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More "Complacency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... short time afterwards, Phrynichus made this event the subject of a tragedy which he exhibited on the stage at Athens; and after he had been for a short time listened to with complacency, when amid all its fine language the tragedy became more and more distressing, it was condemned by the indignation of the people, who thought that it was insulting to produce this as the subject of a dramatic poem, and that it had been prompted not by a wish to console, ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... With his customary self-complacency and patronising air James told the assembled Commons that he had brought them two gifts, the one peace abroad,(26) and the other the union of England with Scotland under the title of Great Britain,(27) and he expressed no little surprise and indignation when he found that neither one ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... scrupulous friend Nightingale, requires to be cast in a different mould. His whole character should have been strung to a higher pitch to make us feel that such degradation would not merely have required punishment to restore his self-complacency, but have left a craving for some ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his announcement on ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... considered when the impression of novelty has worn off. I think we may safely appeal to all critics who occupy themselves much with conjectural criticism, and ask them if TIME does not frequently impair the complacency with which they regard their efforts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... were glad of it. Their mother was one of those shrunken, faded patterns of woman who have never done anything to keep smooth the cheek and dignify the brow. The father had a Scotch look of shrewd narrowness, and entire self-complacency. I could not endure this family, whose existence contradicted all my visions; yet I could not forbear ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was merely the laughter of a man who enjoyed saying what he meant—an occupation which is indeed one of the greatest larks in life. Moreover, it can honestly be said that Shaw did good by shaking the mere idolatry of Him of Avon. That idolatry was bad for England; it buttressed our perilous self-complacency by making us think that we alone had, not merely a great poet, but the one poet above criticism. It was bad for literature; it made a minute model out of work that was really a hasty and faulty masterpiece. And it was bad for religion and morals that there should be so huge a terrestrial ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... sat down, inhaling them and looking at them; and a dreamy, tender complacency crept over his heart, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... of the most patriotic and generous feeling. Numerous instances are also related of his kindness to individuals, and of his private benefactions. The children of his tenants, and neighbours were objects of his generosity and complacency. And those who are unjustly oppressed or defrauded, were sure to find in him, an able advocate. The widow of an American officer, of French parentage, who was left destitute at the death of her gallant husband, had a claim for patrimonial estates in France. ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... take it for granted (1) that it was worth doing, and (2) that whatever be worth doing is worth doing well, then Mr. Leonard has reason for his complacency. "It was never my intention," he says, "to gather together a complete collection of even British poems about dogs."—When will that come, I wonder?—"I have sought to secure a representative rather than an exhaustive anthology." His selections from a mass of poetry ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... suspends the exercise of the senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness; it has its follies and its wisdom; and the most perverse thing of all is that it fills its votaries with a complacency more full and complete even than that which reason ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... talked like this, until to-day. Oh, he's told me a little, from time to time. But to- day, to-day, he just poured out his heart to me—ME!—and there are so many who need just that message to stir them from their smug complacency—men who could fight, and win: men who WOULD fight, and win, if only they could see and hear and know, as I saw and heard and knew this afternoon. And there it was, wasted, WASTED, ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... fishing-rod and travelling-trunk, with a letter to Meg, dated a week previously, desiring her to prepare to receive an old acquaintance. This annunciation, though something of the latest, Meg received with great complacency, observing it was a civil attention in Maister Tirl; and that John Hislop, though he was not just sae fast, was far surer than ony post of them a', or express either. She also observed with satisfaction, that ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... literary fashion. I should welcome a good assault upon Shakespeare which was not prompted by a love of singularity; and there are half-a-dozen popular idols—I have not the courage to name them—a genuine attack upon whom I could witness with entire equanimity, not to say some complacency. If Johnson's blunder in this case implied sheer stupidity, one can only say that honest stupidity is a much better thing than clever insincerity or fluent repetition of second-hand dogmas. But, in fact, this dislike of 'Lycidas,' and a good many ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... The complacency with which we are able to state without fear of contradiction that the body of intelligent and thoughtful women do want suffrage must not obscure our perception of the equal truth of what we have just stated above. To accept this verity and turn our energies ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... fantastical disposition. I myself remember a young lady that was very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals, who, for several months together, did all they could to recommend themselves, by complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of conversation. At length, when the competition was doubtful, and the lady undetermined in her choice, one of the young lovers very luckily bethought himself of adding a supernumerary lace to his liveries, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... an air of virtuous complacency, "I believe you are right. I can't deny it, though it may help your side ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... his time that Philistinism met its match in Oscar Wilde, and for the first time in its history felt its self-complacency shaken. Up to that time it had been very proud of itself. With the loss of that pride it blundered, and it remained for du Maurier to show that the height of Philistinism in a Philistine is to pretend not to ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... "Sunday" was the last straw for Jones, sweeping away breakfast, bank and everything; coming on top of the events of the last twenty-four hours, it brought his mental complacency to ruin, ruin from which shot blazing ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... disgraced their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the Janissaries who mount guard at their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to them when in need of such solace as only money can bring. The time arrived when I applied in vain; the money had disappeared. Though I had no reason to suspect COX AND CO. of being dishonest I noticed a tone of assuredness and self-complacency in their letters strangely similar to that in my own, and I knew that I was being dishonest, so I demanded to see my pass-book. It was a horrid sight, and it gave me seriously to think. How came it that the side of the book ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... top with a flourish. Under it was a single griddle. Mlle. Fouchette regarded the domestic machine with great complacency, her blonde head prettily cocked on ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... you may be, during this period clear and calm reflection has been vouchsafed you as never before. What really plunged us into confusion regarding our position, into thoughtlessness, into a blind way of letting things go, was our sweet complacency with ourselves and our mode of existence. Things had thus gone on hitherto, and so they continued and would continue to go. If any one challenged us to reflect, we triumphantly showed him, instead of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... have to play now that I'm here," he said, with the most exasperating complacency. "My daughter plays some, and she is as crazy about it as the rest of them. I don't see where the fascination comes in. I called the other day on a man who was once in the Cabinet. He is rich and famous, and can have anything or do anything he likes, but he spends most of his time playing ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... of others as new and wondrous discoveries of his own genius and profound meditation; and all with such a simplicity and complacency of self-satisfied conviction, that you never dream or impugning the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... need it as a corrective of the tendency to seek the good of life in what is external, as a means of helping us to overcome our vulgar self-complacency, our satisfaction with low aims and cheap accomplishments, our belief in the sovereign potency of machines and measures. We need it to make our lives less unlovely, less hard, less material; to help us to understand the idolatry of the worship of steam and electricity, the utter insufficiency ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... and injustice. This Mr. B. seems, from the beginning, to have considered his countrymen as a set of cheating, lying, swindling rascals; and a mutual contempt has existed between them. We wish all our officers and agents would bear in mind this fact, that complacency begets complacency; ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... guard against complacency. We must not underrate the enemy. He is powerful and cunning—and cruel and ruthless. He will stop at nothing that gives him a chance to kill and to destroy. He has trained his people to believe that their highest perfection is achieved by waging war. For ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... artless self-complacency in his own success, Trollope took a very modest estimate of his own powers. I remember a characteristic discussion about their modes of writing between Trollope and George Eliot at a little dinner party in her house.[1] "Why!" said Anthony, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... our hero passed as Burton and on the ball-field as Chris, and since his existence alternated 'twixt these two worlds, he was Christopher Mark Antony Burton only at breakfast and at bed-time—intervals so brief that they were endured with cheerfulness and complacency. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the huckster's, he found him in the backroom, or parlor, to which we have before alluded. The old man's manner was, he thought, considerably changed for the better. He received him with more complacency, and seemed as if he felt something like regret for the harshness of his manner toward him during ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... which are the subjects of religious controversy. The reader who is sensitive about having his fixed beliefs dealt with as if they were open to question had better skip the pages which look as if they would disturb his complacency. "Faith" is the most precious of possessions, and it dislikes being meddled with. It means, of course, self-trust,—that is, a belief in the value of our, own opinion of a doctrine, of a church, of a religion, of a Being, a belief quite independent of any evidence that we ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Miss Galindo's misdemeanour in having taken Miss Bessy to live with her, faded into a mistake, a mere error of judgment, in comparison with Captain James's intimacy at Yeast House, as the Brookes called their ugly square-built farm. My lady talked herself quite into complacency with Miss Galindo, and even Miss Bessy was named by her, the first time I had ever been aware that my lady recognized her existence; but—I recollect it was a long rainy afternoon, and I sat with her ladyship, and we had time and opportunity for a ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that your lordship's countenance (I am a very free speaker) has that benignity in it, that complacency, which I have had the pleasure to see ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... question, this lesser accusation might suffice. But there are the Lost Illusions, the Bachelor's Household, and Cousin Bette, not to mention other novels, in which the scenes of vice are dwelt upon with visible complacency and a glamour is created and thrown over them by the writer's imagination, in such a way that the effect is nauseous in proportion as it is pleasurable. The artistic representation of vice and crime is justifiable only in so far as the mind contemplating ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... found you out? In this temptation to mutual indulgence lies the particular peril to morality in married life. Daily they drop a little lower from the first ideal, and for a while continue to accept these changelings with a gross complacency. At last Love wakes and looks about him; finds his hero sunk into a stout old brute, intent on brandy pawnee; finds his heroine divested of her angel brightness; and in the flash of that first disenchantment, flees ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... When I saw them, I tried for my life not to laugh, and biting my lips very hard, quite succeeded, until the cock opened up a pair of sleepy eyes, covered with comb and very sad inversions, and glancing with complacency at his wife (who stood beneath him, even more turned inside out), capered with his twiggy legs, and gave a long, sad crow. Mrs. Hockin looked ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... had given indications of resistance, they would have been obliged to submit to prompt repression, but we see no sign of this. The bulk of the people—clerical as well as lay—accepted the deposition with complacency, and the nobles hastened to offer their adherence to that which afterwards became the official confession of faith of the Lord King.* The lord of Thebes itself, a certain Ramses, bowed his head to the new cult, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... would find herself on intimate terms at Court before the fortnight was concluded; and oh! the joy of returning home and speaking in casual tones about Princes of the Blood, Dukes and Marquises, and Cabinet Ministers, for, the edification of village hearers! Her complacency vented itself in a long postscript to the letter already written to her mother, a postscript of such characteristic nature as delighted that appreciative lady, and which was read aloud with much unction to her husband, and a friend of the family who ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... mighty Empire. Curious are the lives these men, and many like them, lead, cut off as it were from the bustling, throbbing world. A handful of white men, surrounded by thousands of blacks, with calm complacency they proceed, first to impress on the natives the importance, the might, and the justice, of the great Empire which they represent in their various capacities; then to establish beyond question their own dignity and wisdom; and finally to make themselves ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... rigorous manner of speaking; I have sought your favour by all possible means.' 'True it is, madam,' he answered, 'your Grace and I have been at divers controversies, in the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me.' Knox's complacency is sometimes thick-skinned: but he was not wrong in thinking that Mary, a woman with immensely more brains than the generality of her posthumous admirers, had from the first understood and, perhaps, half liked her uncompromising adversary, and ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... recompensed by the enthusiasm of fraternal love with which his Ally, the oppressed people whom he was going to aid in rescuing themselves, would receive him; and that this, and the virtues which he would witness in them, would furnish his heart with never-failing and far nobler objects of complacency and admiration. The discipline of the army was well known; and as a machine, or a vital organized body, the Nation was assured that it could not but be formidable; but thus to the standing excellence of mechanic or organic power seemed to be superadded, at this time, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... hard eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go its own way, but he wasted a ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... a case like this. Indeed, I am not sure you ought not to go further and weigh the whole character and quality and upbringing of the man. You must admit that the monumental complacency with which he trotted out his ingenious little Constitution for India showed a strange want of imagination and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... in these days, had recovered her complacency. The letter she wrote from Symon's Yat had reached Vanrenen from Paris, and its hearty disapproval of Fitzroy helped to re-establish his good opinion of her. She heard constantly, too, from Marigny ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... knows of. Now he is chiefly known as poet; but when I went to New York-people thought most about him as editor of the "Evening Post," and that with little enough complacency in the circles where I moved. How many a fight I had for him with my Whig friends! For he was my parishioner, and it was known that we were much together. The "Evening Post" was a thorn in their sides, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... weeks the time of departure was kept a few days ahead and regularly postponed. First, happened the failure of a contractor; next, the non-arrival of a ship; next, the purchase of supplies; and so on through a long list of hindrances. In the beginning I was vexed, but soon learned complacency and gave myself no uneasiness. Patience is an admirable quality in mankind, and can be very well practiced when, one is waiting for a ship ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the whole British Fair to have outshone my southern Gawry: For if, to a majestic Form and extensive Capacity, I had been qualified to have copied that natural Sweetness of Disposition, that maternal Tenderness, that Cheerfulness, that Complacency, Condescension, Affability, and unaffected Benevolence, which so apparently distinguish the Countess of Northumberland; I had exhibited in my Youwarkee a Standard ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... was simple enough now. All his fractiousness, restlessness, and innumerable wants were easy to put up with; she loved the child. And he, who (except from his father) had never known any love before, took it with a wondering complacency, half funny, half pathetic. Sometimes he would say, looking at her wistfully, "Oh, it's so nice to be ill!" And once, the first time she untied his right arm, and allowed it to move freely, he slipped it around her neck, whispering, "You are very good to me, mother." ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... employ the powers of luminous reason in contemplating eternal nothing with sweet complacency. This is "exactly" as it should be! Varying from this the proposition would need to be "pruned!" Dear brother, does reason countenance all this absurdity? If it be a pleasure to contemplate non-existence does it not involve ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... on his shoulder, and the town militias were transformed into bands which fought all over Europe without knowing why. The flourishing towns became villages; churches were turned into convents; the popular and tolerant clergy were changed into friars who imitated with servile complacency the German fanaticism. The fields remained barren for want of hands to cultivate them, the poor dreamt of becoming rich from the sack of the enemy's towns and left their work; the industrious burghers abandoned commerce as only fit ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to take money won at any game; but possibly their depravity in this matter rather comforted us than offended. At any rate, I am sure of the superiority of our own morals in visiting Monte Carlo after we left Genoa. If we did not look forward with our Englishman's complacency to the nice little church there, we certainly did not mean to risk our money at the tables of Roulette, nor yet at the tables of Trente et Quarante, in the Casino. What we really wished to do was to look on in the spiritual security of ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... witness their repeated failure—herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure—to witness this, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... General felt the tremendous fatigues of the day; there was a wild, swimming, whirling sensation in his head that forced him to let his eyelids sink down; yet, just there, in the midst of his painful bewilderment, he realized with ecstatic complacency that the most martial-looking man in Louisiana was standing in his spurs with the hand of Louisiana's queenliest woman laid tenderly on ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... hideous images followed me without intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... I have come to Nannie to be soothed. All the way upstairs I have been saying to myself, "Fret not thyself, because of him who prospereth in his way." But it is hard to see his self-complacency.' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... The general complacency with the progress in knowledge we have made and are making is ridiculously unjustifiable. Enormous things were no doubt done in the nineteenth century in many fields of knowledge, but all that was done was out of all proportion petty in comparison with what ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... like a well-balanced kite; it has for its tail a whimsy. Haggerty, on a certain day, received twenty-five hundred dollars from the Hindu prince and five hundred more from the hotel management. The detective bore up under the strain with stoic complacency. "The Blind Madonna of the Pagan—Chance" always had her ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... how to speak of this exercise of the mind. It is better felt than described. It is a calm and holy reconciliation with God and his government; a settled feeling of complacency towards everything but sin. It begets a serene and peaceful temper and disposition of the heart. But this gracious work of the Holy Spirit does not stop with these exercises of the mind. However we may seem to feel, in our moments of retirement ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... is it that fat, plethoric, meat-eating children, their faces looking as though the blood was just ready to ooze out, are with the greatest complacency exhibited by their parents as patterns of health! But let it ever be remembered, that the condition of the system popularly called rude or full health, and which is the result of high feeding, is too often closely bordering on a state ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... listened to these several outpourings of spirit with much complacency, "I am a man of peace and amity, according to my conscience; but if others are men of wrath and battle, according to theirs, I will not take it upon me to censure them,—nay, not even if they should feel themselves ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the part enacted here, it must have free will and a fair opportunity to work the unmarred problem safely out. Otherwise the future life is reduced, as far as it affects us here, to a mere source of complacency or of horror as it respectively touches the elect and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... health, in her education, in her wedded life, in her children. She saw a great Empire grow through troubled times in liberty and power and greatness; yet this prosperity brought with it no shadow of complacency, because the Queen felt with an increasing depth the anxieties and responsibilities inseparable from her great position. Her happiness, instead of making her self-absorbed, only quickened her beneficence and her womanly desire that her subjects should be enabled to enjoy a similar happiness ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... consider that for generations to come there will be a haven of rest provided for so many old people past their work. The soul of King James's confectioner—good Balthazar Sanchez—must, we feel sure, still contemplate his cottages at Tottenham with complacency; one hopes His Majesty was not overcharged in the matter of pasties and comfits in order to find the endowment for those cottages. Even the dole of a few loaves every Sunday to as many aged poor has its attraction, though necessarily ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... so far as Sparta alone was concerned, the Athenian felt little repugnance to any revolution or any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the object of his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest of his native city to impair. He might have looked with complacency on the intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the Spartan government, and which threatened to shake that Doric constitution to its centre. But nothing, either in the witness of history or in the character ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... air of calm and reserved opulence about the Weightman mansion that spoke not of money squandered, but of wealth prudently applied. Standing on a corner of the Avenue no longer fashionable for residence, it looked upon the swelling tide of business with an expression of complacency and half-disdain. ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the phenomena of his own body without some regard for it; whereas the reader sees that, so far from looking upon mine with any complacency or regard, I hate it, and make it the object of my bitter ridicule and contempt; and I should not be displeased to know that the last indignities which the law inflicts upon the bodies of the worst malefactors might hereafter fall upon ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... The philosophy of complacency, at least, will be at an end, and the world will face with new earnestness the problem of life. This generation will be tired, perhaps exhausted, by the titanic struggle; but youth comes on, fresh and eager, with exhaustless vital energy, and the generations to come will take ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... had passed from his previous state of haughty complacency to one of violent haste. Already, on August 23, thus long before the sixty days had expired, he demanded the Elector to deliver up this 'child of the devil,' who boasted of his protection, to the legate, to bring away ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... it would be an affair to occupy two or three hours, and he suddenly resolved to go down the cliff and interview his mother-in-law. It would please Denasia, and he was himself in that reckless mood of self-complacency which ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... for the suffrage we shall put an end to an otherwise endless disputation. I am quite sure that as long as her votes are kept separate from the men's votes, and are not counted, no possible harm can come from a little complacency in the face of ... Personally I have no objection to divorce. If a man marries a woman under the impression that she is a good cook, and after the waning of the honeymoon finds that she does not know the difference between sponge-cake and a plain common garden sponge, why should he be forced ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... open. In the hall I had an examination to undergo; the porter, however, permitted me to be announced, and I had the honor to be called into the park, where Mr. John was walking with a select party. I recognized the man at once by the lustre of his corpulent self-complacency. He received me very well—as a rich man receives a poor devil—even turned toward me, without turning from the rest of the company, and took the offered letter from my hand. "So, so, from my brother! I have heard nothing from him for a long time. But he is well? There," continued he, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... beauty. Finding herself thus ensnared, as she was a woman of strong mind, instead of indulging in unavailing complaint, she assumed a satisfied air; and as the only way to preserve her honour, received the addresses of the treacherous master with pretended complacency, and consented to receive him as a husband at the first port at which the ship might touch. With these assurances he was contented, and behaved to her with honourable deference, and affectionate respect. At length the vessel anchored near a city, to which ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... Upon arriving, it was discovered that some of the Jersey Brigade had taken possession of our log snuggeries, and that their officers had established their heels upon the mantels in our officers' quarters, and were smoking the pipes of comfort and complacency, as though they had not a trouble in the world, and never expected to have. But they soon found that possession is not nine points of military law, by any means. An order from Division Headquarters soon sent them profanely packing,—and ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... gratification; contentment, complacency, content, comfort; reparation, indemnification, requital, reimbursement, recompense; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... cheerfully for regiments of soldiers. The pictures which we are gradually getting from memoirs and letters are almost too grotesque for belief, and there is some little excuse for the hearty optimists who look back with complacency on the past, and thank their stars that they have escaped from the domain of evil. For my own part, when I see the mode of life now generally followed by most of our European aristocracies, I am quite ready to be grateful for a beneficent change, and I have again and again made light of the wailings ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... could, Ernest. Of course I don't know very much—not judged by a standard like yours or our dear Harry's. Harry used to say all a woman could ever know was to find out how ignorant she was. Dear fellow! he was so very learned himself he couldn't understand the complacency of little perky, half-educated schoolmistresses. But still, I know quite as much, I think, in my little way, as a great many girls who get good places in London as governesses. I can speak French fairly well, you know, and read German ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... loveliness of the gem. That a Palais Royal deception! Incredible! My fingers twitched, my breath came short and fierce with the lust of possession. She must have seen the covetous glare in my eyes. A look of gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features, as she swept on ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed her to the drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring something unintelligible ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... when I knew he was pondering upon the baleful curse that had cast its withering blight upon all around, until the manhood and humanity were crushed out of the people, and outrages such as the above were looked upon with complacency, and the perpetrators treated as respected and worthy citizens,—and that he was realizing the great truth, that, however man might endeavor to guide this war to the advantage of a favorite idea or sagacious policy, the Almighty was directing it surely and steadily for the purification ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Thursday, the 15th of February, 1827, as I sat with a volume of the Tor Hill in my hand, in the back drawing-room of my lodging in Conduit-street. It was about ten o'clock in the afternoon. My dinner was just removed. It had left me with that gay complacency of disposition, and irrepressible propensity of elocution, which result from a satisfied appetite, and an undisturbed digestion. My sense of contentment became more vigorous and confirmed, as I cast my eye around my apartment, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... poured forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sacredness of years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her: she was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and complacency. The change came gradually, but ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Collet Pardue," said Mrs Tabitha, with calm complacency; "and that's a thing a woman shouldn't do who calls herself ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... a certain artifice with her eyes, and the skill of beauty, she will arm herself with her real charms, and strike you with admiration instead of desire. It is certain that if you were to behold the whole woman, there is that dignity in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear. But then again she is such a desperate scholar, that no country gentleman can approach her without being a jest. As I was going to tell you, when I came to her house I was admitted to her presence with ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... tassel, which is not without its accompanying satisfaction. One can walk the streets of any of the university towns in his academic robes without being jeered at, as I am afraid he would be in some of our own thoroughfares. There is a noticeable complacency in the members of our Phi Beta Kappa society when they get the pink and blue ribbons in their buttonholes, on the day of annual meeting. How much more when the scholar is wrapped in those flowing folds, with their ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... appropriated to the French Consul,—the representative of the King of that nation,—and the protection which it has from time immemorial accorded to the Christians of the Latin rite in Syria. All French writers and travellers speak of this protection with delightful complacency. Consult the French books of travel on the subject, and any Frenchman whom you may meet: he says, "La France, Monsieur, de tous les temps protege les Chretiens d'Orient;" and the little fellow looks round the church with a sweep of the arm, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... important subject in any other than terms of contemptuous ridicule and scornful disfavor, is likely to excite against us the fury of bigotry and the folly of prejudice. A discussion of the rights of animals would be regarded with far more complacency by many of what are called the wise and the good of our land, than would be a discussion of the rights of women. It is, in their estimation, to be guilty of evil thoughts, to think that woman is entitled to equal ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... having left in him but one residual impression. They didn't like les situations nettes—that was all he was very sure of. They wouldn't have them at any price; it had been their national genius and their national success to avoid them at every point. They called it themselves, with complacency, their wonderful spirit of compromise—the very influence of which actually so hung about him here, from moment to moment, that the earth and the air, the light and the colour, the fields and the hills and the sky, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... wherein consists the great charm of dramatic poetry. Action is the true enjoyment of life, nay, life itself. Mere passive enjoyments may lull us into a state of listless complacency, but even then, if possessed of the least internal activity, we cannot avoid being soon wearied. The great bulk of mankind merely from their situation in life, or from their incapacity for extraordinary exertions, are confined ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... a look of great complacency and some wonder, at the child; and packed forthwith into Daisy's basket the half of a cold chicken and a broken peach-pie. A bottle of milk Daisy particularly desired, and a little butter; and she set off at last, happier than ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... this went through the Lieutenant-Governor's mind during the progress of the dinner. He sat at Mrs. Rathbawne's right, than which nothing in the world could have been more cheerless, unless it was sitting at Mrs. Rathbawne's left. But the good lady's habitual complacency was plainly in abeyance, her customary volubility replaced by a fidgety reserve. The dinner, as a social achievement, was a distinct failure, save in so far as Mrs. Wynyard and Colonel Broadcastle were concerned. Several months before, Mrs. Wynyard had frankly announced that she had designs ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... should look upon the gentleman with no clothing except a scanty forelock, and with no personal property save his scythe and hour-glass, as my greatest enemy,—and I should behold the perpetual efforts made to kill him with perfect complacency. This, I know, is not regarded as a strictly moral act; for this murderer of murderers is very much caressed by those who, in the name of Moses, would send a poor devil to his hempen destiny for striking an unlucky ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Anne's plans could not be settled until Roy had spoken. He would soon—there was no doubt of that. And there was no doubt that Anne would say "yes" when he said "Will you please?" Anne herself regarded the state of affairs with a seldom-ruffled complacency. She was deeply in love with Roy. True, it was not just what she had imagined love to be. But was anything in life, Anne asked herself wearily, like one's imagination of it? It was the old diamond disillusion of childhood repeated—the same ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pause in this speech; and surveyed himself in a looking-glass with much complacency, whilst he pronounced the word fashion. He, indeed, approved so much of his wife's taste and discernment, in preferring him to Mr. Pimlico, that he could not at this moment help inclining to follow her judgment respecting ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Coropuna, nor could my companions. No sense of satisfaction in having attained a difficult objective cheered us up. We all felt greatly depressed and said little, although Gamarra asked for his bonus and regarded the gold coins with grim complacency. ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvellous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... exercising those affections of gratitude, complacency, and love toward the objects of their worship which the living God supremely requires, they regarded their deities with horrific dread, and worshipped only with ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... friendly to the political dogmas she cherished, and to the interests and projects of the Southern States. The character and principles of Mr. Adams were not adapted to become subservient to her views, and she saw with little complacency his elevation to the office of Secretary of State, which was in popular opinion a proximate step to the President's chair. Yet it could not be doubted that his appointment had the assent, if not the approbation, of Jefferson and Madison, without whose concurrence ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... arrived. Her ladyship pencilled on the back of the note, 'Pray call the dear babe Magnolia,' and forthwith forgot all about it. But Madam Macnamara was charmed, and the autograph remained afterwards for two generations among the archives of the family; and, with great smiles and much complacency, she told Lord Carrick-o'-Gunniol all about it, just outside the grand jury-room, where she met him during the assize week; and, being a man of a weak and considerate nature, rather kind, and very courteous—although his smile was very near exploding into a laugh, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "drawn") by means of a T-square and the ruling pen; and if architectural drawing has not quite kept pace with that for general illustration since, a backward glance over the professional magazines encourages a feeling of comparative complacency. That so high a standard or so artistic a character is not observable in architectural as in general illustration is, I think, not difficult to explain. Very few of the clever architectural draughtsmen are illustrators by profession. ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... no better, for all that, and was quite as ugly in the eyes of the wise woman, who could not only see but read her face. What is there to choose between a face distorted to hideousness by anger, and one distorted to silliness by self-complacency? True, there is more hope of helping the angry child out of her form of selfishness than the conceited child out of hers; but on the other hand, the conceited child was not so terrible or dangerous as the wrathful one. The conceited one, however, was sometimes very angry, and then her ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... of religion to-day is that men and women are going to the churches, singing themselves into ecstatic complacency and imaginary harmony with their God while their greed is crushing the hearts of the helpless and they are blinding themselves to the world's gloom and pain that unhindered they ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... bitterly contrasting his lost secretary's performances, in every particular, with those of his daughter. The child had disappeared, and a message from the station was all that remained of her. Well, who could wonder? Mrs. Gaddesden reflected, with some complacency, that even she had spoken her mind to her father that night, conveniently forgetting some annoying retorts of his about herself, and the custom she had developed of sitting for hours over the fire pretending to knit, but really doing nothing. After her enormous ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and hate the sex because, I suspect, you know very little about them," Mr. Pen continued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. "If you dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the London women ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of London life is enormous: how do people last at it, I wonder—male and female? ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ran, I then knew nothing, and of course they gave me no concern. Like all inexperienced persons, I supposed myself too strong in virtue to be in any danger of contamination; and this portion of the adventure was regarded with the self-complacency with which the untried are apt to regard their own powers of endurance. I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... to enlarge the orbit, and will in reality do so; in other parts the effect will be the reverse of this. In a word, by the introduction of a third attractive body, the greatest complication will succeed to a simple regular movement upon which the mind reposed with complacency. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... over him. He fumbled nervously as he dressed himself, in a state almost of childishness. He disliked the Scotch accent in Bertie's speech, and the slight response it found on Isabel's tongue. He disliked the slight purr of complacency in the Scottish speech. He disliked intensely the glib way in which Isabel spoke of their happiness and nearness. It made him recoil. He was fretful and beside himself like a child, he had almost a childish nostalgia to be included in the life circle. And at the same time he was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... to do when we look with indifference or complacency upon the present phase of unrestricted competition in industrial work amongst women. So long as we refuse to insist, as a nation, that along with the growth of national wealth there shall be secured those ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... we consider ourselves young ladies at that age," continued Fanny, surveying, with complacency, the pile of hair on the top of her head, with a fringe of fuzz round her forehead, and a wavy lock streaming down her back; likewise, her scarlet-and-black suit, with its big sash, little pannier, bright buttons, points, rosettes, and, heaven knows what. There was a ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... never cease, to be sure; but they are not to be had wholesale, or to order. Mr. Owen, who is another of these proprietors and patentees of reform, has lately got an American savage with him, whom he carries about in great triumph and complacency, as an antithesis to his New View of Society, and as winding up his reasoning to what it mainly wanted, an epigrammatic point. Does the benevolent visionary of the Lanark cotton-mills really think this natural man ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... on much as before. An abiding faith in the Allies was the foundation stone of its complacency. The great six-months battle of the Somme, with its million casualties, was resulting favorably. On the east the Russians had made some gains. There were wagers that the Germans would be done ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little eyes in a smile, bending his head with a peculiar mixture of modesty, complacency, and confusion, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... on intimate terms at Court before the fortnight was concluded; and oh! the joy of returning home and speaking in casual tones about Princes of the Blood, Dukes and Marquises, and Cabinet Ministers, for, the edification of village hearers! Her complacency vented itself in a long postscript to the letter already written to her mother, a postscript of such characteristic nature as delighted that appreciative lady, and which was read aloud with much unction to her husband, and a friend of the family who happened to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... about Mary's charms Schneider listened with much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite terrible. O fool that I was to trust ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... antiquity that give such a vivid impression of the character of the author and of the life of the society in which he moved. The style, it is true, is often bombastic and affected, many of the arguments are almost more puerile and absurd than the accusations, while the intense conceit and complacency of the author often make him ridiculous. A man of wide and varied knowledge, he has no depth of intellect. He is always half charlatan, and the reader is rarely free from the impression that he is taking liberties with the uncertain taste and ignorance of ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... of the accessories, all this was strange and new to him; but Lucien had learned very quickly to take luxury for granted, and he showed no surprise. His behavior was as far removed from assurance or fatuity on the one hand as from complacency and servility upon the other. His manner was good; he found favor in the eyes of all who were not prepared to be hostile, like the younger men, who resented his sudden intrusion into the great world, and felt jealous of his good looks ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... luminosity. He gathered together his endless notes and records, and began to write his biography; but he did not hurry. Several biographies of Johnson appeared, in the four years after his death, without disturbing Boswell's perfect complacency. After seven years' labor he gave the world his Life of Johnson. It is an immortal work; praise is superfluous; it must be read to be appreciated. Like the Greek sculptors, the little slave produced a more enduring work than the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... a dream of a gruesome fight with a giant geranium. I surveyed, with drowsy satisfaction and complacency, the eccentric jogs and ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... confined to her room, and I managed to appear at church with this ridiculous head-gear. People certainly stared a little, but this my vanity easily converted into looks of admiration directed towards my new hat, and perhaps also my improved beauty—and came home more full of self-complacency than ever. ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... friendly shape appeared a man of prayer to visit the cell in which Fred was confined. Dick listened to his instructions with cool complacency, rolling his tobacco from side to side in his mouth, and meditating on him as a subject for some future histrionic ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... two miles on my beat, but you can feel quite safe: no one can get in while I am gone. There is another watchman on the road: he might come while I am away, and—and raise a row. It is best to lock you up.' He nodded his head with great complacency at his good management, and prepared to leave me. I could suggest nothing better. I was at the end of my resources, and had to accept my fate. It would be interesting to know what the Pompadour or Queen Elizabeth would have done under the circumstances, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... remarks and power of drollery and repartee were just sufficiently perceived to be dreaded and disliked. The children were like their mother, and were frightened and distressed by her quickness and unreasonable expectations. Their meek, demure heaviness and complacency, even at their sports, made her positively dislike them, all but one scapegrace boy, in favour with no one, and whom she liked more from perverseness and compassion than from any merits of his own. Lady Acton's good offices gave the widow a tangible ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of his intention, were sensible of the unequal contest and endeavored to appease him by submission. He received their ambassadors with great complacency, and having exhorted them to continue steadfast in the same sentiments, in the mean time made preparations for the execution of his design. When the troops designed for the expedition were embarked he set sail for Britain about midnight, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... opposite the gates—great iron-work affairs with ramping eagles and a Gothic lodge smothered in ivy—the man ran out and began to wheel them back, after a hasty salute to his pastor; and the Rector, turning, saw a sight that increased his complacency. It was just Jenny riding with Lord Talgarth, as he knew she ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... and Shackwell was not likely to turn up till nine o'clock. The unwonted stillness of the room, and the knowledge that he had a quiet evening before him, filled the Governor with a luxurious sense of repose. The world seemed to him a good place to be in, and his complacency was shadowed only by the fear that he had perhaps been a trifle over-harsh in refusing his wife's plea for the stenographer. There seemed, therefore, a certain fitness in the appearance of the man's card, and the Governor with a sigh gave orders ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... appreciatively. The purring of the cat had a loud complacency in the empty hall. No sound of voices came from upstairs. Miss Haldin broke ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of tears that scarce are dry, Ere their founts are filled as the cloud goes by; Weary of feelings where each in the throng Mocks at the rest as they crowd along; Where Pride over all, like a god on high, Sits enshrined in his self-complacency; Where Selfishness crawls, the snake-demon of ill, The least suspected where busiest still; Where all things evil and painful entwine, And all in their hate and their sorrow are mine: O weary Old Year, I would ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... some complacency; "my place here is worth twice that, let alone the money I've got in ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... should see them too; then we made our retreat as soon as possible. But I dared say nothing. These Dyaks had killed our enemies, and were only following their own customs by rejoicing over their dead victims. But the fact seemed to part them from us by centuries of feeling—our disgust, and their complacency. Some of them told us that afterwards, when they brought home some of the children belonging to the slain, and treated them very kindly, wishing to adopt them as their own, they were annoyed at the little ones standing looking up at their parents' heads ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... them. And therefore it needs that God should speak from Heaven, and say to us, 'Thou art the man,' or else we pass by all these grave things that I am trying to urge upon you now, and fall back upon our complacency and our levity and our unwillingness to take stock of ourselves, and front the facts of our condition. And so we build up a barrier between ourselves and God, and God's grace, which nothing short of that grace and an omnipotent ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... most truly, 'in all your rigorous manner of speaking; I have sought your favour by all possible means.' 'True it is, madam,' he answered, 'your Grace and I have been at divers controversies, in the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me.' Knox's complacency is sometimes thick-skinned: but he was not wrong in thinking that Mary, a woman with immensely more brains than the generality of her posthumous admirers, had from the first understood and, perhaps, half liked her uncompromising adversary, and that she had at least enjoyed the dialectic conflicts ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... "very, very much!" And by a simultaneous impulse Henrietta and I both clapped our hands vehemently. This restored Rupert's self-complacency, and he bowed and continued the lecture. From this we learned that the drowned man should be turned over on his face to let the canal water run out of his mouth and ears, and that his wet clothes should ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... but one solitary hen, These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a lonely orchard, where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs; while the horse would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus, by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the other: so that Milton, ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... know, and what he held as best, In practice he threw by. The very thing That happens to myself. For that hard life Which I have ever led, my race near run, Now in the last stage, I renounce: and why? But that by dear experience I've been told, There's nothing so advantages a man As mildness and complacency. Of this My brother and myself are living proofs: He always led an easy, cheerful life; Good-humor'd, mild, offending nobody, Smiling on all; a jovial bachelor, His whole expenses centred in himself. ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... often is it that fat, plethoric, meat-eating children, their faces looking as though the blood was just ready to ooze out, are with the greatest complacency exhibited by their parents as patterns of health! But let it ever be remembered, that the condition of the system popularly called rude or full health, and which is the result of high feeding, is too often closely bordering on a ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... their associates by excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from looking with complacency on the character of the honest old Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... appear to have taken a pride in the ingenuity with which they varied these means of torture, and dwell with complacency on the recital of their cruelties. "I constructed a pillar at the gate of the city," is the boast of one of them; "I then flayed the chief men, and covered the post with their skins; I suspended their dead bodies ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... London. He would then return to his home in Suffolk, and then go to Cambridge, remaining at each place as long as he felt disposed to do so, and going and returning with the most perfect indifference and complacency. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... Lady Willow found, to the no small comforting of her dignity, that, although she came to the hotel in the attitude of one who, if it may be so expressed, sought a favour, the impetuous eagerness of the younger woman had so changed the situation that the elder lady now left with the gratifying self complacency of a generous person who has conferred a boon. Nor was her condescension without its reward, both material and intellectual, for not only did Jennie pay her way with some lavishness, but her immediate social success was flattering to Lady ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... flushed with beer and self-complacency; for he thought he had drawn the line precisely; had faithfully discharged his promise to his lady and benefactress, but not so as to make mischief in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... parlors and flowed over into the yard in front, where the men stood with heads uncovered,) "we are too apt to measure a man's position in the eye of God, and to assign him his rank in the future, by his conformity to the external observances of religion,—not remembering, in our complacency, that we see differently from those who look on from beyond the world, and that there are mysterious and secret relations of God with the conscience of every man, which we cannot measure or adjust. Let us hope that our deceased friend profited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... never seemed to hanker much after his English relatives as long as I knew him, but now that I and Sadie are over here, why we guessed we might look 'em up and sort of sample 'em! 'Desborough' 's rather a good name," added the lady, with a complacency that, however, had a suggestion of ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... base are thy calculations, how sordid thy conclusions! The young, the fair, the helpless, the innocent may perish, it matters not. Loss of relatives, of children, of country, of character, all may be borne with complacency ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... I dare say that your home is not objectionable, taken by itself. But I am not blind to the seductions of the great city. You too forget," she added, with a touch of complacency, "that I am not inexperienced or without knowledge of the profligacy ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... poverty; it compels reason, in spite of herself, to believe, to doubt, to deny; it suspends the exercise of the senses, and imparts to them again an artificial acuteness; it has its follies and its wisdom; and the most perverse thing of all is that it fills its votaries with a complacency more full and complete even than ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... Fairservice fails always, and totally; but that of Moniplies precisely according to the degree of its selfishness: wholly, in the affair of the petition—("I am sure I had a' the right and a' the risk," i. 73)—partially, in that of the carcanet. This he himself at last recognizes with complacency:— ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... look of amazement, and, when the chance came, she whispered to him, "It's awful of me, I know!" at which he only smiled awkwardly. Yourii was really pleased that the matter should have ended happily like this, while yet affecting to despise such an attitude of bourgeois complacency and toleration. He withdrew to his room, remaining there alone until the evening, and as, before sunset, the sky grew clear, he took his gun, intending to shoot in the same place where he and Riasantzeff ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... evidently in that stage. His own figure was the primary object before his eyes, neither indulged, nor admired, but criticised, repressed, and by his very best efforts thrust aside, whenever he was conscious that his self-contemplation was self- complacency. Still it was in his nature to behold it, and discuss it, and thus to conquer and outgrow the study in time, while leaving many observations upon self-culture and self-training, that will no doubt become deeply valued ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Mr. Burne Jones occupied a studio together, they had a young servant maid whose manners were perennially vivacious, whose good spirits no disaster could damp, and whose pertness nothing could banish or check. Rossetti conceived the idea of frightening the girl out of her complacency, and calling one day on his friends, he affected the direst madness, strutted ominously up to her and with the wildest glare of his wild eyes, the firmest and fiercest setting of his lower lip, and began in measured and resonant accents to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... eyes of Dinsmore took in the smug complacency of the handsome young cad. He knew that this particular brand of fool would go its own way, but he wasted ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... nations reaching their zenith, regard with more complacency their rising morn, than the approaching west. France, notwithstanding the precision given to her language by Richilieu, and the Academy, turns back affectionately to her Troubadours and Trouvires, to the long-drawn, scarce-readable "Romance of the Rose," ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... after Jerrold's own heart, and, thinking less of charity this time than of justice, he smote the luckless editor of the "Art Journal" hip and thigh, and revelled in his attacks. Hall's articles on the industrial art of England were supposed to be dictated more by the complacency and generosity of manufacturers than by the artistic excellence of their wares. Sometimes Jerrold would use the image of "Pecksniff" for other and more serious purposes than the baiting of Mr. Hall and his little ways, as when, in 1844, he made this biting ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... fought all over Europe without knowing why. The flourishing towns became villages; churches were turned into convents; the popular and tolerant clergy were changed into friars who imitated with servile complacency the German fanaticism. The fields remained barren for want of hands to cultivate them, the poor dreamt of becoming rich from the sack of the enemy's towns and left their work; the industrious burghers abandoned commerce as only fit for heretics, and became nurseries ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was no other common tie strong enough at that moment to hold together a Union, the possible dissolution of which was, both at the North and at the South, considered with calmness, sometimes with complacency, and, when party passion was at a red heat, even as a thing to be prayed for. At any rate, the President consented to take the advice of the counselors whom he had consulted; but in asking that advice he unwittingly aggravated ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... "Friend" contemplated the destructive zeal of his young helper with the complacency so characteristic of his class, standing by his doctrine that every one should follow "his own light." But it was not long before Garrison made a bold attack upon one of the vilest features of the slave-trade, which put an end to his paper, and resulted in his ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... of the farm; but this man, so proud of his nobility and the colour of his skin, had not taken the trouble of constructing even an ajoupa, or hut of palm-leaves. He invited us to have our hammocks hung near his own, between two trees; and he assured us, with an air of complacency, that, if we came up the river in the rainy season, we should find him beneath a roof (baxo techo). We soon had reason to complain of a system of philosophy which is indulgent to indolence, and renders a man indifferent to the conveniences of life. A furious wind arose after midnight, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... on Mr. Dodge, who turned over to one of his most elaborate strictures on the state of society in France, with all the self-complacency of besotted ignorance and provincial superciliousness. Searching out a place to his mind, this profound observer of men and manners, who had studied a foreign people, whose language when spoken was gibberish to him, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... colonies. The Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency. Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her American colonial empire was lost; Catherine's brilliant policy, and the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening what remained of French influence in that quarter. Here was a propitious moment to emulate ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Consideration it is that I have concealed the ardent Love I have for her; but I am beholden to the Force of my Love for many Advantages which I reaped from it towards the better Conduct of my Life. A certain Complacency to all the World, a strong Desire to oblige where-ever it lay in my Power, and a circumspect Behaviour in all my Words and Actions, have rendered me more particularly acceptable to all my Friends and Acquaintance. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... light heart upon a task she soon found heavy. For the mistress of Holly Hall had no sense of imperfections. She was a tall and still good-looking person, and this added to her fatal complacency. Eileen saw that she imagined God made the woman and money the lady, and that between a female in a Paris bonnet and a female in a head-shawl there was a natural gap as between a crested cockatoo and a hedge-sparrow. Mrs. Maper indeed suffered badly from swelled ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... these faces as a whole was toward goodness, candor, and imperturbable self-complacency rather than learning or mental astuteness; and curiously enough it wore its pleasantest aspect on the countenances of the older men. The impress of zeal and moral worth seemed to diminish by regular gradations as one passed to younger faces; and among the very beginners, who had ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to work to pull down. He wrote against Moore's notion of her as "strait-laced," in a spirit of justice awakened by his new satisfactions and hopes: but there are in the narrative no signs of love on his part,—nothing more than an amiable complacency in the discovery of her attachment ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... big, fat servant-woman, engaged in cleaning a stair. She was steaming with perspiration. Eyeing her curiously for a moment, "Ho, ho!" he cried (his usual introductory exclamation), "do you bake the bread?" The woman, staring in astonishment, and, fortunately for her own self-complacency, not understanding the point of the strange question, replied, "No, your grace, that is not my department; I am in the laundry, and my business is"—"Oh, never mind," said the duke, with the look of one greatly relieved, "I am perfectly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... great relief to James, in these days when the complacency of his self-satisfaction was a little ruffled, to call often on Valencia Van Tyle and let himself drift pleasantly with her along primrose paths where moral obligations never obtruded. Under the near-Venetian ceiling ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... being very nearly concluded in the modest browns of Blackwood and Fraser, and the majesty of the quarterlies being above the range of the properly so-called "public" mind, the simple family circle looked forward with chief complacency to their New Year's gift of the Annual—a delicately printed, lustrously bound, and elaborately illustrated small octavo volume, representing, after its manner, the poetical and artistic inspiration of the age. It is not a little wonderful to me, looking ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is like Amoret, most sweet, natural, and delicate; all over flowers, graces, and charms; inspiring complacency, not awe; and she seems to have good nature enough to admit a rival, which she ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... would have rendered them indisposed to take such an idea seriously, if it had been propounded. No period of their history could be described as an age of optimism. They were never, by their achievements in art or literature, in mathematics or philosophy, exalted into self-complacency or lured into setting high hopes on human capacity. Man has resourcefulness to meet everything—[words in Greek],—they did not go ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... chap, full of argument and fond of beer—that's his character in the village—and the last man in the world to commit a murder like this. I flatter myself," added Superintendent Galloway in a tone of mingled self-complacency and pride, "that I know a ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... 