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Complacently   Listen
adverb
Complacently  adv.  In a complacent manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Complacently" Quotes from Famous Books



... himself. He stuck his thumbs into the armholes of his vest and wagged his crossed foot complacently. This was to be the real ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... five-and-thirty; he had been a student for ten years already. I can see even now his rather long pale face, his little brown eyes, his long hawk nose crooked at the end, his thin sarcastic lips, his solemn upstanding shock of hair, and his chin that lost itself complacently in the wide striped cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, the shirt front with bronze buttons, the open blue frock-coat and striped waistcoat.... I can hear his unpleasantly jarring laugh.... He went everywhere, was conspicuous at all possible kinds of 'dancing ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... aggravating young uns?" said Aunt Chloe, rather complacently, as, producing an old towel, kept for such emergencies, she poured a little water out of the cracked tea-pot on it, and began rubbing off the molasses from the baby's face and hands; and, having polished her till she shone, she set her down in Tom's lap, while she busied herself in clearing away ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... planted in the imagination of the public an ideal of an East London sweater; an idle, bloated middleman, whose expansive waistcoat is decorated with resplendent seals and watch-chains, who drinks his Champagne, and smokes his perfumed cigar, as he watches complacently the sunken faces and cowering forms of the wretched creatures whose happiness, health, and very life are sacrificed ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... for that is something upon which one has the least light, even when the motive is one's own. The motives that we think dominale us seem simple and obvious; they are in most instances exceedingly complex and obscure. Complacently surveying the wreck and ruin that he has wrought, even that great anarch, the "well meaning person," can not have entire assurance that he meant as well as the disastrous results ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... sure that he is without the power of idealization. He has merely photographed what he has seen, and his stock is exhausted. It is wonderful what a quantity of the mere lees of such writers, more and more watered down, the libraries go on complacently circulating, and the reviews go on complacently reviewing. Of course, this power of idealization is the great gift of genius. It is that which distinguishes Homer, Shakespeare, and Walter Scott, from ordinary men. But there is also a moral effort ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... of the stops a knight of the road, whose business was selling women's ready-to-wear garments, came into the car and walked down the aisle past several vacant sections to number 10, where, pausing, he said complacently; ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... being out of breath," he thought complacently, and then—because he hadn't meant to—("wasn't even thinking of her," he grumbled to Providence)—he found himself outside her door. And in the road there was a motor, a little coral coloured motor. He looked ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... the revived emotion. It is a curious question, and is no nearer to a settlement when one of these two I have described turns round and calls his neighbour a gross feeder, a worshipper of his belly, a soulless and brutish man; and when the other answers "pooh-pooh" and goes on complacently devouring larks with great gusto, until he ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

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

... She stood me ma tea, includin' twa hot pies, an' she gi'ed me a packet o' fags—guid quality, mind ye!—an' she peyed for first-class sates in a pictur' hoose! That's hoo to dae it, ma lad!' he concluded complacently. ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... motor that was presently throbbing at the entrance. Undine, at its approach, turned from the window, and as she moved down the gallery her glance rested on the great tapestries, with their ineffable minglings of blue and rose, as complacently as though they had been mirrors reflecting ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... seatmate and calmly examining him from the toe of a well-worn shoe to the crown of a dusty old hat that Howard was trying to make last till the end of the season. When he had finished the survey his eyes travelled complacently back to his own immaculate attire, and his well-polished shoes fresh from the hands of the city station bootblack. With a well-manicured thumb and finger he flecked an imaginary bit of dust from the knee of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... parsonage, or church, but by numerous small isolated farm-houses, their white walls gleaming in the intense sunlight from amidst the trim verdure of their orchards, and their large barns and granaries surveying complacently far and wide the abundant harvests that are to be gathered into their capacious walls. The comfort, solidity, loneliness, and inelegance, not to say ugliness, of these rural dwellings is highly characteristic, the latter quality being to a certain degree ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... obeyed, and, stationing herself in the middle of the room, surveyed the whole effect with much approval. Annis, her fair face flushed with the exertion, balanced herself on her lofty perch and gazed complacently upon her handiwork; while even Mistress Vane, who had been seated quietly on a deep chair by the fireplace, roused herself as from a reverie, and looked half-wistfully around the cheerful room. "What bell was that I heard just ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... Now I think of it, what didn't he talk about? He is one of the most agreeable gossips I ever met,—knows everybody and everything. He has at his finger-ends the history of all who were belles in my time, and" (complacently) "I find that few have done better than I, while some, with all their opportunities, chose very ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

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

... said Janet complacently, "but you brought it on yourself. I'm not brutal, but I won't be balked. Please remember, my girl, that to me this is a very important enterprise and I've no intention of allowing you to ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... hand-in-hand to the tune of "Paddle your own canoe," was not sufficiently disengaged to remark her mother's companion. His eyes followed her with a keen, comprehensive glance, which Mrs. Rolleston observed complacently. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... less courage than a woman. All the women are on the side of the good Bourgeois: he is an honest merchant—sells cheap, and cheats nobody!" Babet looked down very complacently upon her new gown, which had been purchased at a great bargain at the magazine of the Bourgeois. She felt rather the more inclined to take this view of the question inasmuch as Jean had grumbled, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... "Worse," said Jeffers complacently, meanwhile refilling Mike's glass. "While we were on active service together, I've seen you go through all kinds of things and never look like this. What is it? Reaction from this ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... finished his oration, Undy Scott tried to smile complacently on those around him. But why did the big drops of sweat stand on his brow as his eye involuntarily caught those of Mr. Chaffanbrass? Why did he shuffle his feet, and uneasily move his hands and ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... gown and a shawl covered with fir-cones. She was a stout woman, and had been very pretty—she was supposed by her husband to be so still. On this occasion, pointing out the very biggest and brightest bunch of cut-flowers he saw, Mr. Swan remarked complacently...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... from the great shipwreck of Versailles), and listen earnestly to your verdict. The good soul who has just furnished her house by contract, with the latest "Louis Fourteenth Street" productions, conducts you complacently through her chambers of horrors, wreathed in tranquil smiles, born of ignorance and that smug assurance ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... saw a girl so flustered," Mrs. Camden would remark, complacently. "Perhaps our city style rather oppressed her; and as for Mr. Walton, he put on so much dignity that he leaned over backward. They evidently don't belong to ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... Caesar's chance, and he took it. Having pinned one of the heads of the Church, he gave him his views on the Romans, and on the general encroachment of Popery. The parson listened complacently. He was a tolerant old soul, with a round face, expressive of perpetual happiness, though he was always blinking his little eyes and declaring, with the Preacher, that all earthly things were vain. Hence he was ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

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

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

... horsemen—that I knew intuitively—and to have one of their number select my very own horse above all others to speak of with unstinted praise, was something to be proud of, but to have my own self calmly and complacently disposed of with the horse—"put up," in fact—was quite another thing. But not the slightest disrespect had been intended, and to leave the table without making myself known was not to be thought of. I wanted the pleasure, too, of telling those men that ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... burlesque of the American eagle which the common canary-bird assumes when teased. "Did you ever see 'em wash in the fountain in the square?" said Roundsman 9999, early one summer morning. I had not. "I guess they're there yet. Come and see 'em," he said, and complacently accompanied me two blocks. I don't know which was the finer sight,—the thirty or forty winged sprites, dashing in and out of the basin, each the very impersonation of a light-hearted, mischievous puck, or this grave policeman, with ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... terrified at the prospect, and he recalled complacently the scene in the open air in the market-place at Althausen. With his eyes closed, he saw her again playing the castanets, rounding her hips and shooting forward her little foot, in order to make the enraptured rustics admire ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... mean to say calmly that you are going to give that man the right to use the astounding information you have acquired, and allow him to accept complacently all the kudos that such a ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... repeated, nodding again, complacently; "He can do anything! I feel that all the time. He could rule ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... repeated John, complacently, when they were gathered round the stove. "Well, it behooves him to be. I don't know what he'll do when the Indians ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... is possible that he might have heard Miss Caroline's heart thump, which it did violently. Her dress was somehow a little smarter than usual, and Becky, who brought in the hashed mutton, looked at her young lady complacently, as, loaded with plates, she quitted the room. Indeed, the poor girl deserved to be looked at: there was an air of gentleness and innocence about her which was very touching, and which the two young men did ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... of safety, than the person who deliberately deprives him of both, is not easy to see. But Johnstone never doubts for one moment that what he does is always right, and what anyone else does is always wrong, and he goes on complacently to remark that he probably 'saved the life of the poltroon who held the horse, in rousing him out of his panic fear, for in less than two minutes the English army would ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... pretty evenly divided into mountain ranges covered with nut pines and plains covered with sage—now a swath of pines stretching from north to south, now a swath of sage; the one black, the other gray; one severely level, the other sweeping on complacently over ridge and valley and ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... facts, and still the cruel, barbarous forcing goes on. You watch it until it seems you cannot stand it a moment longer, and you instinctively put out your hand and say: "Stop! This modern slaughter of the Innocents must not go on!" Education smiles suavely, waves her hand complacently toward her thousands of knowledge-prisons over the country, and says: "Who are you that dares speak a word against our sacred, school system?" Education is in a hurry. Because she fails in fifteen years to do what half ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... meet him again. And her story had been accepted as the true one by the American and English girls; the other students had assumed that Miss Lawson had given up painting or had taken a holiday. So she had got herself out of her difficulty very cleverly. And she listened complacently to Miss Brand's advice. There was something in what Nellie said. If she were to meet M. Daveau she felt that she could talk him over. But she did not know if she could bring herself to try after what had happened.... She hated ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... people, shrewd, masterful and devout, praying with one hand and keeping from being fooled with the other and we want our public men to have courage and vision for themselves and for us. We give notice that thousands of our most complacently puttering, most quibbly and fuddly politicians are going to be taken out by the people, lifted up by the people, and dropped kindly but firmly over the edge of the world. This nation is facing the most colossal, most serious and godlike moment any nation has ever faced, and it does not ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... the shears, snipped one tendon after another, close to the feet, and in a few seconds had the whole ten toes lying in a heap at the bottom of the dug-out. I picked them up and handed them to their owner, who gazed at them, complacently, and remarked: ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... in Elliott's cheeks. "When you think things like that, it is polite enough." In the direct rays of Priscilla's shining admiration she began to feel like her normal, petted self once more. Complacently she followed the little girl into the main kitchen. It was a long, low, sunny room with a group of three windows at each end, through which the morning breeze pushed coolly. Between the windows opened many doors. ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist

... yielded. He carried the child away, murmuring to her, "Naughty, naughty 'ittie girl!"—a remark which Beatty, tucked under his ear, and complacently sucking her thumb, received ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

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

... Mizzizzippi River until id was discovered," the German argued complacently. "You are a diamond dealer, Laadham, bud you don'd know much aboud dem from whey dey come at. Iss Czenki here? Send for him. He knows more aboud diamonds as ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle

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

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

... would have been rare sport for any child to see Winnie wheeling Bessie in a tiny tin cart no bigger than a match-box. Then they had a grand game of hide-and-seek in the stocking basket Annie had left on the floor. Grace soon joined them, while Augusta, quite gracious by this time, sat eying them complacently ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... snapped out with clicking teeth. "Yes, I know the spawn—complacently pecking at him for his Father Damien ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... for one instant. I kept the reins in my hand, but never pretended to guide the animal, whose intelligence I now had to admit was superior to my own. When we were going along the brinks of precipices so frightful that I dared not look over, I fixed my eyes upon the ears wagging so complacently before ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole

... guess a summer shower won't hurt an old sailor like me,' says I." And the captain reached for another piece of his kelp-stalk, and whittled away more busily than ever. Kate took out her knife and also began to cut kelp, and I threw pebbles in the hope of hitting a spider which sat complacently on a stone not far away, and when he suddenly vanished there was nothing for me to do but to whittle ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... post, where a chaplain, an Indian missionary, happened to be staying at the time, and have a real wedding, with a ring and a fee to the parson. The wedding party started for the post, old mother Tumlin fluttering about the bride as complacently as if the ceremony had been the culmination of the most decorous courtship. The oafish brother drove the bridal party, making crude jests by-the-way, to the frank delight of the prospective groom and the giggling protestations ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... was indefatigable in his suit, which he had unbounded liberty to plead; for Dorothy always listened to him complacently, though without departing from the answer she had originally given, that she and her sisters would not part with each other ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... he discovers here and there a pontiff who but little in his moral character resembles Him Whose Vicar he is. He meets an apostate priest; he hears of some savagery committed in Christ's name; he talks with a convert who has returned complacently to the City of Confusion; there is gleefully related to him the history of a family who has kept the faith all through the period of persecution and lost it in the era of toleration. And he is shaken and dismayed. "How can these be in a Society that is ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... said L. 'He cannot value it, or he would not look complacently on the peculation which surrounds him. Every six months some magnificent hotel rises in the Champs Elysees, built by a man who had nothing, and has been a minister ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... and pair," soliloquised Watty Wilkins, one evening at supper, while his eyes rested complacently on the proceeds of the day's labour—a little heap of nuggets and gold-dust, which lay on a sheet of paper beside him; "a carriage and pair, a town house in London, a country house near Bath or Tunbridge Wells, and a shooting-box ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

