"Can you not startle the little thing out of its
complacency?" said I.
Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-
complacency?
No regular beauty pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with
complacency the lineaments of their daughters' faces, where frequently their own similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and delicacy of outline.
Shelby, who, with a little womanly
complacency in match-making, felt pleased to unite her handsome favorite with one of her own class who seemed in every way suited to her; and so they were married in her mistress' great parlor, and her mistress herself adorned the bride's beautiful hair with orange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which certainly could scarce have rested on a fairer head; and there was no lack of white gloves, and cake and wine,--of admiring guests to praise the bride's beauty, and her mistress' indulgence and liberality.
"No, it was my fancy," she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word "suffering." "No; can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied
complacency, feel anything?"
Vincy, in her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Mary's little figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully to fancy herself caring about Mary's appearance in wedding clothes, or feeling
complacency in grandchildren who would "feature" the Garths.
Edna could not control a feeling which bordered upon
complacency at her friend's praise, even realizing, as she did, its true worth.
Under the inspiration of her soaring
complacency the departed graces of her earlier days returned to her, and her bearing took to itself a dignity and state that might have passed for queenly if her surroundings had been a little more in keeping with it.
She liked him, however, upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more;-- not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with
complacency on the remembrance of Edward's generous temper, simple taste, and diffident feelings.
Silas was thinking with double
complacency of his supper: first, because it would be hot and savoury; and secondly, because it would cost him nothing.
Thus it could hardly happen, that the majority of the Senate would feel any other
complacency towards the object of an appointment than such as the appearances of merit might inspire, and the proofs of the want of it destroy.
How often when considering her character I have told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that constant composure and
complacency and lack of all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a depraved woman.