Quotes & Sayings About Smugness

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

Then I guess the rest of my life will be resigned to doggy style sex." The words were out of my mouth before I could think about them. "I mean however long ... when we're ... that wasn't a fucking proposal."
"Okay."
"Don't smile that. Smugness doesn't become you."
"Okay."
"Scoot the fuck over. You're hogging the bed."
Austin and Peter. :') — Dani Alexander

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

Despite his success as a missionary and leader, Paul was never without a wholesome, watchful fear that he himself might be disqualified (1 Corinthians 9:27). To him this prospect was an ever-present warning against smugness and complacency. So should it be to all who are entrusted with spiritual responsibility. The — J. Oswald Sanders

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

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

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

What's wrong with "the new elite?" Forget cultural insularity or smugness. The main problem with the "new elite" is that they're not an elite at all. That is, they aren't particularly smart, or competent. — Glenn Reynolds

Real joy is becoming exceedingly rare among artists of any kind. And I have an idea that those who can and do communicate it are always people who have had a hard time. Then the joy has no smugness or self-righteousness in it, is inclusive not exclusive, and comes close to prayer. — May Sarton

There's a smugness that goes with being a huge company. The big fish say, 'If it's so great, why didn't we invent it?' But how'd you like to be makin' buggy whips when cars came along? — Woody Norris

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

Moral voices can also become sanctimonious bullies. — Nicholas Kristof

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

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

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

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

... 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

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

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

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

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

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. I patted my basket. I have my own fossils, — Tracy Chevalier

I am a music snob, and proud of it. I'm a New Yorker; smugness is my birthright. — J.J. Howard

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

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

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

There's something uniquely aggravating about the smugness of liberal Hollywood. — Matt Stone

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

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance. — Hugo Ball

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

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, "as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth," and then ask in their smugness: "Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord's messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?" — Harold B. Lee

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

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

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

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

San Franciscans have a bond of self-satisfaction bordering on smugness. — Herb Caen

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

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

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

Next to "I win," "I told you so" are the sweetest words. — Gore Vidal

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

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable. — Agnes Repplier

Again and again, I find something eerie in many Irish occasions - the unrelenting whiteness, the emotional tribal attachments, the violent prejudices lurking beneath apparently pleasant social surfaces, the cosy smugness of belonging. — Tom Paulin

Deeply convinced of the reality of the divine will, he (Lincoln) had no patience at all with any who were perfectly sure they knew the details of the divine will. — Elton Trueblood

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

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

It's a deep and all but certain truth about narcissistic personalities that to meet them is to love them, but to know them well is to find them unbearable. Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm. — Jeffrey Kluger

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

The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough. Stalin told Beria the Bolsheviks were "a sort of military-religious order." When Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, died, Stalin called him "a devout knight of the proletariat." Stalin's "order of sword-bearers" resembled the Knights Templars, or even the theocracy of the Iranian Ayatollahs, more than any traditional secular movement. They would die and kill for their faith in the inevitable progress towards human betterment, making sacrifices of their own families, with a fervour seen only in the religious slaughters and martyrdoms of the Middle Ages - and the Middle East. They — Simon Sebag Montefiore

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

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

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

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

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

You unfailingly omnibothersome bitch. — Scott Lynch

What? You don't think I'm perfect?" I can't resist, because he gets so riled whenever I bring it up. "I can run up to thirty miles without stopping. I can jump six feet in the air. There is not a material in this world sharp enough to pierce my skin. I cannot drown or suffocate. I am immune to every illness known to man. I have perfect memory. My senses are more acute that anyone else's. My reflexes rival those of a cat. I will never grow old" - my voice falls, all smugness gone -"and I will never die. — Jessica Khoury

I get accused of having a haughty smugness. I have a lopsided mouth. I can't help it. I was born with it. It looks as if I am smirking. I have had my publicist tell me, 'Don't do that smile on the red carpet.' I'm, like, 'That's my smile.' — Natalie Dormer

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

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

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

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

The man who does good in doubt must have so much more merit than one who does it in the bright certainty of belief. "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold ... " A warning against the smugness of inherited faith. — Morris L. West

Most open letters undoubtedly come from a good place, rising out of genuine outrage or concern or care. There is, admittedly, also a smugness to most open letters: a sense that we, as the writers of such letters, know better than those to whom the letters are addressed. We will impart our opinions to you, with or without your consent. — Roxane Gay

Smugness in ones own self-knowledge is often a signal that you don't know as much as you think you do. — Erin Wunker

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

Our myths are so many, our vision so dim, our self-deception so deep and our smugness so gross that scarcely any way now remains of reporting the American Century except from behind the billboards ... — Nelson Algren

I love you, he told her.
Sweet joy rushed through her. But there was a distinct smugness about his words. He'd sensed her feelings in return, and was pleased with himself for doing so.
Turns out I love you too, she replied, communicating her wry amusement. Of all the annoying people in the world. — Trudi Canavan

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless. — Russell Lynes

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

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

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

But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society. — Rowan Atkinson

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour towards creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Parochialism remains the Danes' defining characteristic, but their radically recalibrated sense of identity and national pride has created a curious duality best described as a kind of "humble pride," though many often mistake it for smugness. — Michael Booth

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

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

What the historian Elie Kedourie called "the Chatham House Version" - that toxic amalgam of smugness, moral relativism, and cherished feelings of guilt about the achievements of Western civilization - everywhere nurtured the catechism of established opinion. — Roger Kimball

Faith, doubt, humility, and confidence - this is the stuff and substance of theology at its best. Swagger, smugness, and certainty - this is the stuff and substance of ideology at its worst. — Austin Fischer