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

... fairy tale, rather than an ordinary flesh-and-blood damsel. And Peggy did not like it; she did not like it at all, for, in her own quiet way, she was accustomed to queen it among her associates, and could ill brook the idea of a rival. She had not been happy at school, but she had been complacently conscious that of all the thirty girls she was the most discussed, the most observed, and also, among the pupils themselves, the most beloved. At the vicarage she was an easy first. When the three girls went out walking, she was always in the middle, with Esther and Mellicent hanging on ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... title: not enough of fighting. Of punishment I am a glutton, or so my friends are pleased to say. A brace of oxen, a drove of sheep or two, are enough for me," the Giant went on complacently, but forgetting to mention that the sheep and the oxen were the property of other people. "Where am I to put you till your friends come and pay your ransom?" the Giant asked again, and stared at Jaqueline in a perplexed way. "I can't take you home with me, that is out of the question. I ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang

... idea!' said the Phoenix, complacently. 'An enormous altar—fire supplied free of charge. Doesn't ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... was not a popular person in Lisconnel, where he has even become, as we have seen, proverbial for what we call "ould naygurliness." So there was a general tendency to say, "The divil's cure to him," and listen complacently to any details their visitors could impart. For in his private capacity a policeman, provided that he be otherwise "a dacint lad," which to do him justice is commonly the case, may join, with a few unobtrusive restrictions, in our neighborly gossips; the rule in fact being—Free ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... complacently, 'our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie

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

... spite of the climate, in spite of their few needs (they were less then than now), were not the indolent creatures of our time, and, as we shall see later on, their ethics and their mode of life were not what is now complacently attributed ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... dinner to strengthen us for the labors of the field," said Silas Wilson complacently, as he rose from the table. "Come, Bert, now let us get to work to make up for ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger

... said Uncle William complacently. "Sure, God Himself knows the English would be on the dung-heap if it wasn't for us and the Scotchmen. But that's no reason why John shouldn't send his story to Blackwood's Magazine. In one way, it's a good reason why he should send it there, for sure, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

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

... handsome girl of about three-and-twenty. What was her reason for journeying unattended to Cairo we know not. Whether she ever reached her destination we are still in doubt, for a more complacently incapable damsel never went a-voyaging. The Saracen maiden who followed her English lover from the Holy Land by crying "London" and "A Becket" was scarce so impotent as Placidia; for any information the Saracen maiden had she retained, while Placidia naively admitted that she had already ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... sure I do not know the Highland custom in the matter," she was continuing complacently when Aileen hoist her with ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... Klutchem's laugh was a very jolly laugh; and, under the circumstances, a laugh very creditable to his good nature. You are young and impetuous, but I know my learned friend, Judge Kerfoot, will agree with me"—here Yancey patted his toy balloon complacently, and the judge leaned forward with rapt attention—"when I say that if any apologies are in order they should not come ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... bowed to him, and looked earnestly in his face, thinking to myself, "He is old and infirm, and in this world I shall not see him again." I was right; I never did see him again, nor ever shall. He looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedly, returned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and we parted (though he knew it not) for ever. I could not reverence him intellectually, but he had been uniformly kind to me, and had allowed me many ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... I told Aunt Therese I should drown myself," she began complacently; "but, of course, such ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie

... ourselves," Yurt said complacently. "But this seems to be how Zen reproduce. Can you ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby

... Esteban Luna had been gardener of the Cathedral, by the right that seemed firmly established in his family. Who was the first Luna that entered the service of the Holy Metropolitan Church? As the gardener asked himself this question he smiled complacently, raising his eyes to heaven, as though he would inquire of the immensity of space. The Lunas were as ancient as the foundations of the church; a great many generations had been born in the abode in the upper cloister, and even before the illustrious ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... their tea the two elder women chatted complacently about the matinee, about their acquaintances, about other women in the tea-room and the gowns they had on, about bridge hands—the usual small talk of ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston

... medical attendant of the deceased, and the solicitor who is her sole executor," said the voice near Mat, in tones which had ceased to be gently inquisitive, and had become complacently explanatory instead. "That's Millbury the undertaker, and the other is Gutteridge of the White Hart Inn, his brother-in-law, who supplies the refreshments, which in my opinion makes a regular job of it," continued the voice, as two red-faced gentlemen ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... this," said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. "What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... one, so I waited to see what they would do. In my late combat with the bear, I had the anticipation of a meal off my foe, should. I prove the victor, but on this occasion I had not that incitement to exertion, for a man must be very hard up for food who could complacently dine of the flesh of a gaunt wolf at the end of winter; and even the cubs, though probably not quite such tough morsels as their parents, had already far too much muscular development to afford satisfactory employment to the jaws. ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... Lady Sandhurst and Mr. Stansfeld dismayed Mr. Balfour and scattered his myrmidons as the forces of the Evil One fly before the advent of the angels, could they not have used their semi-divine power for these humiliated rent-payers? Instead of complacently listening to bunkum—which, if they had had any sense of humour would have made them laugh; any of modesty would have made them blush—could they not have brought their inherited principles of commercial honesty and manly ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... the babies need the rest," he smiled, complacently. "They must not climb too many stairs—no;" and he led the way back to comfort with unconsciousness of the painful contrast between past and present conditions that made Jessica and me carefully refrain from meeting each other's eyes. The children, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... as hero of the evening, boldly to take a kiss from every pretty girl in succession as he swung her to the shore. "It's my right, to-night, you know, or if it isn't, I'm major now and can make laws for myself," he explained complacently to any expostulatory subject; and Mr. Hardcastle rubbed his soft, plump hands, and added: "Never you mind, never you mind, my dear; every dog must have his day, and this is Dick's day. And after all it's my son Dick, you know, and that makes it all right. ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... counted them and saw with chagrin that he was outnumbered, but another look satisfied him that the stranger's catch was nearly all "white-fish" instead of trout. He caressed his own dappled beauties complacently. ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... natural development of the individual, would be a fatal and short-sighted policy that could only end in national ruin. We have not yet reached the worst depths of the education fallacy, but we are complacently drifting in ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... and rocked to and fro complacently for a few moments. Arising, she went to a rolling door, leading to a room adjoining her own. There, coiled upon the bed, lay the beautiful young woman whom we first saw endeavoring to attract the attention of the Negro porter to a note. Her hair lay wildly about her pretty ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... set off into the wide snow-clad world, hand in hand, our hearts big with expectation,—complacently confident that by a few smudgy traces in the snow we were in a fair way to capture a half-grown specimen ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

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

... all this vastly, and talked amiably with Jessup about old times. He walked complacently over the village, stopping every few steps to have a word with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... for leaving the steamer. As we came near to Bellaggio, I looked up my own portmanteau, and, pointing to the beautiful wood-covered hill that stands at the fork of the waters, told my friend Greene that he was near his destination. "I am very glad to hear it," said he, complacently, but he did not at the moment busy himself about the boxes. Then the small boat ran up alongside the steamer, and the passengers for Como and ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope

... been dreaming complacently about the happy results of Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy awoke to find Ireland in possession of the powerful, well-organized, hostile, combination known as the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... welcome," returned Mary, complacently appropriating the title, "and welcome to more than ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... a dale the dacenter name uv the two; an' Taodoor I'll call him iver an' always," said Mrs. Ginniss complacently. ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... every individual member did exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs. James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch knitting silk scarfs and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... to Lucian, which was just as well, seeing what was the object of his visit, and complacently watched the growing attachment between the handsome young couple, who seemed so suited to one another. But her duties as chaperon were nominal, for when not pottering about the garden she was knitting in a snug corner, and when knitting failed to interest her she slumbered ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... And Cressid" and the "House of Fame" are not of a kind to be entirely explicable by that tendency to make a mock of women and of marriage, which has frequently been characteristic of satirists, and which was specially popular in an age cherishing the wit of Jean de Meung, and complacently corroborating its theories from naughty Latin fables, French fabliaux, and Italian novelle. Both in "Troilus And Cressid" and in the "House of Fame" the poet's tone, when he refers to himself, is generally dolorous; but while both poems contain unmistakeable references to the ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... seen an accomplished young woman of considerable refinement and of a highly strung nervous temperament, string flies with her needle on a piece of thread, and watch complacently their flutterings. Cruelty may remain latent till, by some accident. it is aroused, and then it will break forth in a devouring flame. It is the same with the passion for blood as with the passions of love and hate; we have no conception ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... between the two races as respects their ability to endure hardships. The worthy boat-steerer had several tales to relate of cases in which he had known negroes freeze when whites have escaped. As the fact is one pretty well established, Roswell listened complacently enough, being much too earnest in pressing forward toward his object, to debate any of his companion's theories just then. It was while thus employed that Roswell fancied he heard one more cry, resembling those which had brought him on this dangerous undertaking, on a night ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... a number of different elements, with none of which he could well have been classed—your pardon for the amazing success which had raised so high such a worthless winged grub. It was remembered that at an official dinner he had said of himself complacently, as he bustled round the table with a napkin on his arm, 'What an excellent servant I should have made!' And it might have been ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... our meeting more awkward. There were with him, Mr. Steevens[316] and Mr. Tyers[317], both of whom I now saw for the first time. My note had, on[318] his own reflection, softened him, for he received me very complacently; so that I unexpectedly found myself at ease, and joined ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

