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Singular and displeasing as it is, yet this picture lights up for us many a word and passage in Rousseau's life here and elsewhere, which the ordinary engravings, and the trim self-complacency of the statue on the little island at Geneva, would leave very incomprehensible. It is almost as appalling in its realism as some of the dark pits that open before the reader of the Confessions.
Munificent contributions of Christians and philanthropists, for missionary work abroad, are greatly in evidence, given with a self-complacency of duty done; but, however, fail to vivify the declining pulse-beat for equality before the law and justice at home.
Up to last night she had felt only a great self-complacency over the result; but this morning, toying with her usually much-relished berries and cream, she was obsessed by the insistent thought that her self-congratulation was, after all, a trifle premature. The longer she reflected, the more she regretted that she had not gone back East with her brother.
An immense population gathered round the sacred citadel and gradually spread on all sides of it for miles. But the parish church for a long time remained the only one at Mowbray when the population of the town exceeded that of some European capitals. And even in the parish church the frigid spell of Erastian self-complacency fatally prevailed.
In speaking of the follies or vices of others, sincerity should be tempered by a Christian charity, which, while it does not gloss over vice, does not dwell upon it needlessly, nor take a malicious pleasure in spreading it abroad, nor indulge self-complacency by dilating upon it, to give the idea that one is superior to such things.
The airs of self-complacency, amounting almost to impertinence, practised by this class, cannot fail to surprise persons accustomed to the civility and assiduity of those in London, who, whether the purchases made in their shops be large or small, evince an equal politeness to the buyers.
"Nothing in particular; only the sight of him is such a relief, you know, after that wretched caricature at our table." "Poor little harmless dudelet!" mused Winifred, with a smile; "his self-complacency will be short-lived whenever he meets Isabel. She will simply annihilate him with one of those glances of hers!"
She looked at his face now: and she noted what the month of living with Béda, with whom a day is as a year, had done to the boy's face which she remembered. Count Manuel's face was of remodeled stuff: youth had gone out of it, and the month of years had etched wrinkles in it, success had hardened and caution had pinched and self-complacency had kissed it.
The figure in her arms, which was intended to represent the infant Jesus, was dressed in a style equally unsuitable; his hair was also curled, and powdered, and a small cocked hat placed upon his head. Our delighted guide, whose eyes sparkled with self-complacency, asked us if we had ever seen a prettier Virgin Mary, or one dressed more handsomely.
The display of costume, as the congregation strolled homewards in groups, with the greatest self-complacency, through the beautiful broad avenue, their psalm-books under their arms, was still more strikingly ludicrous than in church. I had by this time, however, lost all inclination to laugh.
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