"Glibness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dumb, indicates your inability to persuade others into your mode of thinking, and using them for your profit by your glibness of tongue. To the dumb, ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... rambled on with the pious glibness of a devotee who is perpetually telling her beads. But the twitching of the myriad wrinkles of her face showed that her mind was still working, and soon she ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... smoking gave him a curious glance, and the proprietor of the establishment, aware of a stranger, felt it to be his duty to learn something of his mission to this small town and of his identity. This was what Renwick wanted, and as the man spoke in German, he told with brief glibness his well rehearsed story, inviting his host to join him in a glass, over which they were presently chatting as thick as thieves. He was a newspaper writer, Renwick said, upon his way to the front, and showed the letter to General Lechnitz. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... took the Patna in tow—stern foremost at that—which, under the circumstances, was not so foolish, since the rudder was too much out of the water to be of any great use for steering, and this manoeuvre eased the strain on the bulkhead, whose state, he expounded with stolid glibness, demanded the greatest care (exigeait les plus grands menagements). I could not help thinking that my new acquaintance must have had a voice in most of these arrangements: he looked a reliable officer, no longer very active, and he ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... not recognized in this community," thought he. Then the glibness and merit of some of their answers surprised and amused him. He, like me, had seldom met an imaginative repartee, except in a play or a book. "Society's" repartees were then, as they are now, the good ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... happened in dialects which nobody understood. People who hitherto had been chiefly remarkable for their ignorance of the past and the slowness of their comprehension of the present fell to foretelling the future, with a glibness which made Isaiah and Ezekiel appear like minor prophets, and a destructiveness which nothing would satisfy out the immediate advent of the final conflagration. Gouty brothers whose own toes were a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Notwithstanding the glibness of his preface, and the scraps of antique information which he is constantly parading, Mr Sheldon absolutely knows less about ballad poetry than any writer who has yet approached the subject. As an editor, he was in duty bound to have looked over former collections, and to have ascertained the originality ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... full of wretched complaints, utterly insincere, attractive perhaps to men, but despised by women. Caleb Garth is a second Adam Bede; and Mrs. Cadwallader, the aristocratic wife of the rector, is a second Mrs. Poyser in the glibness of her tongue and in the thriftiness of her ways. Mr. Bullstrode, the rich banker, is a character we unfortunately sometimes find in a large country town,—a man of varied charities, a pillar of the Church, but as full of cant as an egg is of meat; in fact, a hypocrite ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... the senate: talent has the ear of the house, but tact wins its heart, and has its votes; talent is fit for employment, but tact is fitted for it. It has a knack of slipping into place with a sweet silence and glibness of movement, as a billiard ball insinuates itself into ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is the Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... with common-sense, but often failed to use it. She would fain have said now, "That sounds wonderfully fine; but what does it mean, and how are we to work it?" But unluckily she could not bring herself to say it. And when millions are fooled by the glibness of one man—even in these days of wisdom—who can be surprised at ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... eye; he remembered the incredible conversation, the sense of difficulty and shame under which he had argued some of the common-places of biology and primitive history, as educated Europe understands them; the half patronising, half impatient glibness of the other.— ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... requisites in any home, and suggested the points to be made in regard to the first one,—that of wholesome situation,—Ventilation is next in order. Theoretically, each one of us who has studied either natural philosophy or physiology will state at once, with more or less glibness, the facts as to the atmosphere, its qualities, and the amount of air needed by each individual; practically nullifying such statement by going to bed in a room with closed windows and doors, or sitting calmly in church or public hall, breathing over and over again the air ejected from the lungs ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... data of mine was evidently not holding the close attention of my youthful audience. They annoyed me by frequent pranks and whisperings. No one could have been more surprised at my glibness than I myself, except perhaps my wife, whose attitude of strained attention had not relaxed. I resumed ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough |
