"Flummery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... them because I felt them, and I hate flummery and thick- headedness. I was as respectful as I could be; but there were things about the trial I didn't like—irregular things, which the Admiral himself, who ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... what dolts be men!" quoth Mistress Rachel Enville, addressing herself, to all appearance, to the dish of flummery which stood before her. "They think, poor misconceiving companions! that we be all a-dying for them. That's a man's notion. Moreover, they take it that 'tis the one end and aim of every woman in the world to be wed. That's a ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... for a moment that the English Church will follow the Irish Establishment. In the whole great universe of shammery and flummery there is no such idea floating. Everybody knows that the Church of England as an endowed establishment is doomed, and would be, even if its hand were not perpetually hacking at its own throat; but as was observed of an old lady in gloves in one of my Christmas books, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... she was simple—and by that I mean she's so wise you'd better look out or she'll find you out. She's as dangerous as a bomb. She has a scent for essentials. She can tell 'em from all our flummery. I'm afraid of her, and I'm afraid for her! Remember the fate of the father in the Erl-King! He thought, I dare say, that he was doing a fine thing for his child, to hurry it along to a ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... obliterated every trace of resentment in his little friend's bosom. Thoroughly as Gammon thought he had armed Titmouse against the encounter—indeed, at all points—'twas of no avail. Tag-rag poured such a monstrous quantity of flummery down the gaping mouth and insatiate throat of the little animal, as at length produced its desired effect. Few can resist flattery, however coarsely administered; but as for Titmouse, he felt the delicious fluid softly insinuating itself ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... all this flummery, went her own way upon an even keel. She watched him closely too, but not covertly. She stared him in the face, and imitated his delicate way of eating. Once or twice she called him 'Mr. Rogers,' for this had ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... for ambassadors, but they were idle flummery to the czar, who had come to see, not to be seen, and who did his best to keep out of sight. He visited the fine town hall, inspected the docks, saw a comedy and a ballet, consented to sit through a great dinner, witnessed a splendid display of fireworks, and, most interesting ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... food much used in Scotland, the north of Ireland, and other parts. It is made of oatmeal, and sometimes of the shellings of oats; and known by the names of sowins or flummery.—F.] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... converse, colloquy, conference, confabulation, chat, parley, causerie, parlance, confab; dialogue, interlocution; soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... rightfully inherit the primacy amongst them, and can be dedicated through this right to live the life of a god, to be so worshipped and flattered, so cockered about with every form of moral and material flummery, that he or she may well be more than human not to be made a fool of. Then, by a like prodigious stroke of volition, the inhabitants of the enchanted island universally agree that there is a class of them which can be called out of their names in some sort of title, bestowed by some ancestral or ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... "Flummery!" observed the cynic, "I had a selfish motive: I wished to appear generous—I wished to be praised—I wished to attach you to my service, in order to employ you, when the time came, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Funeral" the author impaled, with many a merciless slash of the pen, the hypocrisy and vulgar flummery that characterised the whole gruesome ceremony of conducting to its earthly resting-place the body of a well-to-do sinner. For the average Englishman loved a funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though he had Irish blood ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and she gave a shrill sort of cackle. "Now I tell you there isn't much fun in living to be old, and I seem to have lost my spunk. It's just a kind of drowsing life away. Now tell me what you did! My, but this toast tastes good! Better than all their flummery." ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... things.... Creative work appeals to me wonderfully. Things seem to come rather easily.... But that, and that sort of thing, is just a day-dream. For a time I must do journalism and work hard.... What isn't a day-dream is this: that you and I are going to put an end to flummery—and go!" ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... ever do—at this present I don't—I shall walk straight up to her like a man, and say, 'Mistress Cicely (or whatso she be named), I love you; will you wed me?' And if she cannot see an honest man's love, or will not take it, without all that flummery, why, she isn't worth a pail o' sea-water: and I can get along without ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... bring a white gown. The Queen's coming to the Bath, and a lot of folks are trying to make her come on to Berkeley; and if she do, a whole parcel of young gentlewomen are to be there to courtesy to her, and give her a posy, and all that sort of flummery. And Mum says she'll send us ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... on. He managed in this way to turn out the regulation column of flummery, but I knew it could not last. And now he had come to be a sot and an outcast. Worse has befallen him. He screwed up his nerve to write an article in the old style, and I helped him by acting as amanuensis. He violently attacked an editor who had ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... writes rapidly.] "'Monsieur le Baron Flamet de la Billardiere died this morning of dropsy, caused by heart disease.' You see, it is just as well to show there are hearts in government offices; and you ought to slip in a little flummery about the emotions of the Royalists during the Terror,—might be useful, hey! But stay,—no! the petty papers would be sure to say the emotions came more from the stomach than the heart. Better leave that out. What are you ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... comes Mr. Winter, collector of taxes, And you must all pay him whatever he axes; And down on the nail, without any flummery; For though he's called Winter, his ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... and kept the English Commons the chief power in the State, a feeling that their own world was good enough and a little better than any other because it was their world, had kept the old Forsytes singularly free of "flummery," as Nicholas had been wont to call it when he had the gout. Soames' generation, more self-conscious and ironical, had been saved by a sense of Swithin in knee-breeches. While the third and the fourth generation, as it seemed to him, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... war still continue—Stocks continue to fall—is that good or bad for the Ministers? The little boys are come home to me to-day. I could not help showing in my answer to Mr. T's letter, that I was hurt at his conduct,—so I have got another flummery letter, and the boys, who (as he is pretty sure) will be the best peace-makers. God bless you, my dear Dick. I am very well, I assure you; pray don't neglect to write ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... now—lamenting his old way of life and making no effort to recapture it! Let him either accept the situation, make up his mind to it and stop complaining, or else offer it some effective resistance—sweep the flummery out of his life—clear decks ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... desperate bounds he gave, rising at the bit as though he would come back over if the hold was not relaxed, and the fourth effort bringing him to the opposite kerb-stone, he up again with such a bound and impetus that he crashed right through Messrs. Frippery and Flummery's fine plate-glass window, to the terror and astonishment of their elegant young counter-skippers, who were busy arranging their ribbons and finery for the day. Right through the window Hercules went, switching ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... for it that she will be happy enough,' said Rupert; 'she has been living on flummery for the last half-year, and you cannot expect her to be contented with mutton-chops ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I should say," cried Lubin, who had no want of plain common-sense; "a pleasant, good-humoured smile makes a face look nicer than all that flummery there." ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... when he picked up the newspaper and the daily instalment of a cardinal's tour through Ireland caught his eye, he remembered that Ellen had sent for a theologian.... His eyes went down the columns of the newspaper and he said, "All the old flummery. Ireland's fidelity to her religion, etc., her devotion to Rome, etc.,—to everything," he said, "except herself. Propagations of the faith, exhortations to do as our ancestors had done, to do everything except make life joyous and triumphant." Looking across the page his eye was caught ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... produced since the days of Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of the Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no very high celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from the flummery in Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Garden, or the broad, exaggerated farce at the Adelphi or Olympic? No: it may still have its place on the London stage when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, and it can never compete with ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... a fool of me, Sir Guy. What's a plain old man like me to do among all your lords and ladies, and finery and flummery? I'll do no ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Flummery and females!" interjected the Admiral. "I hope, Sir, it is not your intention to spoil my Lady Sefton's digestion with this ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... approach to a full and serious treatment of its main positions is to be found in Dugald Stewart's lectures. The great rhetorical art-critic of our own day refers to it in words of disparagement, and in truth it has none of the flummery of modern criticism. It is a piece of hard thinking, and it has the distinction of having interested and stimulated Lessing, the author of Laokoeon (1766), by far the most definitely valuable of all the contributions to aesthetic thought in an age which was not poor in them. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... to be even with the red-faced man, who had ordered me about last night; but whichever way it was, I could have laughed fit to split every time I looked at that odd little bundle by my side and thought of it as it was last night, all dressed in flummery and rustling like the leaves. Nevertheless, I made no mention of it; and, as much to her surprise as mine, we passed through Frejus without any one stopping us, and drove right through the night without let or hindrance. ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... father, taking his pipe out of his mouth and laying it down; 'that's the way they used to talk to us in the old days. Dashed if I don't think it's the best way after all. You know where you are. The rest's flummery. All on us as takes to the cross does it with our eyes open, and deserves all ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... me, and a great deal of the general conversation, it is much more amusing. Seleem Effendi jokes me a great deal about my blunders, especially my lack of politikeh, the Greek word for what we should call flummery; and my saying lazim (you must, or rather il faut), instead of humble entreaties. I told him to teach me better, but he laughed heartily, and said, 'No, no, when you say lazim, it is lazim, and nobody wants ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... upon the middle Of his legs fell Twaddle And astonished Mr. Twiddle, Who began to lift his noddle. Feed upon the fiddle- Faddle flummery, unswaddle A new-born self-sufficiency and think ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... I apprehended. There was no flaring, no flummery, nor bombastical pretensions, but a dignified return to my obeisance, and an immediate recurrence, in converse, to the important duties incumbent on us, in our stations, as reformers and purifiers of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... President of the United States—of ninety million people, of what was in nearly every material sense the first power in the world; and yet Harley, when in Europe, seeking information from the youngest and least attache of a legation, had been compelled to go through an infinite amount of form and flummery. The ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... anonymous indulgence of the luxury of scorn never gave any man a very bad character, even if he were, as Lockhart was, personally shy and reserved, unable to make up for written sarcasm with verbal flummery, and, in virtue of an incapacity for gushing, deprived of the easiest and, by public personages, most commonly practised means of proving that a man has "a good heart after all." But when he complicated his sins by editing the Quarterly at a time when everybody ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... whole business. Only, if some decent elector gets his head broken in the spree, you will plaster him up, or sew him up, as may be necessary. Up to the day of election you will not show yourself, and only put in your appearance when they come to fetch you with music and flags and all that flummery, and beg you to come and kindly accept the mandate, which the chairman of the party is dying to hand over to you. Then at the banquet you offer a toast to his Majesty the King, and afterward you ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Chief Justice Chew.) "About four o'clock we were called to dinner. Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweetmeats of twenty sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., with a dessert of fruits, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... ever read.' However, before being put on the stage it was submitted to Dryden, and by him and others prepared for representation, so that it was well fathered. It was successful enough, and Congreve thus found his vocation. In his dedication—a regular piece of flummery of those days, for which authors were often well paid, either in cash or interest—he acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, who appears to have taken the young ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton |
