self-approbation

Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to say:

He walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her.

I had no solace from self-approbation: none even from self-respect.

"Yeah," she says, in a diva‑ish parody of self-approbation.

This smug self-approbation was, I think, at the heart of my reconsideration of Jane Austen.