Smugness Quotes

Every culture that's ever existed has operated under the illusion that it understood 95% of reality and that the other 5% would be delivered in the next 18 months, and from Egypt forward they've been running around believing they had a perfect grip on things and yet we look back at every society that preceded us with great smugness at how naive they all were. Well, it never occurs to us, then, that maybe we're whistling in the dark too! That the universe is stranger than you CAN suppose, and that that openness that that perception imparts is a great joy, a great blessing, because then you can live your life not in service to some fascistic metaphor but in service to the living mystery: the fact that you're not going to understand it; it is not going to yield to logic; or magic; or any other technique that's been developed ... ~ Terence McKenna

I worship you, but I loathe marriage. I hate its smugness, its safety, its compromise and the thought of you interfering with my work, hindering me; what would you answer? ~ Virginia Woolf

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. ~ Carrie Fisher

This carpet," said Abdullah, "unlike you, is of an ensorcellment so pure and excellent that it will listen only to the finest of language. It is at heart a poet among carpets."
A certain smugness spread through the pile of the carpet. It held its tattered edges proudly straight and sailed sweetly forward into the golden sunlight above the mist. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

You're a talking cat?" Endora asked with a look of disbelief on her face.
"My, my, my, aren't you the bright bulb of the bunch," he replied with a bit of snarky smugness. "Tell me then, bright-bulb, do you suppose that I need your permission to talk just because I'm a cat?" He raised his paw to his face, admiring his newly gnawed manicure. After he observed the last nail, he slapped his paw down on the floorboards, making a low thud sound. "Because I don't," he smirked.
Endora was taken by surprise at his rudeness. She stared back at him, speechless and not quite sure how to respond.
"Are you a magic cat?" Mila busted in with a question that seemed as silly to her as to the cat.
He glared and narrowed his eyes at her. "A magic cat," he said, standing up to arch his furry back. "Is my talking some sort of magic to you? If it is… then I am." He stretched his back higher and let out a long purr that turned into, "Purrhaps, you four little witchy girls should clearly refine your meaning of magic so you know what it means before you say the word magic."
"I rather am quite fond of talking cats," Selena said with a big smile. "Of course, you're the first one I've ever seen."
The cat narrowed its eyes tighter. "Indeed," he said, letting out a yawn as if the whole conversation were a bore. He leapt off the porch and dash away, mumbling and grumbling his way down the corridor.
Selena looked over at Endora. "Rude little snot, isn't he?" she said. ~ Sophie Palmer

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe. ~ Malcolm X

We singer-songwriter people, we're used to getting up and doing our own thing in front of people, and we're it. We're the band, artist, writer, producer, front man. We're the whole thing. You develop, it's not smugness, but this self-reliance, that can limit your creativity. When you're willing and able to invite others into it, you wind up getting a piece of work that's bigger and better than anything you ever imagined it could be. ~ Andy Wilkinson

In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged; ~ David Brooks

Annabelle…" His mouth drifted along her throat. "I've wanted you since the first moment I saw you standing outside that panorama, digging for coins in your purse. I couldn't take my eyes from you. I could hardly believe you were real."
"You stared at me for the entire show," she said, gasping a little as he nibbled at the silken lobe of her ear. "I doubt you learned a single thing about the fall of the Roman Empire."
"I learned that you have the softest lips I've ever kissed."
"You have a novel way of introducing yourself."
"I couldn't help it." His hand skimmed gently up and down her side. "Standing next to you in the darkness was the most unholy temptation I'd ever experienced. All I could think about was how adorable you were and how much I wanted you. When the lights went out completely, I couldn't stand it any longer." A note of masculine smugness entered his voice as he added, "And you didn't push me away."
"I was too surprised!"
"That was the reason you didn't object?"
"No," Annabelle admitted, tilting her face so that her cheek brushed against his. "I liked your kiss. You know that I did."
He smiled at that.

-Annabelle & Simon ~ Lisa Kleypas

He laced his hands behind his neck and propped his boots on the opposite arm of the sofa. If an artist were to capture this image, it would have been labeled,Smugness: A Portrait. She wanted to shake him. ~ Tessa Dare

I also remember my own smugness… that somehow, because I was so careful and well behaved - the attentive listening, the regular sex, my self-appointed role as #1 Fan of Adam Carver - our marriage was insulated. That what happened to those other foolish couples would never happen to us because I was so on guard against it. I lost myself in becoming Adam's wife, and later, the girls' mother. I forgot to be a person, too, a person who was well within her rights to say, "I'm too tired, tonight, honey. How about a back rub instead? I would really appreciate it. ~ Kristan Higgins

I have yet to find any support in the Bible for an attitude of smugness: Ah, they deserve their punishment; watch them squirm. ~ Philip Yancey

Light literature, along with light cinema and light art, give the reader and the viewer the comfortable impression that they are cultured, revolutionary, modern and in the vanguard without having to make the slightest intellectual effort. Culture that purports to be avant-garde and iconoclastic instead offers conformity in its worst forms: smugness and self-satisfaction. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

But if out of smugness, or even cowardice, this battle is not fought to its end, then take a look at the peoples five hundred years from now. I think you will find but few images of God, unless you want to profane the Almighty. ~ Adolf Hitler

What are you doing with your face?" Krissi asked, as I made myself a cheese sandwich in the kitchen. Having been away for two nights, I had a sudden, giddying perspective on just how much margarine seemed permanently smeared on our worktops. This whole room was a health risk. "What do you mean?" I asked - increasing the smugness as I sliced the cheese. "Your face - it's clearly telling me to slap it," Krissi said, staring at me. "It's communicating with me on a frequency you can't hear. It's begging me to slap both cheeks at the same time, like the Three Stooges. ~ Caitlin Moran

Blacheville smiles with the self-satisfied smugness of a man whose vanity is tickled ~ Victor Hugo

When the lord says you must 'become as one of these little ones,' I take Him to mean you must be stripped of all the accretions of smugness and pretence and triviality. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them. You simply say, "Here are the perimeters of our attention. If you prowl around under the windows till the crickets go silent, we will pull the shades. If you wish us to suffer your envious curiosity, you must permit us not to notice it." Anyone with one solid human bond is that smug, and it is the smugness as much as the comfort and safety that lonely people covet and admire. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Confidence is important, but if it is not based on a realistic appraisal of who you are, it is mere grandiosity and smugness. ~ Robert Greene

It was the kind of country that made you feel better about yourself. ~ David Halberstam

Most animals show themselves sparingly. The grizzly bear is six to eight hundred pounds of smugness. It has no need to hide. If it were a person, it would laugh loudly in quiet restaurants, boastfully wear the wrong clothes for special occasions, and probably play hockey. ~ Craig Childs

Kaylin hated politics. Hated them. She hated the stupid decisions, the game playing, the grandstanding. She hated political decisions made by people who never had to do any of the law's actual work. She hated the pervasive sense of superiority and smugness that underlay all of the rules. ~ Michelle Sagara

If you eat healthily most of the time you can afford to indulge yourself occasionally, but if you eat nothing but junk, you'll end up not being able to run for a bus without huffing like a steam train. (The only drawback to being super-fit is that centring your life around your quinoa intake and yoga classes often results in an overdose of smugness which may cause your social circle to shrink.) ~ Rosie Blythe

Complacency traps people and besiege them until longer period. The biggest challenge is to become aware of its existence and stepping out of it quickly. ~ Ashish Patel

Oh my God!" I hear him yell to just about everybody. "Did you see that?! That was John Waters. I'm almost certain he has shit his pants!!" I hear grown men laugh in constipated smugness and digestive superiority. ~ John Waters

I suppose you mean to scandalize society by announcing your betrothal to Miss Butterfield tonight."
"Of course," Oliver said, without a trace of irritation. "Unless you'd rather do it yourself. I'm more than happy to hand the office over to you, Gran. Maria and I will just nod and smile while you get all the glory for making the match."
Mercy. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet.
Mrs. Plumtree's mouth fell open. Then snapped shut. When she spoke again, her voice sounded strained, though Maria could have sworn she caught a gleam in the elderly lady's eye. "Perhaps I will. God knows you won't do it properly."
"Go ahead." His eyes said, I dare you.
There was a trace of smugness on his face now, as if he knew he was on the verge of winning.
A tense quiet fell over the carriage. Clearly Mrs. Plumtree and Oliver were each waiting for the other to back down. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

I flash a fake smile of my own, refraining from telling her what I'm really thinking: that it's an unwise karmic move to go around feeling superior to other mothers. Because before she knows it, her little angel could become a tattooed teenager hiding joints in her designer handbag and doling out blow jobs in the backseat of her BMW. ~ Emily Giffin

