Words similar to smugness

Example sentences for: smugness

How can you use “smugness” in a sentence? Here are some example sentences to help you improve your vocabulary:

Michiko Kakutani writes in the New York Times that although Gates "delineates his characters' predicaments with a pitch-perfect ear," the collection suffers when "a certain authorial smugness creeps into the narration," which leaves the reader "feeling superior to his characters, irritated with their solipsistic mind games and self-inflicted wounds."
Though it has flaws (Egoyan's decision to romanticize the father-daughter incest blunted the force of the ending), The Sweet Hereafter has none of the insufferable smugness found in so much indie film in this Sundance era.
A man characterized by envy and cynicism, superficial wit and subterranean rage, ceaseless introspection and emotional detachment, insufferable smugness and barely concealed self-loathing, Jack is a bundle of apparent contradictions.
"American cockiness over its display of military technology in the Gulf and Yugoslavia, and smugness over its longest post-war prosperity streak, can blind it to a need to cultivate its relations with Russia beyond promoting democratisation.
In short, I am not what is known in the trade as “copy proud”:my feelings about my own writing range from occasional smugness with a job well done to abject frustration and misery at my inability to express myself articulated in writing (given the amount of time and resources available).