"Flippant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flippant agreement. "And your letting your Fidelia do it is the one redeeming thing you have done in your drawing of her. Just the same, with all your ingenuity you leave one with the firm conviction that she will never, under any circumstances, do such an unconventional ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... is a poor and flippant explanation. To attribute such ideas to men like Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Jamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus, shows either intentional misrepresentation, or ignorance of the philosophy and motives of the greatest geniuses of the later Alexandrian School. To impute to those, whom ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?" ("Reminiscences of a Grandmother," "Macmillan's Magazine," October 1898. Professor Farrar thinks this version of what the Bishop said is slightly inaccurate. His impression is that the words actually used seemed at the moment flippant and unscientific rather than insolent, vulgar, or personal. The Bishop, he writes, "had been talking of the perpetuity of species of Birds; and then, denying a fortiori the derivation of the species Man from Ape, he rhetorically ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... engagements; he did not wish his helpmeet to become a servant of the public. This action incited some discussion, and much acrimonious comment, in her family and among their friends. Johnson upheld his course. Sheridan, in this instance, understood himself and understood the times. He knew of the flippant attitude of the young blades of the town toward all public performers; so he sought to save her, who was so sacred to him, from such insult, insincere adulation, and insinuation as she had heretofore suffered from. They retired to a cottage ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... meeting-place where politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... my lord, said Sir Charles, are those women? Are they not generally of a class with those men? Flippant women love empty men, because they cannot reproach them with a superiority of understanding, but keep their folly in countenance. They are afraid of a wise man: but I would by no means have such a one turn fool to please ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... feeling of amaze most people have who look for the first time at Botticelli's Judith tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. You say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. For answer, I refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... man in the fifties. In the earliest days of the diggings proclamations were issued on diverse subjects, but mostly in the direction of curtailing the privileges of the miners. These were signed, 'C. Joseph La Trobe,' and became known by the irreverent—not to say flippant —description of 'Joes.' By an easy transition, the corruption of the second name of the Governor was applied to his officers, between whom and the spirited diggers no love was lost, and accordingly the appearance of a policeman on a lead was signalled ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... earnestness of their intention. Even Herrick, 'jocund' though his muse was, left behind him some 'Noble Numbers.' And though clerical satire, as furnished by men like John Bramston, Charles Churchill, Samuel Bishop, John Wolcot, and Francis Mahoney, has frequently been flippant both in form and phrase, it has at other times—and especially in the works of Bishop Hall, of Norwich—been very vivid and uncompromising. Hall, indeed, was the Juvenal of his century, filled with the spirit of ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... trusted, spoke of him with great harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... filled with images of low, sensual pleasures; the passing enjoyment of the hour is everything to him; his work, the future, nothing. He carries in his heart, perhaps, the bestial motto of the glutton, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die;" or the flippant maxim of the gay worldling, "A short life and a merry one; the foam of the chalice for me;" forgetting that beneath the foam are the bitter dregs, which, be he ever so unwilling, he must swallow, not to-day, nor yet to-morrow,—perhaps ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... new impulses were chiefly turned into secular and often corrupt channels, in the Teutonic lands they deeply stirred the Teutonic conscience. In 1517 Martin Luther, protesting against the unprincipled and flippant practices that were disgracing religion, began the breach between Catholicism, with its insistence on the supremacy of the Church, and Protestantism, asserting the independence of the individual judgment. In England Luther's ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and float,' he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to forget ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... condition, he determined to withdraw. He opposed the majority of those influential men, who promised him the crown of the kingdom, since they were well inclined to the Spaniards and to foreign domination. From this came that flippant report that Gallinato was king of Camboxa, which was believed by many in Espana; and it was represented in the theaters of that country with acclaim and applause. Some men well versed in affairs of those provinces were ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... body? Or might they not easily have been lost from the body that had been so long tossed by the waves? Elsie's examination did not tend to clear her of suspicion. Her answers to the preliminary questions as to "the nature of an oath" were somewhat flippant and unsatisfactory. As to the chain, she first spoke positively of having seen it, then hesitatingly, ending by saying she was frightened and ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, rather than by wasting our time in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... port and bananas, his joy in early morning celebrations in the chapel of Pusey House, his tea-parties, his delight in debates at the Union, of which he became President, and of his many friendships with undergraduates of a witty and flippant turn of mind. Like many effeminate natures, he was glad of opportunities to prove himself a good fellow. In spite of no heel-taps when the port went round, he won the Hertford in 1907, the Ireland and Craven in 1908, and in 1910 ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... "Don't be flippant, Turkey. Listen to me. I've told you very often that no boys in the school have a greater influence for good or evil than you have. You know I don't talk about ethics and moral codes, because I don't believe that the young of the human animal realizes what they mean for some years to come. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... student of school literature to compare the following selection, which I have written myself with great care, and arranged with special reference to the matter of choice and difficult words, with the flippant and commonplace terms used in the average ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... hopes it may succeed. One would have supposed, from the whole tenor of his policy, from his Radical tendencies, and all that he has been doing lately, that Palmerston would have been the last person to approve of this coup d'etat. Not a bit! He turns upon Normanby in the most flippant manner; almost accuses him of a concealed knowledge of an Orleanist plot—never whispered here, nor I believe, even imagined by the Government of Paris, who would have been too glad to seize upon it as an excuse; says he compromises the relations of the country by his evident disapproval ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... called a voice that was almost flippant. "I never did belong to that great sect whose doctrine is that each one should select—at least, I'm not going to belong to it any ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... an amusing child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is certainly an ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... read, in verses, or photographs, or pictures taken from the journals, something of the history, taste and personal life of those who set them there. Serious girls had written favourite hymns beside their working places; the flippant scribbled jokes and riddles; the sentimental copied love songs that ran to many verses. Often the photograph of a maiden's lover accompanied them, and there were also portraits of mothers and sisters, babies and brothers. Some of the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... "Don't be flippant!" admonished Flame's Mother. "There are reasons ... why I prefer that Flame's first offer of marriage should not ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... character, I know without meeting her that she is some spineless old maid who is afraid to call her soul her own, or that she is a hypocrite like me who wants peace at any price. Now she tells me that Miss Kean is head-strong, self-willed, flippant, slangy, ill-bred, inconsiderate——" ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... purity; let him keep in subjection his speech, his arm, and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free gift of anything not injurious. ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... a fine fellow, Colonel Quaritch, and my only son, but very reckless. Only a month or so before he died, I wrote to him to be careful always to put a towel in his helmet, and he answered, in that flippant sort of way he had, that he was not going to turn himself into a dirty clothes bag, and that he rather liked the heat than otherwise. Well, he's gone, poor fellow, in the service of his country, like many of his ancestors ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said symbolically that Americans have a taste for rocking-horses, as they certainly have a taste for rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world is having a hard ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... flippant by his solemnity. "Surely I can laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy, especially when the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... scale of her kisses, and this was a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, to hide ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... That flippant remark broke the tension and the driver climbed gingerly out and viewed the bare hub. "It's lucky," he ruminated, "I had you fellows in back there. If you hadn't been there I guess she'd have turned ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... out until I get back," warned Jim, as he started on a trot toward one of the rear Pullmans, called a "caboose" by the flippant Bob. ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... earth he ever expected to liquidate the indebtedness he smilingly replied that the deluge would take care of everything that stood in need of liquidation when the date of maturity came round. He was even flippant on the subject. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Mrs. Daintree, is presented with discreet vigour. There is possibly a moral in the fascinating Marmaduke's desperate half-hour in Dr. Ferox's consulting-room. But Mr. HEWLETT never wrote this flippant tale to point a moral. Rather, as I suggest, he seems to have said, "These are samples of several genres in which I can succeed on my head. Some day I will really finish something. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... Grey, raced neck and neck at the head of the vast horde of "fashionable" novel-writers; now all but them forgotten. In Bulwer-Lytton's romances the reader moved among exalted personages, alternately flippant and sinister; a "mournful enthusiasm" was claimed for the writer by the readers of his day. It was the latest and most powerful development of that Byronic spirit which had been so shortlived in verse, but which was to survive in prose until Bulwer-Lytton adopted his Caxtons manner in the middle ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... reminded Ivy that her admission to the side show—the bright silver dime—was given her by Lafe, and that before he had any hope of himself seeing the circus. So she began to feel sorry for her flippant attitude and said in a ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... made some gain through the character of the police reports, which The Sunrise had been developing into a feature. It was not that offensive matters were introduced; the worst cases were in fact rather blinked, but Sewell insisted that the tone of flippant gaiety with which many facts, so serious, so tragic for their perpetrators and victims, were treated was odious. He objected to the court being called a Mill, and prisoners Grists, and the procedure Grinding; he objected to the familiar name of ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... flippant