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

... the service, when the dean did not do so himself. The anthem he had put up for this occasion was a very good one, taken from the Psalms of David. It commenced with a treble solo; it was, moreover, an especial favourite of Mr. Pye's; and he complacently disposed himself to listen. ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... to his feet and paced thoughtfully across the room. At least, Rossland measured his action as one of sudden, intensive reflection as he watched him, smiling complacently at the effect of his knock-out proposition upon the other. He had not minced matters. He had come to the point without an effort at bargaining, and he possessed sufficient dramatic sense to appreciate what the offer of half a million dollars ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... particularly interested in subtleties and soul analyses; she merely chuckles rather complacently when a pair of eyes are drawn, somehow, to another pair of eyes, and an indescribable something is altered somewhere in some untellable fashion, and the world, suddenly, becomes the most delightful place of residence in all the universe. Indeed, it is her favorite miracle, this. For at work of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... mused complacently, "but this grove ain't no nice place, bein' as it must be a nigger cemetery. Uncle Dick Siddon says they's always niggers buried whar they's persimmon-trees, an' he says the niggers come first. An' Uncle Dick, he ought to know, bein' he's eighty-odd-year old. Anyhow, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... good thorn sticks, the both of them," said Mike complacently. "I don't know 'ill I bring 'em out before ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... record temperatures—at least, we thought so, and thought also how pleasant it would be to tell these things in front of a nice bright fire. As we approached the ship, however, Hodgson came out to greet us, and his first question was, "What temperatures [Page 155] have you had?" We replied by complacently quoting our array of minus fifties, but he quickly cut us short by remarking that ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... complacently lean back upon victories won, as he can in the older European countries, and depend upon the glamour of the past to sustain him or the momentum of success to carry him. Probably the most alert public in the world, it requires of its leaders that they be alert. Its appetite for variety ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... do," said Molly, complacently. "I never remember stories or anything the right way, my ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth

... next morning, in obedience to the summons of the bell, the first thing I was aware of was that Tempest was complacently whistling a popular air as he ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... be considered by every American complacently believing that the traffic of the countries and islands washed by the Pacific is open to American enterprise whenever we bid for it. When Eastern trade develops in magnitude, it may be found that the Japanese have laid permanent ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... curriculum. Such a child will realize that even an empty water-pail or a vacant wood-box presents a golden opportunity for usefulness which should not be slighted. He will not appropriate for himself the last pint of cold water from the pail, or the last cup of hot water from the teakettle, and complacently leave them for some one else to fill. That child, even though he be grown up who sees nothing in these little opportunities for usefulness, will let greater ones pass by with the same lack ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... fountains continued to gurgle and murmur complacently, prattling with soothing insistence of the days of their youth, when men still had the time and the care for noble lines and curves, and war was the affair of princes and adventurers. Legend popped out of every corner and every gargoyle, and ran on padded soles through all the narrow little ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... John Massey, owner of the Massey Steel Mills. Twice Mr. Massey had threatened the eloquent and fearless orator with arrest, and twice for some unknown reason he had refrained from carrying out his threat, and the authorities of the town complacently allowed Mr. Reynolds to ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... want you to do it—a rich man like him," returned the fisherman complacently. "It's the only money he has to spend, except what he pays for victuals. I'm glad you've fallen in with him. You might as well get the benefit of ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... Mr Easy, sitting down and crossing his legs complacently, with his two hands under his right thigh, according to his usual custom, when much pleased with himself,—"why, my dear son, that is not exactly the case, and yet you have shown some degree of perception even in your guess; ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... the face of an old man, who had like others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... begins. Handfuls of the rich, black soil are flying about in all directions, and the newly-planted radishes and spinach plants are roughly awakened from their quiet sleep and dreams of the future. The stronger of the two remains in possession of the field, and the female awaits complacently the frenetic embraces of the victor. The vanquished flies to engage in a new struggle in which, perhaps, victory ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... becomes public and gregarious. We flatter ourselves in the Pilgrim Fathers, and the Virginian offshoot of a transported convict swells with the fancy ef a cavalier ancestry. Pride of birth, I have noticed, takes two forms. One complacently traces himself up to a coronet; another, defiantly, to a lapstone. The sentiment is precisely the same in both cases, only that one is the positive and the other the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... just said that my admiration for Livingstone has been growing. This is true. The man that I was about to interview so calmly and complacently, as I would interview any prominent man with the view of specially delineating his nature, or detailing his opinions, has conquered me. I had intended to interview him, report in detail what he said, picture his life and his figure, then bow him my "au revoir," ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... little while ago, and I answered and read his message. He is bringing over a gentleman from Albany—a lawyer—to see Professor Dimp and the young man who has been in hiding so long. I think something important is going to happen," said Laura, complacently. "Do let the Barnacle keep the sheriff up in that tree for a ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... probably an official of some sort) on whom this argument may be pressed will take it as a joke in bad taste: "Horrible! disgusting!" Yet that same citizen, stirring the contents of his morning newspaper into his muddy brain as he stirs his sugar in his coffee, will complacently absorb all the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... fellow—every inch a man," said the major carelessly. "Voice orotund, magnetic. Easy manners. Good figure;" and he walked up and down complacently, slapping his own shrunk shank. There had been a well-shaped leg inside of the ragged linen trousers once, and the conscious merit which infused every atom of his lean little body ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... boy I can't master," he said to himself, complacently. "Years hence, when the boy has a forge of his own, he'll thank me for perseverin' with him. There's money to be made in the business. Why, when I began I wasn't worth a hundred dollars, and I owed for ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... his pillow and smiled complacently. "That money'll just set up my Missis nicely in a lodging-house. Now I can go on with my work here, and know that whatever happens she and the kids ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

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

... such families always end up,' observed Alfred complacently. 'No doubt he'll drink himself to death, or something of that kind, and then we shall have the pleasure of seeing a new tablet in the church, inscribed with manifold virtues; or even a stained-glass window: the last of the Eldons deserves ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... belie their traditions, but it is fitting that in May we should have enlisted a new Ally—the Sun. The Daylight Saving Bill became Law on May 17. Here is a true economy, and our only regret is that Mr. Willett, the chief promoter of a scheme complacently discussed during his lifetime as ingenious but impracticable, should not have lived to witness its swift and unmurmuring acceptance under ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... moment, and then, suddenly remembering the Caravan, she jumped up and ran to the window. It was snowing hard, and she saw through the driving snowflakes that the Highlander and Sir Walter Rosettes were standing on their pedestals, complacently watching the people hurrying by with their Christmas parcels; and as for the Admiral, he was standing on his pedestal, with a little pile of snow like a sugar-loaf on top of his hat, and intently gazing across the ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl

... pursued Sproul, complacently, "seein' that you've had fifteen years to study on her name. Now, bein' as I'm one of the fam'ly, I'm going to ask you what ye're lally-gaggin' along for? Wimmen don't like to be on the chips so long. I am speakin' to you like a man and a brother when ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... She never remembered sleeping so late in her life before. Why, at home the work in the dining-room and kitchen must all be done by this time, and Sadie was probably making beds. Poor Sadie! What a time she would have! "She will learn a little about life while I am away," thought Ester complacently, as she stood before the mirror, and pinned the dainty frill on her new pink cambric wrapper, which Sadie's deft fingers had fashioned ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... This was what was folded finely up in her talk—all quite ostensibly about her impressions and her intentions. She tried to put Densher again on his American doings, but he wouldn't have that to-day. As he thought of the way in which, the other afternoon, before Kate, he had sat complacently "jawing," he accused himself of excess, of having overdone it, having made—at least apparently—more of a "set" at their entertainer than he was at all events then intending. He turned the tables, drawing her out about London, about her vision of life there, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... in the sterling worth of the two," replied Annie, glancing complacently on a large mirror; "but she is new, Malison—quite new. Her mother only kept her so long away that she might shine with greater brilliancy when introduced. As for Caroline, I like her, as far as she ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... the Alacrity surrendered when she had suffered still less. French historians asserted that the capture of the two brigs proved that "French valor could conquer British courage"; and a similar opinion was very complacently expressed by British historians after the defeat of the Argus. All that the three combats really "proved" was, that in eight encounters between British and American sloops the Americans were defeated once, and in a far greater number of encounters between French and British sloops ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... perceived that his antagonist was foolhardy enough to try a fall with him, he complacently allowed his body to be encircled and calmly murmured: 'Ho, ho! then you would wrestle with me, eh, Fatia Negra! Very well, be ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... pleased!' he said complacently; 'but I mustn't take all the credit myself. It was like this, you see: I felt all right enough about the other rooms, but the drawing-room—that's your room, and I was awfully afraid of not having ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey

... find it so," responded the Abbe, complacently looking at a fine diamond ring that glittered on the little finger of his plump white hand, "It is a creed which impresses upon us the virtue of being happy during the present moment, no matter what the ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... with excusable pride. To TWEENY). Nor mine for nearly three months. It was only last week, Tweeny, that he said to me, 'Ernest, the water cure has worked marvels in you, and I question whether I shall require to dip you any more.' (Complacently.) Of course that sort ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... twenty-seven minutes and a half—I had made up my mind beforehand not to let it go over the half-hour—and then he came to business. After a year's training and probation in Berlin he thought he could get me a post in his brother-in-law's place in the City. Awfully warm thing, you know," said Bobbie, complacently; "worth a little trouble. So I told him, kindly, I'd think of it. Ecco!" He pointed to the letter. "Of course, I told my uncle I should permit him to continue my allowance, and in a year I shall be a merchant prince—in the egg; I shall be worth marrying; and ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... be precisely the same as before"—rejoined the other complacently—"Only we should have learned to accept them merely as the means whereby to sustain the IMPRESSION that we live,—an impression which would always be ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

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

... The pleasure was never realised. You might say the joints of her body thought and remembered, and were gladdened, but her essential self, in the immediate theatre of consciousness, talked feverishly of something else, like a nervous person at a fire. The image that she most complacently dwelt on was that of Miss Christina in her character of the Fair Lass of Cauldstaneslap, carrying all before her in the straw-coloured frock, the violet mantle, and the yellow cobweb stockings. Archie's image, on the other hand, when it presented itself was ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under Alexander's ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... tackle a job," said Uncle Tom complacently as he carved the roast—"you wouldn't let me wait to tell you some good news I had brought home. Perhaps we'd better wait now until dinner is over," he continued. But of course he couldn't wait—modesty was not Uncle Tom's strong point. "Well, if you must know, as I said it takes ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... which it would be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortised into the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, but the labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note these things complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the Victoria Hotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and from the upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and of the hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenly truncated ruin of a round stone tower. This tower ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... tried hard for a title of nobility and failed, though she gained in the end a greater title. Her works are insufferably and complacently conceited, and yet I always look at their bindings with respect. Mrs. Blashfield, who died too soon, has given us, in her first volume—unfortunately the only one—a new view of this Empress of Didacticism. It is strange indeed that Madame Roland could have been nourished by ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church—where a believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself booked through to glory—there is just the same stampede. People who sit and listen complacently to the story of eternal roastings in an everlasting hell, will fight like maniacs to escape a singeing. Rather than go to heaven in a chariot of fire they will plod for half a century in this miserable ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... charge of nitro-lanarline iss in this," murmured Istafiev complacently. "Imagine it, when released! You know the working well, do you not? Yess. Well, I put it in the plane, ready." He stepped to the hut's single door and passed out. Through it Chris could see the tiny clearing, dark under the camouflaged framework, now closed once more; the ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall

... inferring from our bitter experiences in Upper and Lower Canada, which are mentioned in the despatch, and in Ireland, which is not, that race distinctions increase instead of lessening the necessity for responsible government, Mr. Lyttelton complacently quotes bi-racial Lower Canada as a precedent for his Transvaal Constitution. Quite frankly, though in curiously misleading terms,[37] he records the fact that a similar Constitution there led to deadlock and rebellion. ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers



Words linked to "Complacently" :   complacent



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