Literary notes about Complacency (AI summary)
In literature, complacency is often wielded as a multifaceted term that captures a blend of self-satisfaction and passive inertia. Writers employ it both as a tool of satire and as a subtle critique of social and personal indifference. For instance, Lewis Carroll uses it ironically to mock outdated attitudes [1], while Mark Twain warns how self-complacency can lead to one’s downfall [2]. Authors like Frederick Douglass note even a slight sense of complacency in trying circumstances [3], and Jane Austen embeds it into the nuanced dynamics of familial and social relations [4, 5, 6]. Meanwhile, philosophers and moralists such as Nietzsche condemn complacency as a corrosive force that stifles growth [7, 8]. Across these varied contexts, the term becomes a versatile instrument to expose the delicate balance between comfort and the stagnation that may prevent progress.
- Such is the self-complacency of the old Tory hag, that in her wildest moments would bite excessively,—if she only had teeth.
— from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll - But his self-complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - Even as it was, I felt a slight degree of complacency at the circumstance.
— from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass - She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could regard with any complacency.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - "Shall you be in town this winter, Miss Dashwood?" said she with all her accustomary complacency.
— from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - It is poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Is your soul not poverty and pollution and wretched self-complacency? Verily, a polluted stream is man.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