What matters are those ordinary acts of kindness and of love, not vaulting ambition with its attendant hubris and smugness. ~ Michael Dirda

My mind blurs to a ripple of pleasure when his soft, full lips at last make contact with mine. He starts to deepen the kiss, but pauses, intent on the glass behind me. "You gotta be kidding."
I glance over my shoulder. Outside, Morpheus hangs on the glass in moth form, level with my head, glaring at us with his bulbous gaze. Even without a face, his smugness is apparent. His favorite pastime is interrupting Jeb's romantic moments. I try not to laugh, but can't help myself.
"Cocky son of a bug." Jeb sets me on the floor and draws the dropcloth tighter around me.
A barn owl swoops from the sky and skims the glass. Morpheus launches off in a tizzy, trying to outrun the bird. Now Jeb's the one laughing.
I slap his shoulder. "Hey, that's not funny."
"Ah, he'll be okay." Jeb raises an eyebrow, watching the aerial pursuit taking place outside the glass. "It's a new genus of vegetarian owls. They're only in it for the chase. Besides, Morphie-boy can change to his other form anytime he wants." ~ A.G. Howard

One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates? ~ Brian M. Barry

I can say with pride verging on smugness that I've got two very successful shows that assume their audience is very smart. ~ Steven Moffat

The Archangel." I murmured. looking back over my shoulder at the ride, which had started its next ascent.
"It means high-ranking angel." There was a definite smugness to his voice. "The higher up, the harder the fall. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who today can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another? ~ Madeleine L'Engle

A man makes himself hard and inflexible in order to escape his guiltiness. The strange paradox present on every page of the Gospels and which we can verify any day, is that it is not guilt which is the obstacle to grace, as moralism supposes. On the contrary, it is the repression of guilt, self-justification, genuine self-righteousness and smugness which is the obstacle. ~ Paul Tournier

When someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight. ~ Michael Ondaatje

Moral voices can also become sanctimonious bullies. ~ Nicholas Kristof

A lot of the time, when we think about the past, there's a slightly smug patronizing attitude that kicks in. We know so much more than our ancestors did. We make it a joke: can you believe that in Tang dynasty China they thought that ghosts of soldiers, if they weren't buried, would live in some limbo forever, floating above the battlefield in their unburied bodies?

There's always the risk, or the reality, of that slight pulling back, for the modern reader, from connecting with or understanding the past. We always have this space between the foolishness, from our point of view, of what they thought of the world, and the correctness of our understanding of it.

What the fantastic lets me do, along with the other things that we've discussed, is make the world be as my characters believe it to be. When I do that, when I make the reader understand it, the reader is there, the ghosts are there above that battlefield. They're actually there. You read a book that takes that matter-of-factly. That's one of the definitions of magic realism, by the way: the world is presented as the characters believe it to be, without any sense that the worldview is quaint.

The strength of this, for me, is enormous, because it removes that smugness from the reader who's willing to go there, to be immersed in it. You accept the way the world is, the way the characters do, because that's what you've got. That's one of the things the fantastic gives me.

Or, I'll ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Okay," Nellie said, "whatcha got?"
Dan's expression was pure smugness. "I want you to beg," he said. ~ Linda Sue Park

She didn't use the misery of others to cultivate her own smugness, true, but at least I didn't go about eating all their food. ~ Martin Amis

They had been there. I had seen my mother's anxious face, desperate to catch my eye and give me a warm smile. I had tried to smile back, but I had not known how. That old curse again. How to smile. If I smiled too broadly it might look like triumphalism; if I smiled too weakly it might look like a feeble bid for sympathy. If I smiled somewhere in between it would, I knew, look, as always, like plain smugness. Somehow I managed to bare my teeth in a manner that expressed, I hope, sorrow, gratitude, determination, shame, remorse and resolve. ~ Stephen Fry

His smugness was annoying. This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass. ~ Ruta Sepetys

Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mold, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable. ~ Tracy Chevalier

I hope you forgive the unedifying sight of my struggle to express some of the truths of my inner self and to measure the distance between the mask of security, ease, confidence and assurance I wear (so easily that its features often lift into a smirk that looks like complacency and smugness) and the real condition of anxiety, self-doubt, self-disgust and fear in which much of my life then and now is lived. ~ Stephen Fry

Smugness was an art invented by the race of imps, no matter what cats might claim, so he did it very well indeed, ~ Spider Robinson

His work was defined by emphasis on the subversiveness philosophy, which asks questions, as opposed to the self-satisfaction of politics, which believes it has answers and insists on them. ~ Harvey Mansfield

She had that look a child has only a few times in its life, when the child has bettered her betters. The expression isn't smug, though adults often take it for smugness. It's something else. Maybe relief at having confirmed through personal experience the long-held suspicion of our species, that the enchanted world of childhood is merely a mask for something else, a more subtle and paradoxical magic.
- p. 157 ~ Gregory Maguire

Smugness is the Great Catholic Sin. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Truth, acceptance of the truth, is a shattering experience. It shatters the binding shroud of culture trance. It rips apart smugness, arrogance, superiority, and self-importance. It requires acknowledgment of responsibility for the nature and quality of each of our own lives, our own inner lives as well as the life of the world. Truth, inwardly accepted, humbling truth, makes one vulnerable. You can't be right, self-righteous, and truthful at the same time. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

With the smugness of an end man on parade, he bounced along on his sinewy legs, effortlessly marching to attention, floating with a lightness of step remarkably different from the heavy tread of the soldiers keeping time with him. Down by his thigh he carried, unsheathed, a thin little sword – it was a small curved sabre, for ceremonial use only – and he looked and turned sideways to the commander and back to the men behind, without straining his big powerful frame or getting out of step. He seemed to strive with every fibre of his soul to march past his commander with maximum style, and his strong sense of doing this well made him a happy man. 'Left . . . left . . . left . . .' he seemed to be mouthing to himself at each alternate step, and that was the rhythm to which the solid wall of military men, weighed down by packs and guns, advanced; each face was different in its stern concentration, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers seemed to mouth his own 'Left . . . left . . . left . . .' at each alternate step ~ Leo Tolstoy

To condemn Wordsworth for not writing verse of political and social protest, or for having forsaken the revolution, is to cross the final divide between academic arrogance and moral smugness. ~ Harold Bloom

Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
He turned and walked back to the hated door.
"Er, excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government owns this ship?"
Marvin ignored him.
"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again. I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates. ~ Douglas Adams

He (Lincoln) differed from fanatical moralists primarily in that he was always perplexed. No sooner did he believe he was doing God's will that he began to admit that God's purposes might be different from his own. In short, he never forgot the men's contrast between the absolute goodness of God and the faltering goodness of all who are in the finite predicament. ~ Elton Trueblood

According to Mr. E., all of this was my fault," Ryan explained. With a little too much amusement if you ask me. "For making you fall in love with me
and ruining everything."
"Why did that ruin everything?"
Ryan was quiet for a moment, and I couldn't believe it when his grin changed into that infamous cocky smirk. "You just said you love me!" he
accused with excitement.
Again, I gaped at him, temporarily speechless. Of course I denied it. I had to; it was my natural reaction to his ego. "I did not!"
"Did too." He grinned. "You said, 'why did that ruin everything.' Meaning you agree that it happened. You said it. Can't take it back. You love me."
Learning to control my powers was child's play compared to keeping a straight face right then, but I couldn't give in to his smugness. He was just so
sure of himself. "Do not."
"Do too."
"Do not."
"So do too. ~ Kelly Oram

As on enquiring agnostic one seeks, not the smugness of atheism, not the blindness of idolatry - nor even the complacency of established religion - but the intelligent quest of the unknowing, in humility and with a clarity of mind ~ Andrew Ashdown

Fuck," he mutters as his eyes open. "How the hell have you kept yourself away from men for the last ten years?"
"It's not hard when you're not interested," I answer truthfully, looking away from him.
"Until me."
I hear the smugness in his voice and my eyes go back to him, narrowing when I see the smirk on his face. "My tastes could always change."
"They won't," he says confidently.
"They might," I huff, and his smirk turns into a full smile as he rolls on top of me.
"They won't," he repeats, this time kissing me silent. ~ Aurora Rose Reynolds

... the slightest smile on her face, almost a smugness, as if she had some secret arrangement with my body that I'd never understand, something dark and faminine and private and it excited me to think that she might know some part of me so well, so instinctively. ~ Elliot Mabeuse