"Flippancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the profession of medicine. Patients will bore you to death with long and tedious histories of all their ailments since the days when they chewed a gutta-percha teething-ring, and to appear impatient is to court a reputation for flippancy and want of attention. Great men may hold up their hands and cry "Enough!" But small men must sit with pencil poised, apparently intensely interested, and listen through until the patient has exhausted his long-winded recollections of ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... know I wasn't keeping in practice, in order to become a good protector?" he murmured, but she was not in the mood for flippancy, and continued: ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Love is always beautiful. Not even marriage can always spoil it, though it very often does. Well, Joan," he went on flippantly, though the tickle of her lashes against his palm somehow disturbed his flippancy, "I'll go into the subject with you one of these days, when the weather isn't so beautiful. It's really a matter of law, property rights, and so forth; a practice variously conducted in various lands; it's man's most studied insult to woman; it's recommended as the lesser of two evils by a man ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... 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 ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... the most unflinching. But 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
... 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 All-merciful from the dread creeds ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... should not attack that too? They tell one, that if we began hostilities in Europe, Spain would join the French. Some believe that the latter are not ready: certain it is, Mirepoix gave them no notice nor suspicion of our flippancy; and he is rather under a cloud—indeed this has much undeceived me in one point: I took him for the ostensible mister; but little thought that they had not some secret agent of better head, some priest, some Scotch or Irish Papist-or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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
... doctor had not been Railsford's only support at present, he would have resented this professional flippancy ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... those 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 ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... warnings may teach, they undoubtedly teach that the greatest care should be taken by those who venture to discuss this subject or investigate such discussion. Let both writer and reader therefore cast aside any flippancy of spirit, also any preconceptions or prejudices, and say like young Samuel of old: "Speak, Lord; thy ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... during 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. ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... old admiration for Robin Featherstone, which had been already shaken, vanished that day. The Spirit of God, who had touched her heart through the preacher, led her to see that folly, vanity, and frivolity were utterly out of concord with Him. And then came a feeling of regret for the unkind flippancy with which she had treated Tom Fenton. Jenny knew that Tom was a Christian man; it had been one reason why she despised him, so long as she was not herself a Christian woman. There was a gulf between them now, and of her own digging. Tom had given over coming to the farm except on business; he ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... fall, the waters issuing 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 ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. I can write fast enough now. Am I better than I was then? Oh no! One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that I could go back to what I then was! Why can we not revive past times as we can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... rare pleasure he received from the vigour and liveliness of their conversation. These were the men whom he had despised as slow, yet what a contrast between their way of talking and the inanities of Fitzurse or the shallow flippancy of Bruce. As he sat there and listened, his very face became softer in its lines from the expression of a real and intelligent interest, and they all thought that he was a better fellow, on closer acquaintance, than they had been accustomed to suppose. Ah me! ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... 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
... least 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 river. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... hung his 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 when his turn came ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... sadly. The young girl's sorrow was genuine, in strange contrast to Flavia's voluble flippancy. She laid her hand affectionately on ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... is so elementary. He secretly imagines that he's one of the most complex of men. But in a good many things he's as simple as a child. And I love him for it, although I believe I do like to bedevil him a little. He is dignified, and hates flippancy. So when I greet him with "Morning, old boy!" I can see that nameless little shadow sweep over his face. Then I say, "Oh, I beg its little pardon!" He generally grins, in the end, and I think I'm slowly shaking ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... render those to whom it is 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 ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... 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
... She only affects this vulgar flippancy to torment me. If I didn't know that—There, I've left that infernal pot ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... has been offered in reply to Mr. Goodwin, and his notions of "Mosaic Cosmogony." He writes with the flippancy of a youth in his teens, who having just mastered the elements of natural science, is impatient to acquaint the world with his achievement. His powers of dogmatism are unbounded; but he betrays his ignorance at every step. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... of Grell's mouth grew obstinate. "I shall stick to my story," he said. And then, with a return to his former flippancy of manner, "You're a clever man, Mr. Foyle. I never realised till you and your men were on my heels how hard a time a professional criminal must have. Even now I am not clear how you knew I was down here. When I found the police in charge of the motor-car I had left I thought they ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Yes. I advised you to conquer your idleness and flippancy, and to work your way into an honorable profession and live on it and not ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... the heavens which common men mistake for idolatry. Others again, reversing the old Pythagorean maxim, and wearing the image of God upon their ring, have expressed it by unworthy familiarity, a continual adverting to the gifts of the spirit, and the experience of the soul in the flippancy of ordinary conversation, as did some of the fanatics of the Commonwealth. Others have represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging upon the ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... his opinion upon the greatest scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopaedia. Luckily he had Warrington to laugh at him and to keep down his impertinence by a constant and wholesome ridicule, or he might have become conceited beyond all sufferance; for Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his young aide-de-camp, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen's light and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... crimes against mere order or property with a humane flippancy. Hence, about the mere breaking of an editor's window, ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... earlier? What 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 he had ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... of emotions, a jumble of joy and sorrow and reverence and mirth and flippancy, of right feeling and heresy. In the morning William Wetherell had laughed at Mr. Hopkins and the twenty thousand dollars he had put in the bank to defraud the people; but now he could have wept over it, and as he looked down upon the three hundred members of that House, he wondered how ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which was the second, he replied, action; and the third, action; and such is the idea of the Irish mimbers in the House of Commons. Now there are three important requisites in the diction of a fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is—flippancy; the second, flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it will pass for wit, with some it will pass for scorn,—and even the witty will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... 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 ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... ever 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, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... 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 my boat, which was for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Mrs. Lumley 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 ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... raised 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 the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... But Gootes' flippancy reassured me no more than did the bare sunlit office behind the door. I had somehow, perhaps from the movies, expected to see an editor's desk piled with copypaper while he himself used halfadozen telephones at once, simultaneously making ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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 constantly changing; ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this 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 ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Chesterton was born on November 12, 1879; and there is a special if a secondary sense in which we may use the phrase that he was born a fighter. It may seem in some sad fashion a flippancy to say that he argued from his very cradle. It is certainly, in the same sad fashion, a comfort, to remember one truth about our relations: that we perpetually argued and that we never quarrelled. In a sense it was the psychological ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... you upon my uncle, sir, it was that I commiserated you." There was a slight severity in her tone, as if to reprove the mixture of mockery and flippancy in which he seemed to ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Upon a short acquaintance, that heaviness which leaves to others the whole weight of discourse, and whole search of entertainment, is the most fatiguing, but, upon a longer intimacy, even that is less irksome and less offensive, than the flippancy which hears nothing ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... to appear almost immediately, and he had come to have high hopes of it; it looked most imposing in proof—it was so much longer than 'Illusion;' he had worked up a series of such overwhelming effects in it; its pages contained matter to please every variety of taste—flippancy and learning, sensation and sentiment, careful dissection of character and audacious definition and epigram—failure seemed to him almost impossible. And when he could feel able to lay claim legitimately to the title of genius, surely then the memory ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... unwonted assumption of prominence was beginning to displace gratitude for the aid she had rendered, could not consent to her being allowed, by such dubious means, to monopolise the attention of their guest. If Osric Dane had not enough self-respect to resent Mrs. Roby's flippancy, at least the Lunch Club would do so in the person ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... they would not be miracles; in other words, that events of frequent occurrence are not called miracles; and that it belongs to the idea of a miracle that it is a special and signal suspension of the Divine Law, for a great purpose and a great occasion. If, again, Robert, eschewing flippancy, had retired on abstract theory, he might have said that an event so unique and so transcendent as the assumption of human nature by Eternal God seems to demand, in the fitness of things, a method ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... made me at once, and sincerely, repentant for my flippancy concerning Charles the Second and Elizabeth. And so, partly from being tempted by this apple of Eve, and partly because recent overwork had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to thwart at the outset her kindly-meant ambitions for me, I ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... 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 you did ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... 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 donkey, who had been going ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... she was a somewhat more matronly Carmen than the fancy, stimulated by earlier performances of the opera or the reading of Mrime's novel, was prepared to accept; but it was in harmony with the new picture that she stripped the character of the flippancy and playfulness popularly associated with it, and intensified its sinister side. In this, Frulein Lehmann deviated from Mme. Hauk's impersonation and approached that of Mme. Trebelli, which had been brought to public notice at the first Italian season at the Metropolitan ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... he. "And may heaven preserve you from these three fatal F's—fathers, friends and females!" Having said which, he drank thirstily and thereafter sat frowning down at his broken boots beneath the brim of his woebegone hat, apparently lost in bitter thought. And beholding him thus, his flippancy forgotten, his air of dashing ferocity laid aside, I saw he was pale and thin and haggard and much younger than I had thought. Suddenly, chancing to meet my eye, his pale cheeks flushed painfully, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this side it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for kindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other men. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... compliments the time slipped away, till Clarence's dinner and his valet's supper being fairly over, Mr. Harrison presented himself to his master, a perfectly different being in attendance to what he was in companionship: flippancy, impertinence, forwardness, all merged in the steady, sober, serious demeanour which characterize the respectful ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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,"' ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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 ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... debates. 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 gets ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... in horror. His old dislike for Crispin was all aroused by this indecent flippancy at such a time. Just then the thought of spending the night in his company almost effaced the horror of the gallows whereof he had ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of fitness, should have come to them cap in hand; and as a natural consequence, the story, no doubt exaggerated when it reached him, loses nothing under his transforming and malicious pen. Stripped of its decorative flippancy, however, there remains but little that can really be regarded as "humiliating." Scott himself suggests, what is most unquestionably the case, that the blind man was the novelist's half-brother, afterwards Sir John Fielding; and it is extremely unlikely that the lady so discourteously characterised ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... reprove his flippancy, the girl frowned. With a nervous tremor, which this time seemed genuine enough, she threw back her head, closed her eyes, and laid her ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... privilege of a few words in reply. I feel, even, that I might safely claim, from Mr. Hoffman, the right, which every author has, of replying to his critic tone for tone—that is to say, of answering your correspondent, flippancy by flippancy and sneer by sneer—but in the first place, I do not wish to disgrace the World; and, in the second, I feel that I never should be done sneering, in the present instance, were I once to begin. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... been recommended to the baths to be cured of sterility; and, from what we have seen, we think there are far more unpromising places. Doctors, whose names only are known, but who were probably men of learning, have written on these salutary springs, and modern flippancy has at present forborne them. We have no Quack to patronize them; the "numen aquae" is not violated in print at least by jobbing apothecaries; but there is Gentile di Foligno, and Ugolino di Monte Catino, and Savonarola, and Bandinelli (1483,) and Fallopio (1569,) and Ducini (1711,) who have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... innocent victim within your reach, then it was you lifted up the flood-gates of your loyal wrath, and let your vengeance fall upon his devoted head. Then it was that the overflowings of your 'native malignancy' hurled the tears of loyalty down your pallid cheeks. Then it was that your natural flippancy gave rapid birth to the most gross, unqualified and unjustifiable abuse I ever heard heaped, not only upon a member of Parliament, but even upon the commonest member of society. 'Am I,' said you, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... a 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 at discretion. But classifications ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... anywhere, murdering your fellow-men," said Mrs. Russell. "You won't mind my incurable flippancy, will you? I ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... mind to 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 ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... timely," the young fellow answered, the excitement under which he laboured and the occasion imparting a spice of flippancy to his tone. "I come to warn you that your life is in danger. Do not go alone, M. de Crillon, or pass this way at night! And whatever you do, walk for the future in the middle of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... important cannot relieve man from the necessity of claiming his "daily bread," and I do not know that it is any reproach to a clergyman that he is not distinguished by versatility of manner. The abrupt transition from the gravity of the pulpit to the flippancy of the bar I should not admire; but the consistency of the reverend gentleman here attracted my notice. I had been just listening to him while he repeated, with devotional elongation, the solemn words of the burial service; and when I heard him with the same elongation of sound, address ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... draw it down, either," I replied. But I saw at once that my flippancy did not suit the occasion, for the two young fellows glanced at each other very seriously and seemed embarrassed. "What do you want me to do?" ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... with a frown. If it were true he should not show that flippancy; if it were not he should ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... had been appointed to act as his counsel. When later that morning he visited his client to lay out a line of defence he found Ranson inclined to treat the danger which threatened him with the most arrogant flippancy. He had never seen him in ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... temple, the time has surely come—a nook sacred to God, and untainted by the breath of Mammon, where we could adore our Creator "in spirit and in truth." The evils of nineteenth-century cynicism and general flippancy of thought—great evils as they are and sure prognostications of worse evils to come—cannot altogether crush out the Divine flame burning in the "few" that are "chosen," though these few are counted as fools and dreamers. Yet they shall be proved ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... met my gaze with a steady regard. I had expected scorn, but found grief and hurt. Accused by the sight, I wrapped myself in a cold flippancy. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... of yourself, won't you?" There was genuine concern in the big man's voice as he went on with specious flippancy. "Miss Copley left a dagger kicking around; let's hope she hasn't dropped an automatic or a machine-gun here and there. If Mr. Monk got the idea that you ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... 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
... a beef sandwich," Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy. "You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!" she exclaimed. "And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain, nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a foreigner. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the flippancy which she ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... 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, and my venerable ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... at all understand the strong, simple, earnest nature, incapable of flippancy, with which he had to deal, nor appreciate the danger of playing with it; and he never dreamt that she would seriously ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... 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 in the package ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... 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 ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... man from proceeding to ruin unless some steadying agency is allied with them. After much sad brooding, I cannot but conclude that a fervent religious faith is the only thing that will give complete security; and it will be a bitter day for England and the world if ever flippancy ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... like this. It savoured of flippancy, and he was about entering upon a discussion to prove that Sadness had no soul, when Joe, with blood-shot eyes and dishevelled clothes, staggered in ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... with festival flippancy. "While I must hurry off my supper so as to buy the fish, and Milly and Leah must sweat in the kitchen, you can squat ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... 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; she might even tell her that her nose was too snub for it—and she would ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... is not near so common a thing as is imagined. Let not therefore a young lady be alarmed at the acuteness of her own wit, any more than at the abundance of her own knowledge. The great danger is, lest she should mistake pertness, flippancy, or imprudence, for this brilliant quality, or imagine she is witty, only because she is indiscreet. This is very frequently the case, and this makes the name of wit so cheap, while its ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... are undone; Show us the prowess of your arm this night; I never saw a tilt by candle-light!" Gaily she spoke, and seemed all unconcerned; And yet a curious watcher might have learned From a slight quaver in her laughter free To doubt the frankness of her flippancy. Gawayne, bewildered, looked the other way, And wondered what she meant; for in that day The ready wit of man was under muzzle, And woman's heart was still an unsolved puzzle; And Gawayne, though in valor next to none, Wished that her ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... disagreeable situation that has arisen is improved by flippancy," said Mrs. Riversedge; "a good maid is ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man's praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had been chosen with many ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... love; let us eat and drink in thy fear—for 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., he was forced in a measure to forego his usual custom of furnishing a 'bill of particulars.' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... been afllictingly demure on the theme of her presence at Calesford within her term of mourning. 'But I don't mourn, and I'm not related to the defunct, and I can't be denied the pleasure invented for my personal gratification,' Henrietta's happy flippancy pouted at the prudish objections. Moreover, the adored Columelli was to be her slave of song. The termination of the London season had been postponed a whole week for Calesford: the utmost possible strain; and her presence was understood to represent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... said George, with the flippancy of his class; "but still I must repeat, if you do not mount instantly, we will be late; and my master, the count, is ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... she did not look at him when the light gave her the opportunity to do so, she felt intuitively that he did not enjoy her company. She saw that he was laboring hard to make himself agreeable; but his small talk had not the familiar flippancy and fluency of one speaking in his native tongue; nor was his manner that of one who, infatuated with her beauty, had thrown aside all ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... on the footboard of the bed, and her teeth clinched to keep back a sudden exclamation of surprise. This was more than she had bargained for, yet the other woman, coolly watching, in spite of her apparent flippancy, observed no change in the girl's manner. Apparently the disclosure ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... said. 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 whist with ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... discordant wail of wind in the cordage; one heard, not the wail or the hiss or the roar, but the notes which—in our crude scale with its arbitrary division into tones and half-tones—Wagner had perforce to use to suggest them. There was even something of flippancy in it after Mottl's gigantic rendering: one longed for the dramatic hanging back of the time at the phrase, "Doch ach! den Tod, ich fand ihn nicht!" which is of such importance in the overture. On the other hand, ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... the character and stamping the genius of the Scottish people with the sign manual of dogmatism, otherwise called the perfervidum Scotorum, it has also assisted to secure for Scottish preachers a world-wide reputation for eloquence and power. Flippancy and sciolism may pass muster at the bar, or even in the Senate House; but to be effective, the pulpit must possess in a high degree the qualities of earnestness and an ability to "prove all things." ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... down.] I couldn't bear it upstairs one second longer. Esther and Emily are coming down, too. It's too much for them—and they've had personal experience. [Trying to mask her agitation by a pretense at flippancy.] I hereby become a life-member of the birth-control league. Let's let humanity cease—if God can't manage its continuance ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill
... would those lips 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 shadow ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... suppose she's paid for it," said Florimel, whose innocence must surely have been supplemented by some stupidity, born of her flippancy. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... manifesto is lengthy 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 ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... 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 ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... my own part, dissatisfied with the preface I sent—I fear it savours of flippancy. If you see no objection I should prefer substituting the inclosed. It is rather more lengthy, but it expresses something I have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... rhymes; but surely he was beyond all the Bloomfields and Blacketts, and their collateral cobblers, whom Lofft 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 ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... does not seem a very lively prospect for my friend, D. D.," answered Mr. Larkspur, with irrepressible flippancy. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 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 his not only knowing his ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... your prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find me very faithful to a hope—which, in fact, to relinquish ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... themselves? Does the heat make her long for her home in the country? Does the cold make him think of his native Italy or Greece? Will her remarks change his short, gruff answers to interested questions about her home? Will his enthusiasm for his native land change her flippancy to interest in far-off romantic countries? How would the last detail impress the change, if you decide to have one? Might he call her back and force her to take a gift? Might she deliver an impressive phrase, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Gabriel coolly, for he was hurt by the piece of flippancy and was thinking the worst ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... not a dictionary; I wish you wouldn't ask me to define things," replied Miss Virginia, with a little laugh. Then with the manner of one who regretted this flippancy she added, "I think I understand the word as ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... by a suitable yellow, is orange. This blend brings red almost to the point of spreading out towards the spectator. But the element of red is always sufficiently strong to keep the colour from flippancy. Orange is like a man, convinced of his own powers. Its note is that of the angelus, or ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... it was not flippancy. Your whole point of view is wrong. Do not ask me how I "know"—some conclusions do not need to be analyzed. I wonder if you realize, for instance, what you said about faith? I haven't the charity to call it ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... strained relations at our last parting and the solemnity of the present occasion, she greeted me with a flippancy that was laughable. "Oh, here's Miss Jenkins! Welcome to our happy home, and I certainly wish you ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... and beauty made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared—but Effie's wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among their inferiors. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... momentary flippancy of thought as he stood in the cloistered corner where Goldsmith sleeps under the eye of the law; and, when he laid his little wreath on the worn stone, it was a genuine offering. From it he turned away to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... which he makes, in this dedication, to proper spirit, as he calls it, and fellow-dignity; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the stout-heartedness of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... 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 ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... laugh, 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
... fair moustache forbade the familiar mockery in his pleasant face. In moments of repose the cross of strain, almost suggestive of a squint, appeared in his blue eyes. He was no longer debonair, no longer the lightly laughing philosopher, the preacher of paradox seeing flippancy in the Money Article and sorrowful wisdom in Little Tich. He was morose and irritable. He had acquired a nervous habit of secretly rubbing his thumbs swiftly over his finger-tips when Doria, in her pride, spoke of his work, which amounted almost to ill-breeding. It ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... 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
... tend if these agitators for women's rights were successful. Husbands, brothers, sons, have too keen a sense of what they owe of good to their female relatives to risk its loss; or to exchange the gentleness, purity, and refinement of their homes for boldness, flippancy, hardness and ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back—all ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... laughed aloud, and Mr. Stanhope could hardly preserve his gravity, but Sir William gave Melange a look that seemed a deathblow to his flippancy, for he moved off directly to the care of his jars ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... "An alliance prescribed for the general 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
... once, in the manner of balloons when part of their weight is released by touching down, with a sort of flippancy, and in another moment Bert was over a street crowded with peasants and soldiers, that opened into a busy market-square. The wave ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... 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
... write most of the magazine—to write essays, reviews (of books by the professors, very severe), novels, short stories, poems, translations, also to illustrate these, and to "fag" his friends for "copy" and drawings. A deplorable flippancy seems, as far as one remembers, to have been the chief characteristic of the periodical—flippancy and an abundant use of the supernatural. These were the days of Lord' Lytton's "Strange Story," which I continue to think a most satisfactory romance. Inspired by Lord ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... covers 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 and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... universally accepted as the true one and so honoured with the crown of orthodoxy. It would even to-day strike a Portuguese journalist as a simple statement of an obvious truth. The Archdeacon regarded it as deplorable, and I understood from his letter that the old charge of flippancy had been revived against Lalage. She must, I suppose, have disliked the man who set the examination paper. I cannot otherwise account for the viciously ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... implored him to give it all up. I don't think I went on my knees over it. But I am afraid I did cry; and that was the end. He pretended not to notice anything, and then in an instant he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me more than all the rest. I remember that I wanted to shake hands at the end. But Mr. Raffles only shook his head, and for one instant his face was as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of the time. Then he ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... to them—your patients," she murmured. Then, ashamed of her own flippancy: "Of course, I didn't mean anything as silly as that! I meant—I meant, please sit down while I finish this patch. There, in that easy-chair. There are ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... common failing of wishing 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 who are always laughing, at length laugh ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... possessing, for a hero, one of the most obnoxious and foolish prigs that I can remember in any novel. Octave de Malivert unites varieties of detestableness in a way which might be interesting if (to speak with only apparent flippancy) it were made so. He is commonplace in his adoration of his mother and his neglect (though his historian calls it "respect") of his father; he is constantly a prig, as when he is shocked at people for paying more attention ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... then glanced at her father. Henry Pym's face was expressionless, but his eyes seemed to reply to her unspoken question, and tell her that he, too, recognised a little more thoroughly that under the surface flippancy and light raillery there was depth. In the meantime, feeling she had not been quite fair to her opponent, to go off without allowing him to defend himself, he purposely discussed the language question a little more openly ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page |