any more, and I had a sense of triumph in forcing his return to sobriety. I wanted to ask him what his name was, once we were back to earth again. But as that seemed a little too direct, I merely inquired where ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... wonder that you will still be talking, signior Benedick: nobody marks you.' Benedick was just such another rattle-brain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased at this free salutation; he thought it did not become a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests upon. And as there is no one who so little likes to be made a jest of as those who are ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... No flippant, light-headed, pleasure-seeking creature of society was Belle Wellington. Few of her sort are, public belief to the contrary notwithstanding. Her famous fight for social primacy, now lying far behind in the vague past, had been a ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... Winchester—once the property of the brothers of St. Cross—she always sent a budget. Few of these lengthy epistles contained anything bearing upon Angela's own existence—except the oft-repeated entreaty that she would make haste and join them—or even the flippant suggestion that Mother Anastasia should make haste and die. They were of the nature of news-letters; but the news was tinctured by the feminine medium through which it came, and there was a flavour of egotism ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... into the saloon with the skipper's bunch of keys; and, calling the steward to help me, went into the after cabin, where Garry O'Neil still remained, wetting the bandage round the head of the French captain, and doing it too with greater delicacy of touch than the most experienced and flippant of hospital nurses. ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... about the popular novelist. He had never married, and the flippant explanation of the fact was that he was under contract with his publishers not to marry until he was fifty in order not to impair his popularity among his bonbon-eating clientele, who wrote him intimate, scented letters. But she knew the truth. She ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... Lady Milborough. It was the end of July, and she would already have been down in Dorsetshire, but for her devotion to this good deed. For, in truth, what she was doing was not occasioned by any express love for Nora Rowley. Nora Rowley was all very well, but Nora Rowley towards her had been flippant, impatient, and, indeed, not always so civil as a young lady should be to the elderly friends of her married sister. But to Lady Milborough it had seemed to be quite terrible that a young girl should be left alone in the world, without anybody to take care of her. Young ladies, according ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... straightforward thrift, good-humour, honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... girl? Age? Manner of speaking? Courteous? Flippant? Well-bred? Slangy? Working girl? ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... a particle flippant this time," Brinnaria declared. "I know I am often flippant, but not now, not a bit. I am just as serious as life and death. I have thought of nothing but suicide since Trebellius conducted me back to my seat. I can't get ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... easier to figure upon a platform than to establish educational institutions, or to preach the Gospel throughout new countries. Those who have been in Canada twelve months can do the former, and sneer at the latter. The flippant allusions of certain speakers at the late Toronto meeting to the Methodists and to Victoria College ... were as unfounded as ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Evadne have in common with these flippant people—scum themselves, forever on the surface, incapable even of seeing beneath, their every idea and motive a falsification of something divine in life or thought? They did not even speak the same language. To their ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to be suspicious. The girl's manner was far too flippant to be genuine, but he would not for the world give her the satisfaction of knowing that ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... I," croaked Professor Biggleswade. He was a little, untidy man with round spectacles, a fringe of greyish beard and a weak, rasping voice, and he knew more of Assyriology than any man, living or dead. A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor's face was furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective. 'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... little, familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that whatever he can do he should be able to do at any time, and to do at once. For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his. How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought to have said, but which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... Darwin; I did not expect to find him support me in the belief that naturalists are made of much the same stuff as other people, and, if they are wise, will look upon new theories with distrust until they find them becoming generally accepted. I am not sure that Mr. Darwin is not just a little bit flippant here. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... In the flippant boastings of Christian mothers there are many who pretend they have the fire of faith and divine love like the brave Machabean woman; but when the sore hour of real separation comes, the soft, loving heart bends ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... bombazine gown of antique cut—its whilom black red-rusty from time's dye. But "Aunt Sallie" was a character in Henrico county; and noted withal for the sharpest of tongues and a fierce pair of undimmed eyes, which now shone under the dingy-brown poke bonnet. Toward her sallied the flippant young ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... all this as no more than a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavory fume, several persons suffer the spirit of liberty to evaporate, if it were not plainly in support of the idea, and a part of the scheme, of "cashiering kings for misconduct." In that light it is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... considerable proficiency in the study of it; nay, they will spend years in learning to translate some of their own good poetry into the hypothetical language—to do so with fluency being reckoned a distinguishing mark of a scholar and a gentleman. Heaven forbid that I should be flippant, but it appeared to me to be a wanton waste of good human energy that men should spend years and years in the perfection of so barren an exercise, when their own civilisation presented problems by the hundred which cried aloud for solution and would have paid the solver handsomely; ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... in which he was penned in order to make them believe that he had given up the idea of making a speech, or had ever intended doing so. He tried to think of something clever to shout back at them, and rejected "Ye men of Athens" as being too flippant, and "Friends, Countrymen, Romans," as requiring too much effort. When he looked up again the Hohenwalds were moving on their way, and as he started once more to scale the side of the theatre the Duke waved his hand at him in farewell, and gave another hand to ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... and tried to look severe and could not, for the simple reason that, while she knew Kennaston to be flippant and weak and unstable as water and generally worthless, yet for some occult cause she loved him as tenderly as though he had been a paragon of all the manly virtues. And I dare say that for many of us it is by a very kindly provision of Nature that all women are created capable ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... great revulsion. Instead of looking forward to the visit, she expected it with dread, and dislike to the pert, conceited, flippant Londoner, who despised her noble brother, and aspired to the notice of Carry Price. Her nervous shrinking from strangers—the effect of her secluded life— increased on her every moment of that dull wet ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Current, in its article headed 'Books of the Month,' devoted about half a page to 'English Prose in the Nineteenth Century.' This notice was a consummate example of the flippant style of attack. Flippancy, the most hopeless form of intellectual vice, was a characterising note of Mr Fadge's periodical; his monthly comments on publications were already looked for with eagerness by that growing class of readers who care for nothing but what can be made matter of ridicule. ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... bondage of their sex, and follow the dictates of their own consciences in dress as in other matters. This class embraces usually the very wealthy and the very learned people who compose the polite and refined circles, as distinguished from the flippant and fashionable ones. All honor to them. Their example is great, and furnishes the chief ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... esteem and relish the society of those who have evidently some stability of character, and whose conversation has in it the evidence of mature observation, combined with sound and virtuous principles, more than you do the flippant nonsense of mere ladies' men, or selfish, ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... the same, and is so clear that even Peter's character is scarcely better known than that of Thomas. He always looks at the dark side. We think of him as the doubter; but his doubt is not of the flippant kind which reveals lack of reverence, ofttimes ignorance and lack of earnest thought; it is rather a constitutional tendency to question, and to wait for proof which would satisfy the senses, than a disposition to deny the facts of Christianity. Thomas was ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... glad to see the national mind beginning to effervesce on art subjects. The most opposite views, the new and the old, the conventional and the truly imaginative, the severely real and the more latitudinarian, the earnest and the flippant, the pedantic and the broad, far reaching—will continue to clash for a season, while a school of American Landscape is, we think, destined to rise steadily through the chaotic elements, and to reach a height of excellence to which the conscientious efforts of all advocates of the highest ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... Pascal evidently met at the hotel of the Duc de Roannez, and with whom he formed something of a friendship, was the well-known Chevalier de Méré, whom we know best as a tutor of Madame de Maintenon, and whose graceful but flippant letters still survive as a picture of the time. He was a gambler and libertine, yet with some tincture of science and professed interest in its progress. In his correspondence there is a letter to Pascal, in which he makes free in a somewhat ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... "Don't be flippant, Hugh. There's something strange about Neil lately. He didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper here. He looks at me as if he didn't know who I was when I speak to him on the street sometimes. There's ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... taken in to supper by Mr. Upjohn, who was routed out from the parlor for the purpose, very red in the face, and still convulsed with laughter. Mrs. Bruce may have suspected this to be designed as a neat way of cutting her out, but there is no knowing to what lengths a flippant widow's imagination will not go, and any way Mr. Upjohn quite atoned afterward for any temporary neglect, by paying her the most assiduous attentions right in the face of his wife, who apparently did not care a straw, and only thought her husband ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten selfhood—in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... wanted to know as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The girl's neatly tailored corduroy suit and her flippant but charming millinery augured well. Should he step gallantly forward and inquire in sympathetic tones as to the cause of her woe? Should he carry chivalry even to the lengths ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... I've been here for hours. Is this the way you attend to your business? [He puts his hat and stick on the table, and perches himself with a vault on the clerk's stool, looking at her with every appearance of being in a specially restless, teasing, flippant mood]. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... has uttered his valedictory message. The document is very much like the man. He disapproves of the reports of the Chief of Police and Clerk of the Police Commissioners, because they declare that liquor saloons and brothels cannot be closed, and he even reproves the latter for his 'flippant manner' of dealing with the subject. Barnum must have his joke or two, withal, and he can no more subsist without his fun than could a former Mayor of this city. He ventures to allude in this solemn document to the management of the New York and New Haven Railroad ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... of bearing the stripling beauty of John Oxon would have seemed slight and paltry, a thing for flippant women to trifle with. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... creature so strenuous as the anti-aircraft gun come by the flippant name of Archie? Well, once upon a time the Boche A.-A. guns were very young and had all the impetuous inaccuracy incident to youth. British airmen scarcely knew they were fired at until they saw the pretty, white ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... Reverend Matthew and Mrs. Cotton were the incumbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the incumbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. Yet, unoriginal though the dominant clergywoman of fiction may be, it cannot be denied that St. Paul's injunctions in connection with the subjection of wives did not commend ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... whirling, wild dance of atoms. It has the perpetuum mobile quality, and older masters would have prolonged its giddy arabesques into pages of senseless spinning. It is quite long enough as it is. The second theme is better, but the appoggiatures are flippant. It buzzes to the finish. Of it is related that Chopin's cat sprang upon his keyboard and in its feline flight gave him the idea of the first measures. I suppose as there is a dog valse, there had to be one for ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... sneers from disappointed or flippant persons, a seat in the House of Commons still remains one of the highest prizes of citizen life. When membership becomes a business, bringing in say L6 a week, the charm will be gone. As things stand, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... objects: her manners were not governed by her mind but were solely directed by external circumstances. At court, humble, resigned, patient, attentive: at balls, masquerades, gaming-tables, and routs, gay, sprightly, and flippant; at her country seat, reserved, austere, arrogant, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... an inauspicious landing. With September begin the north-east winds, and we had an average experience that afternoon. Was it not a farce—a great deal more than a farce: a saucy, flippant imposition on the tender mercies of Providence—for an individual who could not endure a few hours of tossing on the bosom of the ocean without becoming deadly sick, to imagine that he possessed the hardihood to establish a home even in this lovely ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... directed to acquaint you that My Lords do not see their way to comply with your suggestion, inasmuch as to do so would be to open a serious door." This delightful formula, with its dread suggestion of a flippant door and all the mischief to which it might lead, is daily employed to check the ardour of Ministers who are seeking to advance the benefit of the race (including their own popularity among their constituents) by a judicious ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... conceive of himself as an apostle of liberty, an outpost of the revolutionary army, and none so well as he could tip the barb with biting sarcasm and satire. Heine's personality was full of seemingly inconsistent traits. He was both fanciful and rational, serious and flippant, tender and cynical, reverent and impious; and he could be at once a patriot and an alien. He was, to use his own phrase, an "unfrocked romanticist"—at once a brilliant representative of the poetry of self-expression and personal caprice, and an exemplar and prophet of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... carries too many guns for you, eh?" was the flippant remark with which Captain Hallam ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... there. We studied a good deal over that sign. The other man, the tailor, had too many words for the board space. My advertisin' man wanted it to be, first, 'Higbee's Hams, That's All.' But, I don't know—for so big a space that seemed to me kind of—well—kind of flippant and undignified. Then I got it down to 'Eat Higbee's Hams.' That seemed short enough—but after studying it, I says, What's the use of saying 'eat'? No one would think, I says, that a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa-cushions with—so off comes ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... questioned him as to what he had heard. His excuse for not personally communicating the story which he had allowed to drift to the governor's ears by chance, was that he thought that what he had heard must have come to King's knowledge also: a supine and almost flippant explanation of neglect in a matter which was serious if the allegations were true. He affirmed also that one of the French officers had pointed out to him on a chart the very place where they intended to settle. It was in what is now known as Frederick Henry Bay, in the south ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... contentious parties to be reconciled, lest the spirits of the dead should be offended at unseemly disputes between those who ought to be at peace. The name of the dead must not be mentioned until his body has decayed, lest a want of sorrow should seem to be indicated by the common and flippant use of his name. A native would have the deceased believe that he cannot hear or speak ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... her—Diana—at Rapallo—under her father's influence and bringing up? The notion spurred her pride as well as her loyalty to her father. She began to hold herself rather stiffly, to throw in a critical remark or two, to be a little flippant even, at Miss Vincent's expense. Homage so warm laid at the feet of one ideal was—she felt it—a disparagement of others; she stood for those others; and presently Marsham began to realize a hurtling of shafts in the air, an ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to all of this that she had a fearful habit of emphasizing certain words in a senseless and flippant style, and of waving a lace kerchief constantly, after the manner of a flag, it may be imagined with what joy I ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... originally formed part of the draft of the Covenant itself. This Resolution, as well as the Covenant, was the subject of extensive comment in the English and Scottish Press. Some opponents of Ulster directed against it the flippant ridicule which appeared to be their only weapon against a movement the gravity of which was admitted by Ministers of the Crown; but, on the whole, the British Press acknowledged the important enunciation of political principle which ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... was acting in accordance with Governor Holden's orders, and he refused to obey the command of his Honor. The lawyers of the imprisoned men then asked for further process of the Judge to punish Kirke for his disregard of his orders; but Judge Pearson passed over his contemptuous message as the "flippant speech of a rude soldier," and held that his powers were exhausted, as the Governor had ordered Kirke to seize the men, and the judiciary could not contend with the Executive, and in this he was sustained by the other members ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... for a time successful, and her army earned a slight reputation for cruelty also; but Edward, son of the late Duke of York, embittered somewhat by the flippant death of his father, was soon victorious over the Lancastrians, and, in 1461, was crowned King of England at a good salary, with the use of a large palace and a good well of water ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... I am strolling in search of the cool air." She bowed and smiled at some passing friends. She seemed very careless, very flippant. She was not at all the impetuous, mischievous Chiquita he ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... incongruously named when he was given the name of Harry. It is a flippant name. It calls up merriness, youth, bravado, color, song. Barnes was forty-nine, streaked with grey, heart-sick, pallid, shuffling, timorous, sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease paint had made his skin flabby; and three decades of what the grease paint ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... his cloak, and without knocking opened the door. The countess was still lost in thought. She still gazed at the blank wall, still heard the flippant voice which had poured out its profanity as though life had been a jest ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For coquetry ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: "He talks almost like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, though sorely tried and harshly used by ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... ourselves—that she is not precisely what we should call a nice girl! The tone of her letter was decidedly flippant. Miss Briskett is hoping much from your influence. You two girls will naturally come a good deal into contact, and I hope you will do your utmost to set her an example ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... no doubt, trivial, as I have said above, and may be regarded by many even as flippant; but the fact is that a successful study of the Chinese people cannot possibly be confined to their classics and higher literature, and to the problem of their origin and subsequent development where we now find them. It must embrace the lesser, not to say meaner, details of their everyday ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... her sister. "You should not talk like that, Grizzel; it is flippant, and you know what Papa says ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... such a charming combination of wit and tenderness, of brilliancy, and reverence for the things that matter.... It is bright without being flippant, tender without being mawkish, and as joyous and as wholesome as sunshine. The characters are closely studied and clearly limned, and they are created by one who knows human nature.... It would be hard to find its superior for all-around excellence.... No one who reads ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to his flippant colleague. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the Quattrocentisti as enlarged the sphere of artistic action, by going out of the conventional circle of holy families, nativities, and entombments. There is a dash about Gentile, a fresh, cavalier-like gentility, quite surprising, and altogether his own. A showy, flippant frivolity in several of the figures enlivens and refreshes us with its mundane sparkle and energy. One of the three kings, in particular,—a young, well-dressed, vivacious, goguenard-looking personage, with a very glittering pair of spurs, which his groom is just unbuckling, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the subject of dandies and their nature from a deeply philosophic starting-point, for, like Carlyle, I recognize the vast significance of the questions involved in the philosophy of clothes. Let no flippant individual venture on a jeer, for I am in dead earnest. A mocking critic may point to the Bond Street lounger and ask, "What are the net use and purport of that being's existence? Look at his suffering frame! His linen stock almost decapitates him, his boots ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that he entertained for the medical profession any deeper respect than for any other class of persons engaged in earning a livelihood, but now he remembered that the best physicians he had known had seemed to look upon their life-work as a consecration of themselves to humanity and the most flippant among them, as men, had always a dignity apart from themselves when they became the physician, and he knew, too, that as a class they were jealous of the good name of their profession and sensitive to a degree ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... the rim," suggested Zeke, ignoring the flippant manner of the Go Ahead Boy. "What do you see about ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... The flippant and vaunting style of this letter is in good keeping with the spirit which prompted the firing upon a flag of truce. By what circumstance the commander of the Warrior ascertained that this white flag was intended as a decoy, is left wholly unexplained. As he and his men, were ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... replied to Prince Schwartzenberg's flippant remark on the bad French of English diplomatists by the apology, "that we had not enjoyed the advantage of having our capital cities so often occupied by French troops as some