrace has got his ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton

... village,' replied Mrs. Gould, rubbing her shins complacently; 'that's what I used to hear of in my day, and I believe the custom ...
— Muslin • George Moore



Words linked to "Complacently" :   complacent



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