The Smug Quotes

#1. So this is the "smug idiot thinks he's funny" face, Kami observed. Not to be confused with other "smug idiot" variants.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#2. The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.

Terry Pratchett

#3. Nothing warms the cockles of the heart more than the smug self-satisfaction of being right.

Val McDermid

#4. I'm tired, my head hurts, and the last thing I want is to play referee between you two. Get over it. She storms off, unable to stop the smug smile stretching her face at their stunned silence. The way people respond to her demands - all flabbergasted and slack-jawed - will never get old.

Laura Kreitzer

#5. They work off all their resentments, enjoy all the smug self-satisfaction a young revolutionary would have, and by the time they take their place in the Imperial hierarchy, they are ready to settle down into conformity and obedience.

Isaac Asimov

#6. Conservatism is not a doctrine of contentment. Not a doctrine for the satisfied and the smug. It's a politics that's at war with the world.

Thomas Frank

#7. Suddenly Ammu hoped that it had been him that Rahel saw him in the march. She hoped it had been him that raised his flag and knotted arm in anger. She hoped that under his careful cloak of cheerfulness he housed a living breathing anger against the smug, ordered world that she raged against.

Arundhati Roy

#8. And one by one, senators disgorge from their vessels, tainting this very nice world with the smug and indulgent cloud of politics and government.

Chuck Wendig

#9. For the statement of Isaiah (28:19) is true: "Trouble gives understanding"; likewise, hunger is the best condiment. For those who are afflicted have a better understanding of the Holy Scriptures; the smug and prosperous read them as if they were some poem written by Ovid.

Martin Luther

#10. The smug complacency of technology adverts disguises a pretty mixed picture, with too many people not connected, too many passive users of technologies designed for interactive, and far too much talk about empowerment but far too little action to make it happen.

Geoff Mulgan

#11. The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.
(August 9, 1955)

Flannery O'Connor

#12. My smile couldn't be smugger if I bought it from Smuggy McSmugster at the Smug Store in Smugville.

Leisa Rayven

#13. For me, faith is more about aspiration than complacency - the smug satisfaction that other people find distasteful.

Tom Hollander

#14. Kinder the enemy who must malign us Than the smug friend who will define us

Anna Wickham

#15. How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible.

Sheldon Whitehouse

#16. Seriously?" she said with a glance of skepticism. Driggs and this nerdlinger? "You guys are best friends?"
Ferbus looked up briefly to give her a smug look. "We prefer the term heterosexual life mates.

Gina Damico

#17. Being snarky and smug doesn't equate to providing insight, and there's more than one occasion when the filmmakers lose sight of this in their zeal to spread the Gospel According to Maher.

James Berardinelli

#18. If I hadn't liked Logan before, I would now at how he is handling all of this. he chuckles as we reach the door.

"Why are you chuckling?" I ask.

"You were jealous." He's definitely smug, though I can't blame him.

L.A. Fiore

#19. And there you sit, gloating over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public benefactor
as complacent and smug and misunderstood as a princess from the moon forced to herd goats!

Hope Mirrlees

#20. What about e-mail? It is e-mail, yes?" Morley asked, leaning even closer. "E-mail is a kind of electronic letter. It travels through the air." He seemed very smug that he knew that.
"Well, not exactly, and would you please either BACK OFF or go find a shower?

Rachel Caine

#21. The snobbish lost in laud.

Toba Beta

#22. Atheism: the religion devoted to the worship of one's own smug sense of superiority.

Stephen Colbert

#23. Sometimes, I thought pity was the most heartless thing in the world. All it did was make people feel superior to you, happy, safe, and smug in the knowledge that someone had it worse than they did.

Jennifer Estep

#24. I have a preponderance to look smug in photos; something to do with the way my mouth turns up at the corners.

Chris Ware

#25. Patriotic?" Will looked smug. "I'll tell you what's patriotic," he said. "In honor of my birthplace, I've the dragon of Wales tattooed on my -

Cassandra Clare

#26. We went back to the weird Institute building. At night there was a lot more activity. Erasers coming in non-stop. Nice cars, nice clothes, nice smug faces (that I wanted to smash!).
-Fang's Blog

James Patterson

#27. I whispered, "Can we kick the aunties out right now?"
I saw the flash of his smug smile before he buried his face in my neck and muttered, "You're adorable."
I wasn't trying to be adorable. I was trying to get laid.
"No, seriously.

Kristen Ashley

#28. Wait a minute." Daddy sounded amused. "What do you mean 'we'? I thought this was my treasure."
"Technically, I don't think that's possible anymore." Mommy sounded smug. "We're mated, married, and as I just realized the other day, we have no prenup.

Thea Harrison

#29. A story from beginning to end that might entertain, teach, or simply bore your listener. It's all in the delivery, my dear."

He got a smug look on his face as he scooted his posterior deeper into the chair and took his pipe between his teeth. "I'm just better at it than most.

Karen L Milstein

#30. They moved me and scared me. I replayed the tapes and nailed the source of my fear. The women sounded smug. They were entrenched and content in their victimhood.

James Ellroy

#31. No matter where you go in the world, a German will have beaten you there, clad in a sweaty black T-shirt and a smug expression.

Claire Dederer

#32. I wish we had the technology to fight God on an equal basis. To beard him in his den. To fight back for all of the injustices heaped on humanity. To allow him to alter his smug arrogance or be blown to hell.

Dan Simmons

#33. How smug I was, telling Theo how hard we tried to do right by the other selves we visit. I'm so full of it. I took more than this Marguerite's only night with the man she loved; I took away her choices.

Claudia Gray

#34. Smug respectability, like the poor, we've had with us always. Today, however, ... such obtuseness is an indulgence we can no longer afford. The computer, nuclear energy for better or worse, and sudden, simultaneous influences upon everyone's TV screen have raised the ante and the risk considerably.

Studs Terkel

#35. The process is the goal," Kaden responded innocently, trying not to feel smug. It was about time one of those Shin maxims worked in his favor.

Brian Staveley

#36. I saw a great Newfoundland dog the other day sitting in front of a mirror at the entrance to a shop in Regent's Circus, and examining himself with an amount of smug satisfaction that I have never seen equaled elsewhere outside a vestry meeting.

Jerome K. Jerome

#37. Lord Carradice managed to look wicked, smug, and saintly, all at the same time.

Anne Gracie

#38. In what may as well be starkly labelled smug satisfaction, an amazing 94% [of college instructors] rate themselves as above average teachers, and 68% rank themselves in the top quarter of teaching performances.

K. Patricia Cross

#39. , But the streets need cleaning, brother," Gromph said.
"That is why the gods gave us magic, brother," Jarlaxle replied in the same smug tone. "To perform the mundane tasks of life.

R.A. Salvatore

#40. The real fun of living wisely is that you get to be smug about it.

Bill Watterson

#41. This is about as simple as games get. There isn't even the paltriest context for what you're doing; you're not exacting revenge on limbless pigs or feeding your pet bitch-lizard. You're a ninja, fruit is flying up in front of you, and fuck fruit. Sitting around all smug on trees and in pies.

Yahtzee Croshaw

#42. The look of a smug teacher is priceless.

Tucker Elliot

#43. She could not be silent even if the men of science, many of them smug experts in white lab coats who promised "better living through chemistry," dismissed her warnings as feminine hysteria.

Mark Hamilton Lytle

#44. We once again man the barricades
alone. Berated by our smug, so-called allies, of the Western Democracies. Islam is going to turn this world inside out before this century is out and you'd better have enough guts to deal with it.

Leon Uris

#45. I am more than willing to be judged by the people you claim to represent. I will let them decide what price I should pay. But please do not sit there with that smug look on your face and expect me to regret the decisions I have made. Because, sir, the truth is I don't.

Jack Bauer

#46. I knew then that I'd give in if he asked. All this fighting-this resisting-it was just because deep down, I knew that all he had to do as say the words and I'd be putty in his hands. Yeah, he could be smug and an all-around ass, but...I still wanted him. Bad. In a way I'd never experienced before.

Kelley R. Martin

#47. Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

P. J. O'Rourke

#48. Let it not be assumed that the artist is so smug as to dislike true criticism. No sincere artist was ever completely satisfied with his labour.

Walter J. Phillips

#49. Too much good fortune can make you smug and unaware. Happiness should be like an oasis, the greener for the desert that surrounds it.

Rachel Field

#50. I love the character of Jaime Lannister. He's just so complex - a character that we love to hate - but it's a lot more complex than hatred. It starts off, and he seems so arrogant and so smug.

Gwendoline Christie

#51. The water near me stirred and then a Sharkface rose up out of it as if on an elevator, slow, his mouth tilted up into a small smile. He stood there on the water perhaps five feet away from me. His eyeless face looked smug.
"Warden," he said.
"Asshat," I replied.

Jim Butcher

#52. One thing lots of Christians do have in common is that they can't help coming across as smug. This winds lots of people up, particularly because famous Christians pronounce on the life of the poor from their very lovely affluent homes filled with their very lovely families and attractive pets.

Jo Brand

#53. For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.

Ralph Nader

#54. I wasn't particularly worried; running is overrated anyway, and sport only makes you sweaty and smug and wears out the knees.

Jasper Fforde

#55. I was so proud of you today," she said, smiling down at him. "And perhaps a tiny bit smug that with all the women swooning and sighing over you, I'm the one you went home with."
Arching a brow, Christopher asked, "Only a tiny bit smug?"
"Oh, very well. Enormously smug.

Lisa Kleypas

#56. Bran grabbed her sleeve, forcing her to look at him. "What in the hell is goin' on with you?" "What is wrong with me? What is wrong with your goats? They're evil! And they're laughing at me! Look at their smug little goat faces! Go on. Look at them!

Lorelei James

#57. I became frustrated early on as a playwright by a kind of smug smallness in modern drama. There was a lack of what I now understand as courage in the work of others as well as in my own work, and I found I was mildly amused or interested by such plays but not deeply engaged or enlightened.

Ellen McLaughlin

#58. The IT kids all wore off-brand Polo shirts and New Balance tennis shoes and the same smug look.

Rainbow Rowell

#59. The people of a city blessed with all the good things nature has can grow smug about who they are, can find complacency in livability polls, as if we did a lot to deserve it.

Robin Cody

#60. I couldn't help but feel a little smug at the prospect of finding my phone this way. I was going to beat Dad at his own game, using the ability he didn't believe I had.

Ha! Take that, you muggle!

K.J. McPike

#61. I punched my hand through the water. I wanted to kick his ass. 'This is between me and Belly.' Smug piece of shit. - Conrad Fisher

Jenny Han

#62. I don't care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.

Lee Child

#63. It's a real smug self-righteous punk kid saying nobody has the right to tell him what to do and how dare you put a sign up saying that I can't go on your property?

Dave Barry

#64. What is feminism? Simply the belief that women should be as free as men, however nuts, dim, deluded, badly dressed, fat, receding, lazy and smug they might be. Are you a feminist? Hahaha. Of course you are.

Caitlin Moran

#65. But even though Ruth's only a hair thinner than I am, she's way on the other side of the fat girl spectrum, looking at me from the safe, slightly smug distance of her own control and conviction.

Mona Awad

#66. Then he looked at the door. It really was very solid, and the lock had a smug air.

Terry Pratchett

#67. Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs.

A.O. Scott

#68. Don't worry about the bloodsucker,' Jacob suggested, and his tone was smug. 'He's just jealous.'
'Of course I am.' Edward's voice was velvet again, under control, a musical murmur in the darkness.

Stephenie Meyer

#69. The scent of Sloth tempts a smug man.

James Boswell

#70. I'm a very smug show-off at heart. I'm altogether too pleased with myself. The big boost for me is to be able to turn out something that I think is pretty marvelous. I'm not in it for money, I'm just in it for the glory.

Alan Moore

#71. He was already telling me about the very important book
with that smug look I know so well in a man holding forth, eyes fixed on the fuzzy far horizon of his own authority.

Rebecca Solnit

#72. Maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom ... is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. -Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain

#73. Was that pity? I think it was. No wonder, I even pity myself. Will the pity make her love me? Make her take me home with her and look after me like the plant? Fucking bastard smug plant.

Rhona Cameron

#74. Cabal took her arm, and they processed towards the cafe like old friends, or at least the sort of old friends in which the lady wears a somewhat smug smile while the gentleman scowls darkly.

Jonathan L. Howard

#75. Thank God I didn't have to see his smug face. Sometimes, I wished I had a pie that I could smash into it. Well, if by pie I meant anvil, then yes. I smiled at the visual. I really was sick.

Emily Cyr

#76. Sheldon Van Auken wrote,"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness." Guess what he said is the best argument against it? "When Christians are sombre, joyless, self-righteous, smug, narrow, repressive - Christianity dies a thousand deaths.

John Ortberg

#77. An enlarged global public society, with its many dissenting and corrective voices, can quickly call the bluff of lavishly credentialled and smug intellectual elites.

Pankaj Mishra

#78. How obvious can it be? ... The purpose of makeup is to defy the degradations of time, and time is just a synonym for death.

Dean Koontz

#79. I think that London is very much like that. I find there's humour in the air and people are interesting. And I think that it's a place which is constantly surprising. The worst thing about it? I think it can be smug and aggressive.

Colin Firth

#80. Ninety-five percent of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct, so don't look so goddamn smug. - GERARD RYDER

Christopher Moore

#81. Squatted beside the fire, with the warmth of it upon his face and hands, he felt a smug contentment that seemed strangely out of place
the contentment of a man who had reduced his needs to the strictly basic
and with the contentment came a full-bodied confidence that was just as out of place.

Clifford D. Simak

#82. I hated the very idea of the eighteenth century, with all those smug men writing tight little couplets and being so dead keen on reason.

Sylvia Plath

#83. So how are we going to get into the temple, anyway? Are we going to fight our way through the Necromancers on our own?'
'No, we're going to find a way to let our friends in, and then we'll let them fight while we stand by and look smug.'
'I like that plan.'
'It has its moments.

Derek Landy

#84. America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

Norman Mailer

#85. Either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow

Ogden Nash

#86. Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

Clarence Darrow

#87. He was the most gorgeous hunk of male it had ever been my privilege to stare at, and darn his hide, he knew exactly what I was thinking.
His smile turned to a smug grin to so full of satisfaction, that I couldn't help myself. I laughed.

Katherine Allred

#88. In the real world, I see conservatives volunteering at adoption agencies, at churches, at bake sales and the local American Legion Post while the only charity a progressive sends is a smug sermon on fair share and what fairness is.

Allen West

#89. Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat

Don Marquis

#90. The loss of transcendence has left in its wake the flotsam of distrustful, cynical Christians, angry at a capricious God, and the jetsam of smug bibilolatrists who claim to know precisely what God is thinking and exactly what he plans to do.

Brennan Manning

#91. M. de Charlus persisted in not replying. I thought I could see a smile flicker about his lips: the smile of the man who looks down from a great height on the characters and manners of lesser men.

Marcel Proust

#92. Secret, smug believers! God never gives you
more than you can bear, they like to say, as if
the strong should be punished for their strength:
We can bear it. So we got it.
But what about my baby? How weak does
a newborn have to be to escape God's burdens?

Brenda Shaughnessy

#93. She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.

Mervyn Peake

#94. Ruth had come so far and lived so lonely only to learn that she was the daughter of a rapist and a murderer. She was half-sister to a smug fool who would probably have used Phoebe as ill as his father, had he been given the chance.

Anita Diamant

#95. The word conservative is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.

Norman Tebbit

#96. Seems like a lot of my generation as a whole is more concerned with being the cool kid; sarcastic, smug, or just all together impenetrable. So anyway, it's not always comfortable to be like, the dorky, happy girl at the party ... but that's me.

Hayley Williams

#97. I've got such a disgusting, wide, smug grin on my face all the time that my friends just want to slap me. I've never been so happy.

Holly Valance

#98. Why do people who are good at families have to be smug and assume it is the only way to live. ... Why can't they be blamed for being bad at promiscuity?

Hanif Kureishi

#99. Did you know I never paid taxes before I came here? The Edema don't own property, as a rule." He gestured at the inn. "I never understood how galling it was. Some smug bastard with a ledger comes into town, makes you pay for the privilege of owning something.

Patrick Rothfuss

#100. You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go."
"The War Poems

Siegfried Sassoon