of our neighbours," he uttered not merely a smart epigram but a great philosophical truth. It was ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... big shows over two or three miles or more of front, little shows over a thousand yards or so, while five hundred yards is merely "cleaning up a trench." It may seem a flippant way of speaking, but it is simply the application of jargon to the everyday work of an organization. An attack that fails is a "washout," for not all attacks succeed. If they did, progress would be ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... with them, which mystified LINCOLN B. SWEZEY not a little; he "allowed it was darned personal," but further than that his light did not penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary member; it was not fashionable, and did not seem to want to be, and SWEZEY thought it flippant. There he asked, "What are the Souls, anyhow?" "Societas omnium animarum," somebody answered, and SWEZEY exclaimed "Say!" "They are a congregation of ladies. Their statutes decree that they are to be bene natae, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... full dress concern with all its plating and brown leather, and in use it is as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could not bring myself to it. But a Bishop might ride ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... said Meldon. "I quite believe you. And as for the murder of Simpkins being a joke, I assure you it's nothing of the sort. I may be flippant—several people have called me flippant—but I draw the line at making jokes about murder. It's a serious subject. In fact I've more than once hesitated about going into this business at all. It's mainly for your sake ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... that we are putting flippant expressions into the mouth of Rainiharo, we may explain that the Malagasy define an ungrateful man as the "son of a thunderbolt," and sometimes as the "offspring of a wild-boar," because—so they say—the young of the wild-boar, when running by the side of its dam, continually gets in advance and ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... honor, my lord, that does not often befall men of my humble condition," said the master of the house, in the flippant utterance of a vulgar cockney; "but I thought it would be more agreeable to your lordship, to receive the a—a—here, than in the place where your lordship, just at this moment, resides. Will your lordship please to rest ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... brother might come back at any moment, and all I thought of after that was what I should say to him. I had an idea that I ought to congratulate him, but it seemed a brutal thing to do. I had not made up my mind when I heard him coming down. He was laughing and joking in what seemed to me a flippant kind of way, considering the circumstances. When his hand touched the door I snatched at my book and read as hard as I could. He was swaggering a little as he entered, but the swagger went out of him as soon ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... Peter, but not so many as here. Gulian told me that there are some three thousand slaves owned in the city and its environs. But our negroes go to church and pray; they do not dance, and I know Chloe would be shocked with Miranda's flippant ways. She was ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln
... when they heard this accomplished traitor professing friendship towards themselves, and zeal for their service; they might be disgusted at the flippant sophistries by which he strove to defend his unexampled villainy. But far different feelings must have been awakened, when he went on to unfold the gigantic scheme of conquest, to which, as he pretended, the invasion of Sicily was no more than a ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... ignore that last appeal. What my answer was you will not care to know; but if it was brief, it was at least not flippant; and before writing it, I, in my turn, appealed for help, only my appeal was made upon my ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Gorki published a brilliant impressionistic sketch of Coney Island, and called it "Boredom." Gorki at Coney Island is like Dante at a country fair. Thomas Carlyle was invited out to a social dinner-party once upon a time, and when he came home he wrote savagely in his diary of the flippant, light-hearted conversation among the men and women about the festive board, saying, "to me through those thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat glaring." What a charming guest he must have been on that ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... dinner, privately, Dicky learned that Mrs. Portheris had for some time been seriously considering the effect of his, to her, painfully flippant views, upon the opening mind of her daughter—the child had only been out six months—and that his distressing announcement of this morning left her in no further doubt as to her path of duty. She would always endeavour to have as kindly a recollection of him as possible, he had really been very ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... she says, but, 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better by ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... sorry for a moment that he had considered me to have been somewhat flippant. I had no doubt he had some right to think so, so I very sincerely and seriously told him that such a thing as pulling anybody's leg had never entered my mind. Indeed, very far from it; that my experience since ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... contracted features, which put him in mind of the head of a skinned rabbit—another with an immense flat unmeaning face; and the third, though better-looking than her two companions, was a silly little flippant miss in her teens, rejoicing in a crop of luxuriant curls which swept over her shoulders as she returned Frank's polite bow—when the squire introduced him to the assembled company—as much as to say, "I'm not for you, sir, at any price; so, pray don't for a moment ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... detach the exponent as the patroness of a whole universe of inferior souls. This is what everybody would mean in objecting to these notes (supposing them to be published), that they are too smart and too flippant. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... is a wonderful man, the most extraordinary I ever saw, but there is more of the mountebank than of greatness in all this. It may do well enough for Sefton, who is as ignorant as he is sharp and shrewd, and captivated with his congenial offhandism, but it requires something more than Brougham's flippant ipse dixit to convince me that the office of Chancellor is such a sinecure and bagatelle. He had a levee the other night, which was brilliantly attended—the Archbishops, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, a host of people. Sefton goes and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... ordinary tone of voice, this would have sounded rather flippant, but Dorry uttered the words with ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... two daughters of the "architect and land surveyor." Charity is thin, ill-natured, and a shrew, eventually jilted by a weak young man, who really loves her sister. Mercy Pecksniff, usually called "Merry," is pretty and true-hearted; though flippant and foolish as a girl, she becomes greatly toned down by the troubles of her married ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the Examiner and your letter. You are very good not to be angry with me, for I wrote in indignation and grief. The critic of the Daily News struck me as to the last degree incompetent, ignorant, and flippant. A thrill of mutiny went all through me when I read his small effusion. To be judged by such a one revolted me. I ought, however, to have controlled myself, and I did not. I am willing to be judged by the Examiner—I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... a school meeting like a theatre," said May, laughing. "Will it be considered unduly flippant on my part to go in this muslin? or ought I to wear black, as ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... She shook herself and shivered slightly. Then she sat down in the chair which Weldon had just left vacant. "It is bad manners to have nerves, Captain Frazer. Forgive me first, and then tell me something altogether flippant, to ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... lineal glories rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out a crime, Poor culprit bards ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... was light, almost flippant, and Rose, in her turn, wondered at the woman and her marvellous self-control. At twenty-five, Madame Bernard married a young French soldier, who had chosen to serve his adopted country in the War of the Rebellion. In less than ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... think I have, and for them a respect withheld from any woman of the rostrum who points to their misfortune and calls it emancipation—to their need and calls it a spirit of independence. It is not from these good girls that you will hear the flippant boast of an unfettered life, with "freedom to develop;" nor is it they who will be foremost and furious in denial and resentment of my statements regarding the morals of their class. They do not know the whole truth, thank Heaven, but they know enough ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... varied by nobles and knights of the court, by foreigners from many lands, by soldiers and men-at-arms from the Tower, by countrymen and sailors. Their amusement was sometimes turned into anger by the flippant remarks of the apprentices; these varlets, perceiving easily enough by the manner of their attire that they were from the country, were not slow, if their master happened for the moment to be absent, in indulging in remarks that set Geoffrey and Lionel into a fever to commit a breach ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... volume of discourses (not, I am thankful to say, by a clergyman of either of the national churches), and I came upon a sermon or lecture on Woman. You can imagine the kind of thing it was. It was by no means devoid of talent. The writer is plainly a clever, flippant person, with little sense, and no taste at all. The discourse sets out with a request that the audience 'would kindly try to keep awake by pinching one another in the leg, or giving some nodding neighbour a friendly pull of the hair;' and then there is a good deal about Woman, in ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... really mean that, did you?" He was boyishly hurt at her flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had always been hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears were brimming suspiciously. They were ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... at the soft fair-haired creature who was uttering all this worldly jargon in a tone that would have been flippant if it had not been so childish. She asked if ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like heresy to question their sincerity. But now—whether it was the slight hint dropped by Sir Francis Vesey on the previous night as to Mrs. Sorrel's match-making proclivities, or whether it was a scarcely perceptible suggestion of something more flippant and assertive than usual in the air and bearing of Lucy herself that had awakened his suspicions,—he was certainly disposed to doubt, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the candid nature of the girl for whom he had hitherto entertained, half-unconsciously, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... I don't approve of a flippant attitude toward life, it is far better than accepting dangerous and destructive doctrines—such as ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... about little fishes, doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of outdoors. All one admires in the Barbizon men - the lyric feeling of a Corot or the more dramatic note of a Rousseau - is missing in the modern Italian landscape as seen in these pictures. They are flippant in their catchy technique and in the ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... of this statement is not at all affected by Joseph's flippant suggestion that by this Napoleon probably meant that he would read his enemies to sleep with his Homer, and then use his sword to cut their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated by his ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... dei Medici, this flippant, egotistic artist and despot, has at last been broken the long spell of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance has sung no longer of knights and of spring, but of peasants and of autumn. An immoral and humanistic time, an immoral and humanistic man, have had at length a heart for the simpler, ruder ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee |
