he seems to consider the mighty universe itself as nothing better than a mirror in which, with a grinning and idiot self-complacency, he may contemplate the physiognomy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge....

She was one of those fortunate persons who never see themselves as others see them, but move through existence surrounded by a halo, or a haze, of self-complacency, through which their perception cannot penetrate.

There were attempts to show that British self-complacency was not altogether justified.

She had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote horizon,negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency.

Now, conscious of entertaining some common opinions which seemed to fall under the mildly intimated but sweeping ban of Lentulus, my self-complacency was a little concerned.

This head, however, does not seem characteristic of Christ; it wants the gravity, the soft melancholy and unassuming meekness of the great Reformer: in short, from the vivid fire of the eyes and the too great self-complacency of the countenance, it gave me rather the idea Del biondo Dio che in Tessalia si adorá.

Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from the consideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite is self-complacency.

In vain Cecilia ran to the rest of her companions, to display her present, in hopes that the applause of others would restore her own self-complacency; in vain she saw the Flora pass in due pomp from hand to hand, each viewing with the other in extolling the beauty of the gift and the generosity of the giver.

On first casting his eyes over his picture, a feeling of self-complacency and pride stole over the soul of the artist.

Neither in his letters nor in his poems does a single word of self-complacency escape his pen.

An eclectic philosopher already, in the very title which he assumes, proclaims his self-complacency in the large liberty of error purchased by the renunciation of all controlling principles.

At any rate, something or other in the way of pique urged me to stir him out of his self-complacency, just as one feels urged to prod a bull-frog to watch him jump.

It may here be said that probably there is hardly an influence which tends so powerfully to produce extreme self-complacency as the conviction, that, as regards some one physical accomplishment, one is a person of whom more could not have been made.

As these were two propositions to which even the ingenuity of Scipio could raise no objection, he wisely declined touching on either, contenting himself with shaking his head in great self-complacency, and laughing as heartily, at his imaginary triumph over his companion, as though he had never known care, nor been the subject of wrong and humiliation, so long and so patiently endured.

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 beautyand came home more full of self-complacency than ever.

It is possible that other men have felt quite as vain of their own exploits, and on far less grounds; but surely no man ever paraded his self-complacency like Cicero.

We are forced by an effort to recall to mind the state of society at that time in Italy, in order to understand how it is that he can talk with unconcern and even self-complacency about his homicides.

And, bearing in mind the ineffable self-complacency with which Stobo always dwells on himself and his belongings, the description of his person given in the "Memorial" coincides very well with that of the figure which the novelist makes to descend in the yard of the Durham inn.

Mrs. Cadurcis' self-complacency was not only less shocked, but more gratified, than before; and this was the secret of her happiness.

The slightest reaction in the self-complacency that was almost unceasingly stimulated by the applause of applauded men and the love of the loveliest women, instantly took the shape and found refuge in the immediate form of the darkest spleen, generally, indeed, brooding in silence, and, if speaking, expressing itself only in sarcasm.

When Lady Monteagle discovered, which she did a very few hours after the mortifying event, where Lord Cadurcis had dined the day on which he had promised to be her guest, she was very indignant, but her vanity was more offended than her self-complacency.

It would have added somewhat to her self-complacency as well as importance in their eyes, could she have quoted Mrs. Richard's sayings, and, described Mrs. Richard's dress, the very first day after her arrival.

His supreme self-complacency gave her no occasion to pity him.

DISMAL SCIENCE, Carlyle's name for the political economy that with self-complacency leaves everything to settle itself by the law of supply and demand, as if that were all the law and the prophets.

In announcing his discovery, Hume amusingly displays the self-complacency and the want of humour with which we Scots are commonly charged by our critics: 'I flatter myself that I have discovered an argument which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusions, and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures.