"Flippancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could not help laughing. She spoke, with such a whimsical flippancy, and she looked so ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... indignation of the true, virtuous, upright citizens of the commonwealth is aroused into vigilance for the dear-bought liberties of themselves and fathers, and that spirit of intolerance and persecution which has driven this people time and time again from their peaceful homes, manifests itself in the flippancy of rhetoric for female insult and desecration, it is time that I forbear to hold my peace, lest the thundering anathemas of nations, born and unborn, should rest upon my head, when the marrow of my bones shall be ill prepared to sustain the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... be, from which the laughter never quite vanished, even as the ripple of the ocean's edge tries how small it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a word of; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged from that black ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... her eye over the article she saw that it was quite in harmony with the general tone and policy of the paper which catered to the jaded throngs of the Tenderloin. Truth had been cunningly distorted; flippancy, sensationalism, and a salacious double meaning ran ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... It was as though she spoke of something very sacred. Then very musically Lady Drogheda laughed, and to the eye she was all flippancy. "La, William, I can't bury myself in the country until the end of time," she said, "and make interminable custards," she added, "and superintend the poultry," she said, "and for recreation play short ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... in his arms in that little arbour beside the river. The rhythmic lapping of the waves was the only sound that stirred the balmy air. He seldom spoke then, for his voice would shake whenever he uttered a word: but his impenetrable armour of flippancy was pierced through and he did not speak because his lips were pressed to hers, and his love had soared beyond the ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... head the minister would ask, with a groan, whether he was unprepared; and the whole congregation would sigh out the response that Mr. Dishart had hit it. When he replied audibly to the minister's uncomfortable questions, a pained look at his flippancy travelled from the pulpit all round the pews; and when he only bowed his head in answer, the minister paused sternly, and the congregation wondered what the man meant. Little wonder that Davie Haggart took to drinking ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... 'let us have no flippancy, I beg.' And so, with a dead lift as it were, I got rid of him. He left the room muttering, 'But to read it through—three times, ten times, for all one's life?' And I was obliged to confess to myself ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... had not been Railsford's only support at present, he would have resented this professional flippancy more ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... at his mother's flippancy. Modern colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,—food, cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... Belmaine with the degree of flippancy which is considered correct for immortal verse, the Bible, God, etc., in these days. And Ethelberta replied, lit up by a quick remembrance, 'It is a good time to talk of Milton; for I have been much impressed by reading the "Life;" and I have decided to go and see his tomb. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Quair, with a malice so buried under flippancy that the deliberate effrontery passed for it with Graylock. Which amused Quair for a moment, but the satisfaction was not sufficient. He desired that Graylock ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... I don't think you're quite alive to what it is that is growing up about you. Flippancy is out of place. I abominate flippancy." ("Well, dash it, it's my house!" Sabre thought.) "This Garden Home is not a speculation. It's not a fad. It's not a joke. What is it? You're thinking it's a damned nuisance. You're right. It ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... comparatively simple process to affix the regulation labels of philosophy; to say that Mr. Carlyle is a Pantheist in religion (or a Pot-theist, to use the alternative whose flippancy gave such offence to Sterling on one occasion[1]), a Transcendentalist or Intuitionist in ethics, an Absolutist in politics, and so forth, with the addition of a crowd of privative or negative epithets ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... these nicknames," Miss Scudamore said. "There is a flippancy about them of which I ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the sceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to change their ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or care for his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat the superficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century. Two things have been specially insisted on. We have been told that if we are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our minds from the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a later theology, ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... charms of a perfect face, a low and modulated voice and a mind that never mistook flippancy and triviality for wit, he met her everywhere on common ground, and she wondered why she had not seen the attractions of this grave, quiet young man long before! Surely such a conquest—and she was not certain yet that it was achieved—was worth a half-dozen ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... acute distress the mother of a little son. For all unexpectedly, suddenly, her house built of cards of carelessness, flippancy, thoughtlessness, had fallen round her. She struggled among the ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... seventy-eight in smaller print. He opens by a "Dedication to the Ladies," beginning, "Lovely creatures"—an exordium which any woman of spirit would resent, the perfidy and disrepect of his intentions being obvious in those words alone; and he continues in the tone of flippancy which was to be expected. His arguments are weak in the extreme, and his satire is pointless. The only hit is his scheme for a female university, with Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Afra Behn in the chair of literature. His summary of woman's character ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... And he can be hardly blamed for this. The savages had some idea of the Great Spirit and of a future world. David was as uninstructed in those thoughts as are the wolves and the bears. Many years afterward, in writing of this occurrence, he says, with characteristic flippancy, interlarded with ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... Flippancy, flippancy, of course. London would be better (for your friends) as a residence for you, than Wittemberg can be; and for that, and no other account, I could be sorry that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... who have been estranged from the Churches is worth considering. We see that Mr. Gosse was driven from them in his youth by their sectarian narrowness and unwillingness to face intellectual inquiry; Mr. Shaw by the flippancy of the Irish Church, its class prejudice, its false respectability; Mr. Lowes Dickinson, among other reasons, because at a time when men are learning to adapt the processes of Nature to their ends, when it becomes them to "dwell less and less ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... treated serious crimes against mere order or property with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's window, he was ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... mocked Him." That was the real spirit behind the eager curiosity. And I, too, may mock my Lord! I may bow before Him, and array Him in apparent royalty, while all the time my spirit is full of flippancy and jeers. I may lustily sing: "Crown Him Lord of all," while I will not recognize His rights on a single square foot of the soil of my inheritance. And this it is to be the kinsman of Herod. And this, too, will be the issue; the heavens will be as ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... attempts the most nonchalant air, tells Mr. B. to proceed and state his case. This was not the first time that he had been requested to perform this incipient step of the law's demand, and he does it with such astuteness and flippancy, and how he had been wronged and persecuted by the plaintiff, that tears, unbidden, are ready to glisten in your eyes. Injured innocence and your sworn duty to your profession inspire courage and induce you to take his case. Later on the tyro will have ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... why you lay so much stress on Puritanism," he said. "What has Puritanism resulted in? Its whole struggle has come to an end in doubt and agnosticism and flippancy. Intellectual curiosity has taken the place of spiritual stress; ethical casuistry or theological amusements seem to me to stand instead of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... Jeffrey, it was a most unrelenting tribunal for literary culprits, as well as a determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle of his fellow-creatures—that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... place in the castle, besides this corridor, where WE can see him in safety, you know; and, as for the hour,—it must be when all the Signors are asleep, if that ever happens!' 'You may mention these circumstances to the Chevalier, Ludovico,' said she, checking the flippancy of Annette, 'and leave them to his judgment and opportunity. Tell him, my heart is unchanged. But, above all, let him see you again as soon as possible; and, Ludovico, I think it is needless to tell you I shall very anxiously look for you.' Having then wished her good night, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... so did Geraldine Seagrave. The majority instinctively watched him; so did she. In close acquaintance the man was a disappointment. It seemed as though there ought to be something deeper in him than the lightly humourous mockery with which he seemed to regard his very great talent—a flippancy that veiled always what he said and did and thought until nobody could clearly understand what he really thought about anything; and some people doubted that he thought at all—particularly the thoughtless whom ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... and he could not have heard with patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the law of nations, and one of the richest repositories of all law, should be taught a new code by the ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of La Fayette, with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild, profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... declaration with a frown. If it were true he should not show that flippancy; if it were not ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... of his flippancy. Suddenly, looking at her, he saw that the upward lifting of her face was misery and not scorn. His heart grew tender for everybody. He turned and was gentle with Miriam, whom he had neglected ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... her sister. "You should not talk like that, Grizzel; it is flippant, and you know what Papa says about flippancy." ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Blackett), certes there is poesy and genius. I don't say this on account of my simile and rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields [4] and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft [5] and Pratt have or may kidnap from their calling into the service of the trade. You must excuse my flippancy, for I am writing I know not what, to escape from myself. Hobhouse is gone to Ireland. Mr. Davies has been here on his way ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... concluded with this amiable remark, I looked round for Cousin John, and rode away from her in disgust at her flippancy, and sick at heart to think of such a man as Captain Lovell wasting his smiles on such a creature. To be sure, he only said three words to her, for when I looked round again at the carriage he was gone. There is something very ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy; she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking people. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn at last, and so will the mild, pacific literary man. Her last outrage ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Owen's flippancy disturbed Barry, and he spoke shortly, whereupon Owen smiled meaningly, and Barry went out ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... pleasure in the masterpieces of Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, and, in later days, Spanish literature. In parliament he had hitherto opposed all popular measures, sometimes with insolent flippancy. He was appointed a lord of the admiralty in 1770. He gradually came under Burke's influence and showed signs of remarkable talents in debate. His speeches were unprepared, his statement of a case ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... it was the instrument used by a number of very clever young men to put forward the ideas current in the more liberal section of the upper classes, with much occasional vigour and a large infusion of common-sense, but also with abundant flippancy