Smug suggests an effeminate self-satisfaction, usually not justified by merit or achievement.

And British people still look at the red-splashed map of the world with the profoundest self-satisfaction, blind to the swift changes that are making that scattered empireif it is to remain an isolated systemalmost the most dangerous conceivable.

Charles (the real canting person of the scenefor the hypocrisy of Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's professions of a good heart centre in downright self-satisfaction) must be loved and Joseph hated.

If peace of mind be the summum bonum, and religion is merely the science of self-satisfaction, they are right; and your wisest plan will be to follow them at once, or failing that, to apply to the next best substitute that can be discovered alcohol and opium.

Meantime he himself strutted about the streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, pleasing himself with the belief that he was the object of universal admiration, and swelling with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant enunciation, of the magnificence of the palace he was building.

I could almost see George sitting at one side of the table with that insufferable air of gallantry and self-satisfaction that he always assumed in the presence of a pretty girl.

Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease, quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model of provincial journalese.

"Your charitable and generous proceeding, besides the self-satisfaction which always attends such actions, will be of the greatest advantage to this province.

So let him stride over the down, enjoying the mere fact of life, and health, and strength, and whistling shrilly to the bird below, who trumpets out a few grand ringing notes, and repeats them again and again, in saucy self-satisfaction; and then stops to listen for the answer to this challenge; and then rattles on again with a fresh passage, more saucily than ever, in a tone which seems to ask,"You could sing that, eh?

he exclaimed, and the evident note of astonishment and appreciation in his tones did not tend to increase Mortlake's self-satisfaction.

Hate easily leads to underestimation, love to overestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility.

After it has been exercised and its exercise rewarded by self-satisfaction, admiration, thanks, and reciprocation, it is indeed possible for the expectation of such agreeable consequences to lead us to the repetition of beneficent acts.

An aura of self-satisfaction enveloping her, Miss Jevne disappeared behind the rose-garlanded portals of the new cream-and-mauve French section.

Poor Elkanah Settle seemed raised up like another Mordecai to poison the peace and disturb the false self-satisfaction of Dryden,raised up, rathershall we say?to wean the poet from a sphere where his true place and power were not, and to prepare him for other stages, where he was yet destined far more powerfully to play his part.

There was a time when American confidence and self-satisfaction seemed impregnable; at the slightest qualm of doubt America took to violent rhetoric as a drunkard resorts to drink.

Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him.

Love waives even self-satisfaction.

Though an air of self-satisfaction gleamed in his face, when he alluded to his present personal appearance, for he well knew all his advantages in that way, in spite of the dress of a lazzarone.

She is a kind of mistress of the robes, and exercises her prerogative with much conscious dignity and self-satisfaction; and, what is better, with great satisfaction to yourself.

Meanwhile I let him talkhe was a boastful, egotistical oaf, as might have been expectedand I flattered and admired him until he fairly purred with self-satisfaction.

I fared very well at Dinner, and heard many other notable Sayings of their Heir, which would have given very little Entertainment to one less turned to Reflection than I was; but it was a pleasing Speculation to remark on the Happiness of a Life, in which things of no Moment give Occasion of Hope, Self-Satisfaction, and Triumph.

He speaks of his "severe studies" occupying the greater part of his time, and amidst their dulness he seems to have underrated the incidents of his private life, which he afterwards related to the world with some share of self-satisfaction.

But supposing that, devoid of any higher ambition to approve himself to judicious critics and posterity, and wanting in that love of art which longs for self-satisfaction in the perfection of its works, he had merely labored to please the unlettered crowd; still this very object alone and the pursuit of theatrical effect would have led him to bestow attention to the structure and adherence of his pieces.

I was about to describe the apprenticeship of my manhood, a period which, taken as a whole or in parts, I can never look back upon without a great deal of inward amusement, a little melancholy, and considerable self-satisfaction.

The overmastering self-hypnotism which leads the present-day German to believe that black is white, if it adds to his self-satisfaction, is one of the most startling phenomena of history.