In 1922 Lewis published Babbitt, a study of the complacent American whose individuality has been sucked out of him by Rotary clubs, business ideals, and general conformity.
Cynicism is a fate that seems to lie in wait especially for companies like this bakery, producers of well-known branded products whose managers have grown complacent in the prestige that universal recognition of the brand confers on them, like aging prima donnas too comfortable in their fame.
Least likely to say: "We see well only with the heart" (Saint-Exupéry) Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) A caustic and playful writer whose Candide savaged the complacent optimism of his age; his prolific oeuvre embodied the 18th-century ideals of enlightened despotism, cosmopolitan elitism and cultural elevation; he campaigned vigorously for religious toleration.
But Cronenberg shows there are quasi-Oedipal tensions between the two men: one is a prosperous and complacent gentile whose wife has money, the other is a Jew, maintaining a large family in a small apartment; his life is more difficult and finds the younger man puppyish and naïve.
Manookian had a grandiose sense of self and didn't hesitate to challenge people whose ideas he considered complacent or ignorant.
There was the "complacent" Lord Grabiner, for whose "veneer of establishment credibility" and shocking apparent docility, Green paid a lot of money.
THE THEATRE FLAT BROKE Oct. 23 Horton Foote's comedy "Dividing the Estate," about a complacent Southern family whose finances suddenly crumble, moves to the Booth in a Lincoln Center Theatre production after a well-received Off Broadway run last year, at 59E59.
This is what dinner conversation with good people sounds like in a society whose politicians, years ago, became complacent about the rule of law, where they sold themselves cheap to the highest bidders and where political factions became so polarized and consumed with hatred of each other that they would not let any law, any norm, constrain their behavior.
"We got complacent," said DeLaurie, whose team never trailed.
As Blakeslee details, once wolves were removed from Yellowstone, game wardens had to become wolves themselves, culling the growing, complacent elk herds, whose overgrazing was causing significant damage to the park's ecosystem.