and superficiality, and, in a literary sense, without that solidity of workmanship which is ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... complete was his overthrow. Disraeli said that he had watched him during Johnny's speech, and doubted whether the hanging of the head, etc., was merely acting; but before he had spoken two sentences he saw he was a beaten fox. Many said that the extreme flippancy and insolence of his manner was more remarkable than ever, from their being evidently assumed with difficulty. I have always thought Palmerston very much overrated as a speaker; his great power arose from ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... against me, no doubt," Winter went on with his eager talk. "An acute man—rather too acute, don't you think, for a Father of the Church? That habit he got into of smashing the arguments of the heathen, gave him a kind of flippancy in talking of ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... We hear eloquent orations about the merits or demerits of socialism, without any effort being made to define clearly for what end it is useful or useless. It is meaningless to claim that socialism is good, if we do not know for what it is good, and the whole flippancy of the discussion too often becomes apparent when we stop and inquire what purposes the speaker wants to see fulfilled. We find a wobbling between two very different possible human purposes, with the convenient scheme of exchanging the one for the other, when the defender ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... smote him that the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... extended; and although she exhibited upon many occasions that affectation of extreme shyness, silence, and reserve, which misses in their teens are apt to take for an amiable modesty; and, upon others, a considerable portion of that flippancy, which youth sometimes confounds with wit, Mistress Margaret had much real shrewdness and judgment, which wanted only opportunities of observation to refine it—a lively, good-humoured, playful disposition, and an excellent heart. Her acquired follies ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... quite appalled as she entered the schoolroom, not only at Mervyn's fulfilment of his threat, but at Bertha's flippancy and shrewdness. Hitherto she had been kept ignorant of evil, save what history and her own heart could tell her. But these ten days had been spent in so eagerly studying the world, that her girlish ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a widow," I replied, a bit stiffly, resenting his flippancy of tone. "She was the wife of this Henley's half brother, but I have every reason to believe ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... to be thought satirical often runs through whole families in country places, to the great annoyance of their neighbours. To be struck with incongruity in whatever comes before us does not argue great comprehension or refinement of perception, but rather a looseness and flippancy of mind and temper, which prevents the individual from connecting any two ideas steadily or consistently together. It is owing to a natural crudity and precipitateness of the imagination, which assimilates nothing properly to itself. People ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... talkativeness &c adj.; garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux de mots [Fr.]; copia verborum [Lat.], cacoethes loquendi [Lat.]; furor loquendi [Lat.]; verbosity &c (diffuseness) 573; gift of the gab &c (eloquence) 582. talker; chatterer, chatterbox; babbler &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the want I allude to. A German ought to write it; for it is, probably, only a German that would have the requisite learning. A German only, too, is likely to treat the mighty subject with boldness, and yet with veneration; without the shallow flippancy of the Frenchman, without the timid sectarianism of the English. It would be a noble task, to trace the winding mazes of antique falsehood; to clear up the first glimmerings of divine truth; to separate Jehovah's word from man's invention; to vindicate ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you mustn't be spiteful," Mary shook her head a little at him. "I've thought that I felt just a touch of—of, well—flippancy in you once or twice lately. You mustn't deceive poor Mrs. Scott. It's that that is so wonderful about Imogen. I really believe that she could make her give up the part, if she set herself to it; ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Adam ever made use of a written language at all; since we find no mention made of any in the sacred history."—Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 5. A certain late writer on English grammar, with admirable flippancy, cuts this matter short, as follows,—satisfying himself with pronouncing all speech to be natural, and all writing artificial: "Of how many primary kinds is language? It is of two kinds; natural or spoken, and artificial ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... wonder whether there was any capacity in the nature of such as she for suffering at all comparable to that which I was describing. My companion's sympathy was subtle and soothing. There was in my tale an element of the grotesque which might have tempted a vulgar nature to flippancy. No smile crossed my companion's lips. He turned away his head, on pretense of watching the receding figure of the old peasant-woman. When he looked at me again, his deep dark eyes were suffused with a moisture which enhanced the mystery of their ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... was a tiny touch of irony in his manner towards her, contrasting sharply with Winifred's heavy, unleavened solicitude and care. The child flickered back to him with an answering little smile of irony and recklessness: an odd flippancy which made Winifred only the ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... at that period one of the tutors, and some time later an associate judge of the Supreme Court. This great statesman and lawyer of after-days was a most delightful teacher. He took a fancy to my Jack, and, as we were inseparable, put up with my flippancy and deficient scholarship. Jack's diary says otherwise, and that he saw in me that which, well used, might make of me a man of distinction. At all events, he liked well to walk with us on a Saturday, or to go in ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... were put into plain words. "Ye must ken," said a godly old Scotchman, "that the Almighty may often have to do in His offeeshial capacity what He would scorn to do as a private individual!" I quote this not with flippancy but with stern indignation. That is baldly what ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... scandalized: "You don't seem right well," she said as if in excuse for such flippancy. "I do believe you've got a fever. I'm going straight home and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... it, but now its note was discordant. It was good Arkansas journalism, but this was not Arkansas. Moreover, the next to the last line was calculated to give offense to the hermits, and perhaps lose us their advertising. Indeed, there was too lightsome a tone of flippancy all through the paper. It was plain I had undergone a considerable change without noticing it. I found myself unpleasantly affected by pert little irreverencies which would have seemed but proper and airy graces of speech at an earlier period of my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Geoffrey overcome by such a journey because he had missed two meals, and she smiled at her aunt's dismal picture, answering her with a flippancy which increased the elder lady's indignation, "Mr. Thurston is not ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... under the title of The Cost of Wings (HEINEMANN), I am bound to record my conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of The Dop Doctor. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, which tells of a young wife goaded to hard words by her constant anxiety for an aviator-husband. There is some genuine feeling here; but the climax, in which the pair ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... of that grace to this Samaritan woman, in her ignorance, in her profligacy, in her flippancy. He offers it to you. His offer awoke an echo in her heart, will it kindle any response in yours? Oh! when He says to you, 'The water that I shall give will be in you a fountain springing into everlasting ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Myers ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of Guenevere, was "absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent admiration." The duke was the glad ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... distinguishes this scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents especially that element in human nature which is perhaps the meanest and most ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... open the seance with a few moments of earnest, silent meditation—a few moments of dwelling "in the silence," as some have well called it; and these moments should be observed in a religious and devotional state of mind, all frivolity and flippancy being carefully avoided. If some present feel moved to prayer, then by all means let the prayer be made, for there can scarcely be a more fitting occasion for reverent prayer than a properly conducted seance. A few moments of hymn-singing may also ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... a saucy creature. I know, if I do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... are your manners, child? What would Garston say if he heard your flippancy?' But by the way he stroked his beard and looked at me, I saw he was not displeased. No one would have taken him for my uncle who had seen us together, for he was a young-looking man, and I was old for ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... impudent, &c. &c. except Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not think there was a man in the kingdom who would pretend ignorance, &c. &c. except Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not conceive that one man in the kingdom would utter such stupid flippancy, &c. &c. except Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not think there was one man in the kingdom who, &c. &c. could so utterly show his ignorance, combined with conceit, &c. as Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not believe there was a man in the kingdom so perfect in Mr. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... back and puzzled by the flippancy of the man from whom he had expected at least the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... like, in excuse of my own flippancy, to assume the same detachment, and to regard this ballet-theme as having practically no relation whatever to Biblical history, but being just one of many themes out of Oriental lore, mostly secular, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... CHRIST's sake——LORENZO, take your fingers out of that plate!' was a grace once said in our hearing, but evidently not in that of the spoilt boy, 'growing and always hungry,' who could not wait to be served. We should prefer to such insensible flippancy the practice of an old divine in New-England, who in asking a blessing upon his meals, was wont to name each separate dish. Sitting down one day to a dinner, which consisted partly of clams, bear-steak, etc., ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... to the mortal page, the unspeakable solemnity of the theme, which our volunteers are rudely striving to trace upon their country's bosom with their blood, and our women are steeping in their tears, ought to drive all flippancy shuddering from the lines in which sarcasm itself should be measured and awful as the deaths which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... with a look on his face that mingled astonishment and injury, sank back in his chair. He never attempted anything that even faintly suggested flippancy, and he was unappreciative of this tendency ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... had been wholly engrossed in the study of war and military matters, until at last he came to believe that there was no commander in the whole Empire who could stand against him. His father was much disquieted by this overweening conceit, and the flippancy with which he spoke of such a serious thing as war, and solemnly declared that if ever Kua was appointed general, he would bring ruin on the armies of Chao. This was the man who, in spite of earnest protests from his own mother and the veteran statesman Lin Hsiang-ju, was now sent ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... trammels of the law. Clarendon was forced to submit to daily encroachments upon regularity of procedure, which found encouragement from the King. His personal dignity was injured, and his temper was daily chafed, by the insults of those who carried their insubordination and their flippancy to the Council Chamber, where he could ill brook their presence; and they did so under cover of the secret sympathy of the King. Day by day he found his own influence more surely undermined; and it was none the less irksome because he saw ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... entered—pale, her eyes showing traces of recent tears. Susie was absent, having no heart for food or company, and preferring to sit beside her mother for the brief time which remained to her. Even Meeteetse Ed shared in the general depression, and therefore it was in no spirit of flippancy that he observed as he replaced his cup ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... conversation were many and varied. What he was pleased to term his inner moral consciousness told him he ought to be shocked at its flippancy; the rest of his mental make-up was distinctly refreshed. Besides, a certain tension in the social atmosphere suggested that Miss Matilda was about to go forth to battle, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... belief not so much in the localisation of organs as in their general development. Here Leech, who hates street music, professes horror at the possible development of organs, and wishes they were localised where nobody could hear them. Paying no heed to this flippancy, Professor explains gravely that peculiar formations incline to special acts, and that the development of certain cranial organs—vulgarly termed 'bumps'—may be lessened or augmented in the course of early schooling. 'Well, I do believe in "bumps,"' says Shirley, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... advertisement. He admired his own toilet effect in a mirror from a genuine sense of pleasure in a thing good to look upon, just as he would feel a sensuous appreciation of the sight of a well-bred, well-matched, well-turned-out pair of horses. Behind his careful political flippancy and cynicism one might also detect a certain careless sincerity, which would probably in the long run save him from moderate success, and turn him into one of the brilliant failures of his day. Beyond this it was difficult to form an exact appreciation of Courtenay ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... from under the sanctuary—you see I have remembered the words—the trees for medicine and healing, even the fish,—why I never thought there could be anything like that in the Bible! You chose it purposely, of course?" The young man did not reply for an instant. A hint of flippancy in the speech of his companion seemed to create a barrier ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... regard to "some minor appointments in Ohio." The Colonel went with him. When Colonel Sherman spoke of the seriousness of the Secession movement, Lincoln replied, "Oh, we'll manage to keep house." The Colonel was so offended by what seemed to him the flippancy of the President that he abandoned his intention to resume the military life and withdrew from ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... monologue the pair had strolled far afield with their cigars, and Langholm was beginning to puff his furiously. At first he had merely marvelled at the other's coolness; now every feeling in his breast was outraged by the callousness, the flippancy, the cynicism of his companion. There came a moment when Langholm could endure the combination no longer. Steel seemed disposed to discuss every aspect of the subject except that of the investigations upon which his very life might depend. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... Alhambra under a guard, in his gallows garb, like a hooded friar; but with head erect and a face of iron. The Escribano was demanded in exchange, according to the cartel. The once bustling and self-sufficient man of the law was drawn forth from his dungeon, more dead than alive. All his flippancy and conceit had evaporated; his hair, it is said, had nearly turned gray with fright, and he had a downcast, dogged look, as if he still felt the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... nothing but the personal advantage and the zigzag impulses of the chance surroundings. He who has never learned obedience can never become his own master, and whoever is not his own master through all his life lacks the mental soundness and mental balance which a harmonious life demands. Flippancy and carelessness, haphazard interests and recklessness must result, mediocrity wins the day, cheap aims pervade the social life, hasty judgments, superficial emotions, trivial problems, sensational excitements, and vulgar pleasures ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... leave it with me to correct? I will let you have it again to-morrow," he went on. "Flippancy depreciates a work; serious and conscientious criticism is sometimes praise in itself. I know a way to make your article more honorable both for yourself and for me. Besides, I ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... excuse can be offered for this vacillation and procrastination in an affair of such vast urgency? "We had not the means to equip a sufficient force," his lordship may reply, in his usual strain of bitter flippancy. And why had he not the means? The extravagance and profligacy of his Government had deprived him of them; his exchequer was empty; and had he, or they, the boldness or the virtue to propose what has been demonstrated to have been the only mode of meeting the exigency, an income-tax? In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... better opinion of him," he said, disregarding her flippancy. "I don't like him, but I've never suspected him of being ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... Kennaston, also, were somewhat unenthusiastic in their parting. Kennaston could not feel quite at ease with Margaret, brazen it as he might with devil-may-carish flippancy; and Kathleen had by this an inkling as to how matters stood between Margaret and Billy, and was somewhat puzzled thereat, and loved the former in consequence no more than any Christian female is compelled ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... wished to lose herself, had been entering with a feverish intensity into the spirit of their lively chatter; but now, instead of responding with some prompt, defensive flippancy, she colored high and was silent. A clock above them struck five. "Oh, I must get on," she cried; "I'm down here, you know, to ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... when I was a little girl, and I used to nurse her—I fancy it was our little Sally's death that killed her; she took to her bed after the funeral, and never left it till she went to her own," said Mary Ann, with unconscious flippancy. "She used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was going to little Sally, and I remember I was such a silly then, I brought mother flowers and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally with my love. I put them on her pillow, but the flowers ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... Annan came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... elapsed, during which Olga continued to annoy the learned small man with her irreverent flippancy, and Mrs. Carew seemed to fascinate the two gentlemen who hovered about her like eager moths around a lamp. Then the host and Congressman came in together, and Regina saw her guardian cross the room, and murmur something to his fair ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... this flippancy, he fell silent for a space, and together they moved on, through the thick of the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... intoxicating melody, I, feeling pretty sure of my game, whispered half playfully in her ear: 'Countess, what would you say, if I should propose to you?' 