1763, Boswell came by solemn appointment to meet Johnson, so long the god of his idolatry. They had first met at the shop of Davis, the actor and bookseller, and afterwards near an eating-house in Butcher Row. Boswell describes his feelings with delightful sincerity and self-complacency. "We had," he says, "a good supper and port wine, of which Johnson then sometimes drank a bottle. The orthodox High Church sound of the Mitre, the figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, the extraordinary power of his conversation, and the pride arising from ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... on the saloon deck of the Korosko; only twelve since they had breakfasted there and had started spruce and fresh upon their last pleasure trip. What a world of fresh impressions had come upon them since then! How rudely they had been jostled out of their take-it-for-granted complacency! The same shimmering silver stars, as they had looked upon last night, the same thin crescent of moon—but they, what a chasm lay between that ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it by their inventions. And if these are obstinate in their wish to obtain glory, and despise those who do not invent, the latter will call them ridiculous names, and would beat them with a stick. Let no one then boast of his subtlety, or let him keep his complacency to himself. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... as miserable as she had expected. Still, if he had overcome the passion, it was so much better for him. But yet Valencia hardly wished that he should have overcome it, so self-contradictory is woman's heart; and her pity had sunk to half-ebb, and her self-complacency was rising with a flowing tide, as he chatted on quietly, but genially, about the voyage, and the scenery, and Snowdon, which he had never seen, and which he would ascend ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... threats of any punishment, but by the ardent ambition which they inspire, by the high value which is set upon their love and esteem. When we have formed a high opinion of a friend, his approbation becomes necessary to our own self-complacency, and we think no labour too great to satisfy our attachment. Our exertions are not fatiguing, because they are associated with all the pleasurable sensations of affection, self-complacency, benevolence, and liberty. These feelings, in youth, produce all the virtuous enthusiasm characteristic ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... cried Montjoie again, with something like a blush. "You've seen me in those things! I only wear them when I think nobody sees. They're something from the East," he added, with a tone of careless complacency; for, as a matter of fact, he piqued himself very much upon this smoking-suit which had not, at the Hall, received the ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... that the man animal long ago knocked Young Gratitude on the head, heaved him overboard into a leaky gig, and left him behind to ogle the seagulls. He is a healthy pirate, this man animal, accustomed with great complacency to maroon the trustful stowaway when he comes to nose about the cargo of his brig, or thrusts his pleading in between the cutthroat and his ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... see page 167, above. A later parallel, it is claimed, is found in the "virtually exscinding act" of the General Assembly of 1861, which was the occasion of the secession of the Southern Presbyterians. The historian of the Southern Presbyterians, who remarks with entire complacency that the "victory" of 1837 was won "only by virtue of an almost solid South," seems quite unconscious that this kind of victory could have any force as a precedent or as an estoppel (Johnson, "The Southern Presbyterians," pp. 335, 359). But it is natural, no doubt, that exscinding acts ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, merciful, and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... commented so freely on them to the willing ears of Owen, who likewise came in to go down under Sweet Honey's protection, as to call for a reproof from Honora, one of whose chief labours ever was to destroy the little lady's faith in beauty, and complacency in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these hideous images followed me without intermission. I lost my sleep; it was impossible for me to do anything; my brush fell from my hand; and, horrible to confess, I found myself sometimes gazing at the crossbeam with a sort of complacency. At last I could endure it no longer, and one evening I descended the ladder and hid myself behind the door of Fledermausse, hoping to surprise ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... childish intuition and perception than with matured observation—that they owe to it; and the most accomplished man or woman of the great world might take a lesson from this little audience who receive from their lips the lie they feel too palpable, with round-eyed complacency, or outwardly accept as moral and genuine the hollow sentiment they have overheard rehearsed in private for ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... farrier had re-established his self-complacency, and waited with confidence to hear himself named as one of the superlatively ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... acquaintance, with the power of assuming the mask afterwards; very observant of the smiles and frowns of the royal humour; careless before a sword's point; always ready to risk his life on a sign from his Majesty with heroism and complacency, capable of any insult but of no impoliteness; a man of courtesy and etiquette, proud of kneeling at great regal ceremonies; of a gay valour; a courtier on the surface, a paladin below; quite young at forty-five. Lord David sang French songs, an elegant gaiety which had delighted Charles ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Countess Mavrodin's house had come as a severe blow to the complacency of the authorities. It seemed probable that Princess Maritza had found shelter there, that she was actually in the house when the attack was made, and her defenders had succeeded in holding the soldiers back until ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... sex were still more enthusiastic in their admiration, if we may judge from the following passage of a letter written by the intelligent and accomplished wife of John Adams to her husband: "Dignity, ease, and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every line and feature of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurred ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... old bachelors, living by themselves in the old Whitman homestead about a mile away, and their fare was understood to be forlorn and desultory. To-day they watched with grave complacency while their ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... like to wait; it was different no doubt in the days of stage-coaches, when patience had some exercise frequently; now, we are spoiled, and you may notice that ten minutes' delay is often more than can be endured with complacency. Our fathers and mothers had hours to wait, and took it as ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... bellows, and read while I was performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the bellows was inflated and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, and I look back to it now, after so many years, with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... all of lonely unsolaced struggle that remains. Still, though dreams and hues of poetry cannot blunt grief, it invests his fate with a sublime fitness, which those less nearly allied may regard with complacency. A year before he had poured into verse all such ideas about death as give it a glory of its own. He had, as it now seems, almost anticipated his own destiny; and, when the mind figures his skiff wrapped from sight by the thunder-storm, as it was last seen upon the purple sea, and then, ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... by an act of Congress, the veterans of the Civil War, who had served continuously for thirty years or more were given an extra grade, so now my hero wears with complacency the silver leaf of the Lieutenant-Colonel, and is enjoying the quiet life of ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... been accustomed to associate with at home. This discovery came as the result of a chance meeting with a stranger, and, but for it, he probably would have remained unaware of the truth, for his newly made friends had treated him with consideration and nothing had occurred to disturb his complacency. He had acquired a speaking acquaintance with many of the best citizens, including the Mounted Police and even the higher Dominion officials, all of whom came to the Rialto. These men professed a genuine liking ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... can remember, too, how when I was a young girl my mother had regarded the rare invitations to have tea and tiny cakes in the Benton parlor as commands, no less, and had taken the long carriage-ride from the city with complacency. And now Miss Emily, last of the family, had begged me to take ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... disturbed by the Arab's attitude. The complacency with which he accepted the death of his chief lifted a considerable burden of apprehension from the shoulders of Achmet Zek's assassin; but his demand for a share of the jewels boded ill for Werper when Mohammed Beyd should have learned that the precious stones were no longer ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sometimes. People do say that she never knows how to hold her tongue. But she won't rob you, nor yet poison you; and in these days that is saying a very great deal for a woman in London." And then there was a pause, as Mr Prendergast sipped his wine with slow complacency. "And we are to go to Mr. Die to-morrow, I suppose?" he said, beginning again. To which Herbert replied that he would be ready at any time in the ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... the help she accepted so casually, climbing into his big car—were all evidences that she was as unconscious of his presence as Stan was. But in reality the future for herself of which Sandy confidently dreamed was one in which, in all innocent complacency, she took her place beside Owen as his wife. Clumsy, wild-haired, bashful he might be at twenty-two, but the farsighted Sandy saw him ten years, twenty years later, well groomed, assured of manner, devotedly happy in his home life. ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... like it." Archie squinted with some complacency down his chest. "I always say it doesn't matter what you pay for a suit, so long as it's right. I hope your jolly old father will feel that way when ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... certainty of other days; the prophet had begun to waver, almost to doubt of himself and of his mission. Anxiously he searched himself to see if in the beginning of his work there had not been some vain self-complacency. He pictured to himself beforehand the chapter which he was about to open, the attack, the criticisms of which it would be the object, and labored to convince himself that if he did not endure them with joy he was not a true Brother Minor.[14] The noblest virtues are subject to scruples, ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... passed from his previous state of haughty complacency to one of violent haste. Already, on August 23, thus long before the sixty days had expired, he demanded the Elector to deliver up this 'child of the devil,' who boasted of his protection, to the legate, to bring away with him. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... known to her as one of her husband's drinking companions, then, dazzled by the wife's mad beauty, he began to haunt the handsome Madame Montjoie, as many other persons had haunted her before him,—with no particular results except to increase the arrogant self-complacency with which Louie bore herself among ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... who still remained in Brussels were treated in the same manner. With the most cheerful complacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatches to their governments. When the diplomats learned of this, with their code cables they sent open cables stating that their confidential despatches were ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... Institute care for too much praise of itself. Its traditional spirit is to work more for outcomes than for the devices which produce complacency. It stages only a few opportunities of telling "Why ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... accompanied by the paralysis of will power, otherwise political crimes would be much commoner in Russia than they are. The Russian is tremendously impulsive, but not at all practical. Many hold the most extreme views, views that would shock a typical Anglo-Saxon out of his complacency; but they remain harmless and gentle theorists. Many Russians do not believe in God, or Law, or Civil Government, or Marriage, or any of the fundamental Institutions of Society; but their daily life is as ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... eyes were two stars whose beams were love; hope and light-heartedness sat on her cloudless brow. She fed even to tears of joy on the praise and glory of her Lord; her whole existence was one sacrifice to him, and if in the humility of her heart she felt self-complacency, it arose from the reflection that she had won the distinguished hero of the age, and had for years preserved him, even after time had taken from love its usual nourishment. Her own feeling was as entire as at its birth. Five years had failed to destroy the dazzling unreality ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... a gloom over the country, would have nerved the people to renewed exertion and made them look steadily and unwaveringly at the true dangers that threatened them. The other gave them time to fold their hands and indulge in a complacency, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... have fancied of first importance to you, on making trial you reject; and this is my case at present: for the rigid life I have hitherto led, my race nearly run, I {now} renounce. Why so? —I have found, by experience, that there is nothing better for a man than an easy temper and complacency. That this is the truth, it is easy for any one to understand on comparing me with my brother. He has always spent his life in ease {and} gayety; mild, gentle, offensive to no one, having a smile for all, he has lived for himself, {and} ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... overlooked on account of his unimpeachable conduct and his brilliant talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of Bartenstein appeared an expression of haughty triumph, which he was at no pains to conceal; and over the delicate mouth of Von Uhlefeld fluttered a smile of ineffable complacency. ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... according to our plan, I followed with the maid. My dear husband was well enough to meet us in Cape Town at the depot, and Jacky was in high feather—he had a tin steamboat; he was inclined to swagger; and showed a personal complacency not warranted by his appearance, for some of his clothes were put on ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... from the custom of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. For example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted—"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... Ernestine," continued Bea, all smiles and complacency; "and just say, by the way, that you're sorry you hurt her feelings; it's quite the proper thing to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... thousand times listening to him with that air of softness and complacency—Believe me, my dear, I am not angry with you for loving him; he is formed to charm the heart of woman: I have not the least right to complain of you; you knew nothing of my passion for him; you even regarded me almost as the wife of another. But tell me, though ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... stood alone illuminating an age unworthy of him. At such periods the calculating principle pervades all the forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt, succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... he was busy with his sharp Spanish clasp knife, whittling and fitting together two peeled twigs. A cross was the ultimate result. Then he placed Clinch's hands palm to palm upon his chest, lay the cross on his breast, and shined the result with complacency. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... observe that the sun or the moon does not seem to be permanently injured by the attacks of its celestial enemy, although a half or nearly the whole appeared to have been swallowed up. This happy result is doubtless viewed with much complacency by the parties engaged to bring it about. The lower classes generally leave the saving of the sun or the moon, when eclipsed, to their mandarins, as it is a part of their official business. Some of the people occasionally beat ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... of His spirit and a deeply needed revival of religion? In the words of Admiral Sir David Beatty, the Commander of the British Fleet, "England still remains to be taken out of her stupor of self-satisfaction and complacency and until she be stirred out of this condition, until religious revival takes place at home, just so long will the ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... a man goes to admiring his own skill, or airing his own powers, or imitating the choice touches of others, or heeding the breath of conventional applause; if he yields to any strain of self-complacency, or turns to practising smiles, or to taking pleasure in his self-begotten graces and beauties and fancies;—in this giddy and vertiginous state he will be sure to fall into intellectual and artistic sin. The man, in such a case, is no more smitten ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cases.' Thucydides would have had eyes for it in all its forms, mild or severe, simple or complex, pitiful or repulsive. He would show us the English upper and middle class, shaken out of its comfort and complacency, its easy and patronizing security, by the shock of war and bereavement, facing a future of unknown and terrifying ideas and forces, with the brutal tax-gatherer administering the coup de grâce ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... grey head before him with as much complacency as he would a turnip; "and a serene old place it is when ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... conscience is the first result of Censorship, is proved to certainty by the protected Drama, since many dubious plays are yearly put before the play-going Public without tending in any way to disturb a complacency engendered by the security from harm guaranteed by this beneficent, if despotic, Institution. Pundits who, to the discomfort of the populace, foster this exemption of Literature from discipline, cling to the old-fashioned notion that ulcers should be encouraged ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the grace and humour of a Claude Duval? Let us be honest with ourselves. How many of us really wish to be corsairs? Which of us would not have been a reiver in the old reiving days? Have we not noticed in ourselves and other Borderers an undeniable complacency, a boastful pride in a mask of apology that would not deceive an infant, when we say, "Oh yes; certainly a good many of my ancestors were hanged for lifting cattle." And, however "indifferent honest" we ourselves may be, which of us does not lay aside even ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. "At any rate one must give him a chance." He struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... a moment touching his dry lips with the tip of his tongue, his fingers clasping and unclasping, then his shoulders straightened into firmer lines and he faced his questioner with a smile of complacency. ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... so strong as to make very miserable men take comfort that they were supreme in misery; and certain it is{, that where} we cannot distinguish ourselves by something excellent, we begin to take a complacency in some singular infirmities, follies, or defects of one kind or other." —Burke, {On The Sublime And Beautiful, (1756), Part I, ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... tresses peroxide, And heart that is hard as a flint, Blue orbs of complacency ox-eyed, That light at the mark of the mint, Ears only for jingle of joybells, A conscience as light as a cork— You are wedded to follies and foibles, My Lady ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... friends, he cannot find it in his heart to take any but the most round-about way of doing so; but he is never disconcerted by any of the untoward results of his schemes, and relates to Cnemon, with the most perfect self-complacency, the deceit which he had practiced on his confiding host, Charicles, in helping Theagenes to steal away his adopted daughter, and the various scrapes into which his proteges had fallen under his guidance. He has, moreover, pet theories of his own on the phenomena of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... told the story of the negro's wrongs. Yes, Northerners know every thing about slavery now. This monster of iniquity has been unveiled to the world, her frightful features unmasked, and soon, very soon will she be regarded with no more complacency by the American republic than is the idol of Juggernaut, rolling its bloody wheels over the crushed ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... injury done to their object, without, even going so far as to desire to work the evil themselves. These passions are often held in check for a time; but, in the event of misfortune befalling the hated rival, there follows a sense of complacency and satisfaction which, if entertained, has all the malice of mortal sin. If, on the contrary, the prosperity of another inspire us with a feeling of regret and sadness, which is deliberately countenanced ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... the First, invented the devices; composed the procession of the Masquers and the Anti-Masquers; while one took the care of the dancing or the brawlers, and Whitelocke the music—the sage Whitelocke! who has chronicled his self-complacency on this occasion, by claiming the invention of a Coranto, which for thirty years afterwards was the delight of the nation, and was blessed by the name of "Whitelocke's Coranto," and which was always called for, two or three times over, whenever that great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... full value of the sacrifices his parents were making for him; so he thanked them lightly for the promised allowance, rattled the first payment cheerfully into his purse, and smiled on papa and mamma with almost condescending complacency. When he was equipped in his best suit, and just ready for starting, his mother took ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... excitement did we lay rugs and place furniture in our mind's eye! How we appealed frantically to each other to decide whether there were three or four windows in the library, and with what complacency did we discover that, owing to a shrewd forethought of my own in furnishing the smoking and living rooms in our apartment with similar curtains, we now had enough for the great, light, airy sitting-room at ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... her own soul and encouraged her to grand aspirations—goes mad now in another sense. She has grown used to hear warning in them, and something in alliance with her own stifled conscience protesting against her wrong courses; and such habituation rarely means acquiescence or soothed complacency. Now she is smitten and stung to the quick. A yell from the mob; uproar; from the tiers above tiers they butt, lurch, lunge, pour forward and down: the tinkers and cobblers, demagogs and demagoged: intent—yes—to kill. But ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... a printer are German rather than Venetian, but as his best work was executed during his sojourn in Venice, it will be more convenient to include him in the present chapter. Like so many others of the early printers, he regarded his own performances with no little self-complacency, for in his colophons he describes himself, "Vir solertissimus, imprimendi arte nominatissimus, artis impressori magister apprim famosus, perpolitus opifex, vir sub orbe notus," and so forth. To him is attributed the credit of having invented ink of a golden colour; and he was the first ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... began, and with it I end. Depurate vice of all her offensiveness, and you prune her of half her evil. Let not your love of indulgence be so inordinate as to purchase short pleasure by impairing health, neglecting duty, or, while promoting your own self-complacency, allow yourself to become permanently revolting to society, by offending more senses as well as more ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... ardent moralist ought to be true to what he knows to be the truth. The method of Christ seems here again to differ from the method of the Christian teacher. Christ reserved his denunciations for the complacency of virtuous people. We do not see him rebuking the sinner; his rebukes are rather heaped upon the righteous. He seems to have had nothing but compassion for the sins that brought their own obvious punishment, and ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... few days ago, to glance through two or three little dramas of mine, wherein lies revealed the disquiet of a mind that has given itself wholly to mystery; a disquiet legitimate enough in itself, perhaps, but not so inevitable as to warrant its own complacency. The keynote of these little plays is dread of the unknown that surrounds us. I, or rather some obscure poetical feeling within me (for with the sincerest of poets a division must often be made between the instinctive feeling of their art and the thoughts of their real ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... of a prophecy given by Lilly, and related by him with much complacency, will be sufficient to shew the sort of trash by which he imposed upon the million. "In the year 1588," says he, "there was a prophecy printed in Greek characters, exactly deciphering the long troubles of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... strangely out of place; and he was almost afraid to tread upon the thick soft carpets, or to sit upon the luxurious chairs. And yet he smiled to himself, as he contrasted his own uneasiness with the complacency with which his sister was fitting herself into her place in ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... burdens. Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask which concealed the hideous features of DISUNION should be taken off. It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects which not long since you would have regarded with horror. Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state—look forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... courage enough to give utterance to his wish to speak with the senator, and the young woman, who looked with complacency on his strong and youthful frame, offered to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thought me the finest-spirited young man he had ever met, or ever would meet, in the whole of his life. Indeed, I reflected, there could not be many such as myself—of that I felt sure, and the conviction produced in me the kind of complacency which craves for self-communication to another. I had a great desire to unbosom myself to some one, and as there was no one else to speak to, I ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... smooth; he seemed to have decided to accept the "charity" offered him by Lawler. But there was mockery in his voice, and his eyes were alight with cunning. In the atmosphere about him was complacency which suggested that Warden knew exactly what he was doing; that he had knowledge unsuspected by Lawler, and that he had no doubt that, ultimately, Lawler would accept ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... pleased, in places where I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity, poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of poverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of poetry, at least of the love of poetry, still abides in Vienne: as was proved in a manner mightily tickling to our self-complacency as we swept past the town. Taking the place of the stone bridge that was built in Roman times—and so well built that it was kept in service almost down to our own day—a suspension bridge here spans the stream: ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... like it. I know the piece you mention, but am far from being convinced by it. A great misgiving is upon me, that in many things (this thing among the rest) too many are martyrs to our complacency and satisfaction, and that we must give up something thereof for their ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... man who could, with any complacency, consent to have conditions enforced upon him by the family of the lady whom he selected as his wife; his pride was quite as great as theirs; but before he had obtained Madeleine's consent to his suit, it was politic to preserve the favor of those ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... useful of all human inventions, the invention of alphabetical writing, Plato did not look with much complacency. He seems to have thought that the use of letters had operated on the human mind as the use of the go-cart in learning to walk, or of corks in learning to swim, is said to operate on the human body. It was a support which, in his opinion, soon became indispensable ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at least would be no difficulty; husbands had deserted their wives before this in Californian emigration, and had been heard of only after they had made their fortune. Any plausible story would be accepted by HER in the joy of his reappearance; or if, indeed, as he reflected with equal complacency, she was dead or divorced from him through his desertion—a sufficient cause in her own State—and re-married, he would at least be more secure. He began, without committing himself, by inquiry and anonymous correspondence. His wife, he learnt, had left Missouri for Sacramento ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... way!'—a joyful sound to Colonel Heathcock and to her grace, and not less agreeable, at this instant, to Lady Langdale, who, the moment she was disembarrassed of the duchess, pressed through the crowd to Lady Clonbrony, and, addressing her with smiles and complacency, was 'charmed to have a little moment to speak to her—could NOT sooner get through the crowd—would certainly do herself the honour to be at her ladyship's gala on Wednesday.' While Lady Langdale ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... earnest tones: her quick glance downward surprised a spasm of pain on the chubby face, which she had always associated with unruffled complacency. It appeared that here also lay a hidden trouble, a secret grief carefully concealed ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you observed, in a Report on contemporary literature, that your "courage and sincerity never allowed you to tolerate work not absolutely good." And yet you regarded "La Pucelle" with some complacency. ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... possession of my COX AND CO., I had very frequent recourse to them when in need of such solace as only money can bring. The time arrived when I applied in vain; the money had disappeared. Though I had no reason to suspect COX AND CO. of being dishonest I noticed a tone of assuredness and self-complacency in their letters strangely similar to that in my own, and I knew that I was being dishonest, so I demanded to see my pass-book. It was a horrid sight, and it gave me seriously to think. How came it that the side of the book which showed my takings was so clear and easily ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 25th, 1920 • Various
... with which love has nothing to do, and it is a knowledge that for many people is quite sufficient. 'Knowledge puffeth up,' says the Apostle; into an unwholesome bubble of self-complacency that will one day be pricked and disappear, but 'love buildeth up'—a steadfast, slowly-rising, solid fabric. There be two kinds of knowledge: the mere rattle of notions in a man's brain, like the seeds of a withered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... obstinately unconscious are we of our ruin that even God's voice, whether uttered in definite words, or speaking in sharp sorrows and punitive acts, but too often fails to pierce the thick layer of self complacency in which we wrap ourselves, and to pierce the heart with the arrow of conviction. Indeed we may say that the whole process of divine education of a soul, conducted through many channels of providences, has for its end mainly this—to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... whatever advantages the old state of things afforded, without receiving any compensation from our present condition; having destroyed an aristocracy, we seem inclined to survey its ruins with complacency, and to fix our abode in ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... them and looking at them; and a dreamy, tender complacency crept over his heart, and softened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... John Haynes looked about him with an air of complacency and importance. He felt little doubt that his own essay on the "Military Genius of Napoleon" would win the prize. He did not so much care for this, except for the credit it would give him. But his father, who was ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... mild complacency, the unutterable sympathy, the affectionate lovingness of the heroine for her hero! And with what gentle expression she speaks of him—"her poor dog." Verily, must there have been an abyss of kindly feeling in that Old Dame's large heart for ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... Mancha. By us ordinary mortals of a mediocre animus that is only too anxious to pass by wicked giants for so many honest windmills, adventures are entertained like visiting angels. They come upon our complacency unawares. As unbidden guests are apt to do, they often come at inconvenient times. And we are glad to let them go unrecognised, without any acknowledgment of so high a favour. After many years, on looking back from the middle turn of life's way at the events of the past, which, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... by a secretary. Elizabeth was angry enough, but could not afford an open rupture with Philip, who, now that Mary was no longer Queen of France, might find it in his interest to support her pretensions to the English throne. On the other hand, the French Queen-mother could not now view with complacency the succession of Mary with her Guise connexions, coupled with the possibility of her matrimonial alliance either with the Spanish Don Carlos or the Habsburg Archduke Charles. Elizabeth's own desire now was to be in amity with Mary, and to have her married ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... heart that that gentleman must be in trouble. He also felt moved by a desire to hear of his old flame—for such she now seemed at the remote distance of six weeks,—of whose marriage with Mr. Chiffield he had read in the papers with the utmost complacency. Therefore, Maltboy stepped up behind the officers, and was about to follow them into the house. The officers would have kept him back; but Quigg recognized his friend of New Year's day, and asked him in, hoping to get legal advice ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... with several final and dainty touches that put to rights her hat and dress—a little pull here and a pat there—regarded herself with some complacency in the large mirror that was set before her, as indeed she had every right to do, for she was an exceedingly pretty girl. It is natural that handsome young women should attire themselves with extra care, and ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... certainly. For the first time in all these years, his Lordship realised how lonely he had been. He should have remarried long before, and indeed even so unworldly a person as he knew that more than one young lady in Blanford would have viewed with complacency the prospect of ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... confessing how utterly they have been hoodwinked and enslaved by those invisible loafers who form so large a portion of the newcomers and who are permitted—not to put on too fine a point—to do the dirty work of cleansing the modern mind of its gross Augean Sadduceeism. The only theory promotive of self-complacency that I could ever concoct, as to why I was put through such an ordeal, is, that I was suffered for my own and the general benefit to see the dangers of necromancy, and especially the awful psychodynamical ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... This restored the complacency of the bashaw, who, having by this last demand used up all the grocer's cash, finished by taking possession of his cash-box to ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... contempt. But this does not prevent the Pole and the Dutchman from despising each other. To a Dutch or Russian Jew, the "Pullack," or Polish Jew, is a poor creature; and scarce anything can exceed the complacency with which the "Pullack" looks down upon the "Litvok" or Lithuanian, the degraded being whose Shibboleth is literally Sibboleth, and who says "ee" where rightly constituted persons say "oo." To mimic the mincing pronunciation of the "Litvok" affords the "Pullack" ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the publican and harlots, his attitude was of pure compassion. Toward the Pharisees it was denunciatory. Wealth of ceremony and poverty of spirit, self-complacency mixed with scorn for others and with hostility to new light and love, roused in him a wrath which broke in lightning-flashes. "Woe unto you! whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones, ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Maurier, the son, whose anecdotes are full of blunders, advances[548] that, when Grotius desired to be recalled, the High Chancellor readily took him at his word, because, says he, Grotius sent him only the news that every body knew. Father Bougeant repeats this passage with great complacency; but he would have done much better to have read Grotius's letters with attention, than to censure them without reason. By their assistance he might have rectified several dates in his work, which, otherwise, deserves the public esteem. ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... impertinent-looking moustache, and hair that was very smooth and oily save for two tight curls, which looked like the horns of a young goat, on each side of the centre parting. I hated him cordially, and had to control my feelings not to show him the contempt which I felt for his fatuousness and his air of self-complacency. Fortunately the beautiful being was the first to address me, and thus I was able to ignore the very ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... public are prepared to put up with all this discomfort, loss, and privation if thereby their country marches triumphantly out of this great struggle. [Cheers.] We have every reason for confidence; we have none for complacency. Hope is the mainspring of efficiency; complacency ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... fields and toward the hills. Sometimes she would come home like a creature of the snow, born of it, and living in it; so covered was she from head to foot with its flakes. David used to smile at her with peculiar complacency on such occasions. It was evident that it pleased him she should be the playmate of Nature. Janet was not altogether indulgent to these freaks, as she considered them, of Marget—she had quite given up calling ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
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