'Propose and you will see,' she answered gravely, while those big black eyes of hers flashed at until I felt half ashamed of my flippancy. Of course I did not venture to put the question then and there, although I was sorely tempted. Now that shows that she has spirit, to say the least. What do ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... weekly which lost no opportunity of throwing scorn upon Yule and all his works would be a much more profitable conquest. He succeeded in transferring his services to the more flourishing paper, and struck out a special line of work by the free exercise of a malicious flippancy which was then without rival in the periodical press. When he had thoroughly got his hand in, it fell to Mr Fadge, in the mere way of business, to review a volume of his old editor's, a rather pretentious and longwinded but far from worthless essay 'On ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... but it was not infectious as respected the occasion of it. He shook his head mournfully, and said, "The flippancy of rude health—the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... or—perchance a lover's intrigue. He is in great repute for his smile that is transcendent in its beauty, but one can never tell what note it rings, whether true or false; its condiment may be of malice, hate, reserve, flippancy, deception. And one looks on and fears to take part in his mirth, for the reason one knows not what lies ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... understand that this is no time for flippancy? Can't you make him see it, sir?" she ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... girl's sorrow was genuine, in strange contrast to Flavia's voluble flippancy. She laid her hand affectionately ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... him to find persons of quality introducing materialism as a new fashion, and atheism as the liveliest of condiments. The perfume of good manners only made what he took for bad principles the worse, and heightened his impatience at the flippancy of pretensions to overthrow the beliefs of a world between ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... a vulgar catch-penny little book, made up, like Peter Pindar's razors, to sell. To me it seems that to dismiss even the wildest and foolishest opinion which makes way, as if it were a mere absurdity that does not deserve notice, is to show a certain flippancy and shallowness. Do not all thoughtful men pass through certain stages of intellectual growth, and are not the convictions of our youth held very differently from those which we find ourselves swayed by in our later years? The beliefs ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... first of the French writers of comedy to treat love seriously,[107] but, though he freed the theme from the malice or flippancy with which it had been treated by his predecessors, he was nevertheless a stranger to that intense and passionate love that we have come to associate with the romantic drama. Some have gone so far as to say that it is not amour at all ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... sat a long time by the fire. He reflected on the events of his first few hours in that supposedly uninhabited solitude where he was to be alone with his thoughts. He pondered the way and manner of the flippant young man who posed as a lovelorn haberdasher, and under whose flippancy there was certainly an air of hostility. Who was Andy Rutter, down in Reuton? What did the young man mean when he asked if he should "close up shop"? Who was the "he" from whom came the orders? and most important of all, what was ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... word, an appeal to the love of amusement, of display, and of glory,—quiets the murmur about to rise against interference with human rights or usurpation of the national will. Political interests of the gravest character are treated with flippancy: one writer calls the formation of a new government Talleyrand's table of whist; and another casually observes that "tous les gouvernements nouveaux ont leur lune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... may seem strange to insist upon, but one has only to mark the injury to everything noble, of an atmosphere of flippancy and constant strain after smart language. There is nothing in flippancy to have awe of—any one can learn the knack of it—but it is foolish and degrading, while seriousness is the color ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... not, of course, proper subjects for conversation at all times, or at any time in a spirit of levity and flippancy. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... the entr'acte, surrounded by the paint-pots, the intrigues, and the wild confusion of the dressing-room, Millicent had been able to commune with herself, and to foresee and take arms against the peril of an anti-climax. By sheer force, ingenuity, vivacity, flippancy, and sauciness, she lifted her lines to the level, and above the level, of the rest of the piece. She carried the audience with her; she knew it; all her colleagues knew it, and if they chafed they chafed in secret. The performance went better and better as the end approached. The ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... life, the outward conditions perfect, the June sunshine, the wealth of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at hand the homes and haunts of the inspired singers whom I especially reverenced. I was most fortunate in my companionship, the bearing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar with their masterpieces and we felt for them a like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the hour and place, but in his mind plainly ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... it were uttered designedly, was a masterpiece. To Mr. Rainsfield it had an air of flippancy that indicated to him a total suppression of any tender feeling; and he congratulated himself that his young friend had had sufficient good sense to see the justice of his remarks to him with respect to Eleanor. To Mrs. Rainsfield it appeared in a different ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... and flippancy made her speedily the vogue in London among a certain class. You saw demure chariots at her door, out of which stepped very great people. You beheld her carriage in the park, surrounded by dandies of note. The little box in the third tier of the opera was crowded with heads ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rose and left the room. I was seized with one of those sudden and unaccountable panics, and from sheer embarrassment—my mood was far too tragic to admit of flippancy—blurted out, 'You must come to America, Mr. President, as soon as all this trouble is settled, and see how ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... not, it wasn't any pipe-dream!" said Morgan, so earnestly that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. "It was a woman's voice, but it wasn't the voice of ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... a shiver through Mrs. Branscome with a remembrance of the desecration of a gift which she had cherished as a holy thing. She clung to flippancy as ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... "Not its flippancy, father," said Mary, quickly, fearing that her mother would be displeased. "It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my flippant ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of the sex (zabzaba), will have guarded himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. "Some women," says he, "might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda or the whiskey straight. ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... against some of the most valuable, and now generally received, works! When an author recollects the pert conclusion of Dr. Kenrick's review of Dr. Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides,[90] he need not fear the flippancy of a reviewer's wit, as decisive of ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... imagined could be turned from sacrament to circus by the indecorous behavior of the groom and the flippancy of the bride. She, above all, must not reach up and wig-wag signals while she is receiving, any more than she must wave to people as she goes up and down the aisle of the church. She must not cling to her husband, stand pigeon-toed, or lean against him or the wall, or any ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Highness pursues the question with an unwise flippancy;"— remonstrated the professor with a pained, forced smile. "If an idiot or a madman were unfortunately born to a throne, a regency would be appointed to control state affairs, but the heir would, in spite of natural incapability, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... hard to believe that this is indeed the Gay of Polly and The Beggars' Opera. True, the dialects of his Peachum and his Lockit are in some sort one; his gentlemen of the road and his ladies of the kennel rejoice in a common flippancy of expression; there is little to choose between the speech of Polly and the speech of Lucy. But in respect of the essentials of drama the dialogue of the Beggars' Opera is on the whole sufficient. The personages are puppets; but they are individual, and they are ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... this flippancy, though the pupils of her gray eyes grew large with anger. She walked the length of the room ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, modern and insolent now overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the naive quality that made dear the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness, flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of doctrinaires. They eagerly dispute Wagner's meanings, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Matheson let the flippancy pass. He continued steadily: "I felt I could not do my big work under the constant friction of our married life, and my life in the financial world. I felt you longed for ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... the disagreeable situation that has arisen is improved by flippancy," said Mrs. Riversedge; "a good ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... deficient in the politics myself; and I have torn up—don't be angry, waste paper has risen forty per cent., and I can't afford to buy it—all Buonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise on Corn, and one or two more light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited the flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking. Mary says you will be in a damned passion about them when you come to miss them; but you must study philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... very ill-timed remark, Tommy," answered Miss Elting in a severe tone. "I am surprised at your flippancy. I really believe you enjoyed ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... Somers airily. 'There are so many fair models among native Englishwomen. Still, blondes are useful property!... Well, well; this is flippancy. But I ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... in the world," returned Quinton Edge, and Esmay smiled involuntarily at frankness so unblushing. Whereupon and curiously enough, Quinton Edge became suddenly of a great gravity, the flippancy of his accustomed manner falling from him as a cloak drops unnoticed from a man's shoulders. He rose to his feet, strode to a window, and stood there for perhaps a minute looking out upon the moonlit waters of the Lesser ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... in the dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a mondaine. She had the social gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the glissey mortel n'appuyez jamais attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has mystified and delighted in all great hostesses since the days ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... war with France, and asserted that he would vote for the impeachment of that minister who should enter into such a war, for the purpose of re-establishing the old despotism of the Bourbons. The deep earnestness of Burke, who next spoke, contrasted strangely with the flippancy of Sheridan. Burke said that this day was indeed a trial of the constitution. He agreed with an honourable gentleman, in regarding the present as a momentous crisis; but for reasons different from those which he had assigned. Liberty and monarchy, he continued, are connected in this country; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... gallants who came a-borrowing of their fathers, but the influence of my dear daughters—there, the beautiful one is Dorothea, the eldest, and that other, who takes more after me, is Henrietta—their influence is doing much to counteract the wave of flippancy and materialism. But fancy any one still reading my Philosophical Conversations—my 'prentice work. I had no idea of printing it. I lent the manuscript to Lessing, observing jestingly that I, too, could write like Shaftesbury, the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... given in the journal of John Dunton, a cockney bookseller, who visited Boston and other towns of Massachusetts with a cargo of pious publications, suited to the Puritan market. Making due allowance for the flippancy of the writer, which may have given a livelier tone to his descriptions than truth precisely warrants, and also for his character, which led him chiefly among the gayer inhabitants, there still seems to have been many who loved the winecup and the song, and all sorts ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and it will no doubt be reprinted in book form. I repeat what I said in my first paragraph as to the major part of it, but I assert that the objectionable part of the manifesto is so objectionable in its flippancy, in its perversity, in its injustice, and in its downright inexactitude as to amount to a scandal. Mr. Shaw has failed to realize either his own importance or the importance and very grave solemnity of the occasion. The present is no hour for that disingenuous, dialectical bravura which might ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... His flippancy broke down on those words, with one sincere and tragic note that touched me through my contempt. Watching, he saw this, and catching at self-control, he caught also at the straw of ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to a wedding reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—"a wife-beater" he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly: this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to him—for a lurid instant he saw Winifred's husband wielding ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... but might be better than they are found, and none but have virtues which deserve attention, at least as much as their failings; for these reasons this section would not have found a place in my observations, had not some persons, of much more flippancy than wisdom, given very gross misrepresentations of the Irish nation. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I take up the pen on the present occasion; as a much longer residence there enables me to exhibit a very different ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... skirt with a history, touching and teaching, is no theme for flippancy; so, by your leave, I will unwind my story tenderly, and with reverential regard for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... essential to let go the stone at the right moment, otherwise it will hurl you. The game is almost identical with the commoner game of "bowls," except for the language, which is worse. The term "wood" is inappropriate and must be avoided, as the use of it may lay you under a charge of ignorance or flippancy, which you will find almost impossible to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... This gentleman, a connexion by marriage, and author of some now forgotten novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as 'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... "Yes'm," and withdrew. Then Mrs. Duncan resumed her questioning with manifest eagerness, but with as much of seriousness as Duncan himself had shown. There was no touch of flippancy, or even of lightness in either her words or her tone. For Mrs. Will Hallam was a woman of deep and tender feeling, a woman to whom all holy ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... except the judiciary, are saturated in corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life, flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word, business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and money-making ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... a stone, and presently appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... suppose, to see that this letter is a d—d impertinence, filled with an outrageous flippancy, a deliberate affront, an implication that our marriage does ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to honour and grim actuality, he realises with dismay his breach of trust—he, who in their earlier days in London had called out that sprightly little emigre merely for the vulgar flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own across the face—ay, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. It must be an offer, though the wording seemed to indicate he ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... and often spoken; nor can it ever be praised more than it deserves. However "within its magic circle none dare walk"[84] but those who have naturally quick and refined perceptions, assisted by careful cultivation. Narrow indeed is the boundary which divides unfeminine flippancy from the graceful nonsense which good authority and our own feelings pronounce to be "exquisite."[85] The unsuccessful attempt at its imitation always reminds me of Pilpay's fable of the Donkey and the Lapdog:—The poor ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... diversion of tearing them to pieces, still flattering herself that her present wit and drollery would prevail with Ormond, as she had found it prevail with most people against an absent friend. But Ormond thought upon this occasion she showed more flippancy than wit, and more ill-nature than humour. He was shocked at the want of feeling and reverence for age with which she, a young girl, just entering into the world, spoke of a person of Lady Annaly's years and high character. In the heat of attack, and in her eagerness to carry her ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the flippancy which she had brought ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... not to flinch from the goad. "A charming and proper sentiment," she cried with well simulated flippancy. "The marriage of Mr. Mark Bower will be quite a fashionable event, provided always that he secures the assent of the American gentleman who is paying his future wife's expenses ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Erewhonians some twenty years earlier. It all came back to him, as the storks had done, now that he was again in an Erewhonian environment, and he particularly remembered how one youth had inveighed against our European notions of heaven and hell with a contemptuous flippancy that nothing but youth ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... Tale of a Country Town, is a very serious volume. It has taken four people to write it, and even to read it requires assistance. Its dulness is premeditated and deliberate and comes from a laudable desire to rescue fiction from flippancy. It is, in fact, tedious from the noblest motives and wearisome through its good intentions. Yet the story itself is not an uninteresting one. Quite the contrary. It deals with the attempt of a young doctor to build up a noble ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... improvement of the two races, I should say, Mr. Blithers." He smiled. "It would in no way impair the credit of Graustark, however. It is what you might really describe as a family secret, if you will pardon my flippancy." ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon |
