"Flippant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the feeling of amaze most people have who look for the first time at Botticelli's Judith tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. You say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. For answer, I refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitude, ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... flippant. But if we were prophets what a dreadful thing life would be! It did not seem possible seven years ago that Eleanor Leigh would become a professional beauty, a hired guest, who lived upon the royalty from the sale of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... like this flippant tone of address. He was, as has been recorded by SHAHSTEAD (a gentleman of whose patronage he is proud) not a man you may take liberties with. For SCHEHERAZADE, taking mean advantage of a French agglomeration of letters which did not represent ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various
... public duty, I call the attention of my readers in the metropolis to the situation of this worthy man, this real friend of Liberty, who has been neglected and insulted by that venal band of mercenary and time serving politicians, those flippant summer flies of the metropolis, those fair-weather patriots, which, when compared with the steady, sound, and inflexible patriotism of Mr. Jones, are like the dross of the vilest metal put in competition with the purest gold. In doing this justice to Mr. Jones's character ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... very flippant young man," she said severely. Whereat I grinned, and she regarded me silently with a baleful glare. Suddenly I remembered my mission and became ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... man fastened his eyes on Ashe's in a piercing stare. Ashe met them smilingly. His spirits, always fairly cheerful, had risen high by now. There was something about the little man, in spite of his brusqueness and ill temper, which made him feel flippant. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... appointed professor of English to the princesses of the royal house. Nuper—in former days—I too have militated; sometimes, as I now think, unjustly; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you never committed an imprudence? Have you never had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong? So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent mania. His ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... curls; he told a group of men, who were sheep-dipping with him, that the parasites of the sheep, which are formidable in appearance, never troubled him until they reached his head. "Into them curls, I suppose, John?" said a flippant bystander. John was pleased that his most attractive feature should receive ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... but did not dream of such good luck for—Bobbie as to be sent up here. I know she will find happiness up here in these hills. You'll be kind to the little girl, won't you?" she pleaded. "You know you haven't much mercy for sinners, but you will see she is serious about reforming; not flippant like me. She will never yield to ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... returned Boyle good-humoredly. "You see I reckon it don't pay to do anything halfway. And whatever I do, I mean to keep my eyes about me." In spite of her prejudice, Miss Cantire could see that these necessary organs, if rather flippant, were honest. "Yes, I suppose there isn't much on that I don't take in. Why now, Miss Cantire, there's that fancy dust cloak you're wearing—it isn't in our line of goods—nor in anybody's line west of Chicago; it came from Boston or New York, and was made for home consumption! But your hat—and ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... still giggling; a deep color mantled Maggie's cheeks. She turned and began to talk desperately to Mr. Hammond. Her tone was flippant; her silvery laughter floated in the air. Priscilla turned and gazed at her friend. She was seeing Maggie in yet ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... opinion in a most subdued voice, and then either turning the subject, or turning upon my heel. But as for women, it is astonishing how well I got on. The nervous rapidity of my first rattle soon subsided into a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed an original and a wit. But the most remarkable incident was, that the baroness and myself became the greatest friends. I was her constant attendant, and rehearsed to her flattered ear all my evening performance. She was the person with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... after her husband's funeral than wear weeds which attract attention on account of their flaunting bad taste and flippancy. One may not, one must not, one can not wear the very last cry of exaggerated fashion in crepe, nor may one be boisterous or flippant or sloppy in manner, without giving the impression to all beholders that one's spirit is posturing, tripping, or dancing on the grave of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... and brown leather, and in use it is as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could not bring myself to it. But a Bishop ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... crowd that filled the street, consisting for the most part of the citizens themselves, but varied by nobles and knights of the court, by foreigners from many lands, by soldiers and men-at-arms from the Tower, by countrymen and sailors. Their amusement was sometimes turned into anger by the flippant remarks of the apprentices; these varlets, perceiving easily enough by the manner of their attire that they were from the country, were not slow, if their master happened for the moment to be absent, in indulging in remarks that set Geoffrey and Lionel into a fever to commit ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... a moment that he had considered me to have been somewhat flippant. I had no doubt he had some right to think so, so I very sincerely and seriously told him that such a thing as pulling anybody's leg had never entered my mind. Indeed, very far from it; that my experience ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a case. She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be some assurance that she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the "Volcano Book," which contains the observations and impressions of people from all parts of the world. Some of these are painstaking and valuable as showing the extent and rapidity of the changes which take place in the crater, but there is an immense quantity of flippant rubbish, and would-be wit, in which "Madam Pele," invariably occurs, this goddess, who was undoubtedly one of the grandest of heathen mythical creations, being caricatured in pencil and pen and ink, under every ludicrous aspect that can be conceived. Some ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... violent beginning and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, to hide ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... satire; did not censure with the fiery fervour of a righteous indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective. 'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of this poem came Holy Willie's Prayer, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... from which it is impossible to detach the exponent as the patroness of a whole universe of inferior souls. This is what everybody would mean in objecting to these notes (supposing them to be published), that they are too smart and too flippant. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is just possible that he occasionally wished that she would dress herself in a more human way—patronise in winter the humble Viyella stripe, for instance, or in summer the flippant sprig. But a large proportion of Mrs. Gustus's faith was founded on simple strong colours in wide expanses, introduced, as it were, one to another by judicious black. Anybody but Mrs. Gustus would have been drowned in her ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... were the incumbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the incumbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. Yet, unoriginal though the dominant clergywoman of fiction may be, it cannot be denied that St. Paul's injunctions in connection with the subjection of wives did not commend themselves ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... alone. They were not the women to tease one another by flippant jests or allusions; and Mrs. Fred, of all others, had a dread of thrusting any vulgar face on this colorless, yet delicious, atmosphere. Love knew his own, and ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... unkindly, but rather as if he feared to drop, even for an instant, his flippant defiance of the trick fate had played him. The jerk sent a small, shining thing sliding down to the floor; where it stood upright and quivered ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... welcomed their remarks, at least her silence was not scornful, and the most shallow-headed prater that fluttered around her felt that he was received with dignity and not with disdain. Awed by her conduct, not one of them dared to be flippant, and every one of them soon became dull. The ornaments of the Court of Reisenburg, the arbiters of ton and the lords of taste, stared with astonishment at each other when they found, to their mutual surprise, that at one moment, in such a select party, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... my lord, said Sir Charles, are those women? Are they not generally of a class with those men? Flippant women love empty men, because they cannot reproach them with a superiority of understanding, but keep their folly in countenance. They are afraid of a wise man: but I would by no means have such a one turn fool to ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates. But he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm, he may be compared with Voltaire, and his end was the same, to demolish and pull down, without ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... purpose was easily accomplished. While the Cardinal awaited him near Roa, the King avoided him by proceeding directly to Tordesillas to visit his mother. This ungracious and unmerited snub was applauded by Martyr, who dismissed the incident with almost flippant mention; nor did he afterwards touch upon the aged Cardinal's death which occurred simultaneously with the reception of the unfeeling message sent by Charles to the greatest, the most faithful and the most disinterested of ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that we are putting flippant expressions into the mouth of Rainiharo, we may explain that the Malagasy define an ungrateful man as the "son of a thunderbolt," and sometimes as the "offspring of a wild-boar," because—so they say—the young ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Take it upstairs again." The perfectly trained servant, marveling privately, obeyed once more. Horace, in silent astonishment, advanced to the sofa to observe her more nearly. "How grave you look!" she exclaimed, with an air of flippant unconcern. "You don't approve of my sitting idle, perhaps? Anything to please you! I haven't got to go up and downstairs. Ring the ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... offices of the Doctor, and the strenuous exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no very great success until I joined it. The truth is, the members indulged in too flippant a tone of discussion. The papers read every Saturday evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery. They were all whipped syllabub. There was no investigation of first causes, first principles. There was no investigation of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Flippant Person). Don't speak so loud. If they know you've come in here fresh, you'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... public aid to their clergy or churches. It is much easier to figure upon a platform than to establish educational institutions, or to preach the Gospel throughout new countries. Those who have been in Canada twelve months can do the former, and sneer at the latter. The flippant allusions of certain speakers at the late Toronto meeting to the Methodists and to Victoria College ... were as unfounded as ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is certainly ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that he is given credit for a much more pronounced sense of humor than he actually possesses. I doubt that he is always conscious of the element of humor and I suspect that if he realized that his observations were to evoke laughter he would deliberately choose a less satirical or flippant method of expression. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... glance. Only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed keener, more gentle, more innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of intense longing, of deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and flippant Sir Percy followed the retreating ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... was very flippant about it," Mrs. Marlow complained to her husband that evening, after she had shown him Jimmy's letter and had heard his remarks thereon. "I didn't like her tone at all. She has grown rather coarse lately, since they have got into that new ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... say, 'He at his lady's feet Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs; Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet In flippant censers of light lover's songs.' Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each passion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors of houses and saloons, ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what a grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be, he still thought Mr. ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... the bride is always easily played. It is her duty to look pretty if she can, and should she fail in that,—as brides usually do,—her failure is attributed to the natural emotions of the occasion. The part of the bridegroom is more difficult. He should be manly, pleasant, composed, never flippant, able to say a few words when called upon, and quietly triumphant. This is almost more than mortal can achieve, and bridegrooms generally manifest some shortcomings at the awful moment. Daniel Thwaite was not successful. He was silent and almost morose. When Lady Fitzwarren congratulated ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... Morrice, ever more flippant than sagacious, called out, "I really believe the gentleman's deaf! he won't so much as say umph, and hay, now; but I'll give him such a hallow in his ears, as shall make him hear me, whether he will or no. Sir! I say!" bawling aloud, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... paid no attention, and Roscoe went on, reminding Tom of the old, flippant, cheaply cynical Roscoe, who had stolen his employer's time to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office, trying to arouse the stenographer's mirth ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... personas this grubby painter—it was maddening! She thought of him as "grubby," whatever that meant, because she did not like him, but it was even more maddening for her to think of Olga Tcherny's portrait, which, in spite of her flippant remarks, she had been forced to admit revealed a knowledge of feminine psychology that had excited her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... "Don't get flippant, young lady," said Jessie, severely, "or I shall be obliged to give you a ducking," the river being very convenient just there, as the girls had to walk alongside its shores for some distance before ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... respect than for any other class of persons engaged in earning a livelihood, but now he remembered that the best physicians he had known had seemed to look upon their life-work as a consecration of themselves to humanity and the most flippant among them, as men, had always a dignity apart from themselves when they became the physician, and he knew, too, that as a class they were jealous of the good name of their profession and sensitive to a degree where anything affected its honor. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... that all is not well when we prosper. The thoughtless, light-hearted, somewhat shallow mind which thinks it can speak, think, and act without having to render an account needs the somewhat stern tonic of these seven dramas; it may be chastened into some sobriety and learn to be a little less flippant and irreverent. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... substitution of the wrong daughter, and Jacob's meek acceptance of two wives in eight days would not only arouse a storm of moral indignation, but would land both these men in a police court and in jail? I say this not in a flippant spirit, but merely to bring out as vividly as possible the difference between the ancient Hebrew and modern Christian ideals of love. Furthermore, what an utter ignorance or disregard of the rights of personal preference, sympathy, and all the higher ingredients ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... him shuffling over the hewn plank floor in his straw sandals. A very different type, this swaggering Celestial, from the furtive-eyed Chinamen of the east. His tightly coiled cue was as smooth and shining as a king-snake, his loose blouse was immaculate, and the flippant voice in which he demanded in each person's ear, "Coffee? Milk?" was like a challenge. Whatever the individual's choice might be, he got it in a torrent in ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profanation amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secret haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted him. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition. And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood nor valued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn't even like ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating a subject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see the details too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude of sparks gives but ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... when she talked she gave no hint at all of any deep sense of the beauty of her surroundings. When she talked she was just like other town girls he had known, a bit slangy, more than a bit self-possessed, and frivolous to the point of being flippant. That type he knew and could meet fairly on a level. But when she was looking and saying nothing, she seemed altogether different. Which, he wondered, was the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... nothing to do with devotion. And the impertinent patronage of worshippers in "fustian" is at least as offensive as the older-fashioned vulgarity of pride in congregations who "come in their own carriages." And I do protest against the flippant inference that good clothes for the body must lower the assumptions of the spirit, or make repentance insincere; which I no more believe than that the worship of a clean Christian is less acceptable than that of a brother who cannot afford ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... irreverent remarks of Bob Ingersoll have fallen harmlessly upon the minds of our people. The flippant sneers and wicked sarcasms of the modern infidel, wise in his own conceit, have alike passed over our heads without damage or disaster. These times that have tried men's souls have only rooted us more firmly in the faith, ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... rebuking her for her flippant treatment of a brother's pain, agreed with the sense of her remarks, if not with the wording. It had taken a good deal of quiet obstinacy on the part of the whole family to get Oliver to accept Peter Piper's invitation—Mrs. Crowe, who ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... came back here," says Cousin Lucy, without heeding these flippant and heartless words, "I found an old gentleman who has something to do with the boats, and he sat down, as if it were a part of his business, and told me nearly the whole history of his life. Isn't it nice of them, keeping an Autobiographer? ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... a garb like this? Needs he the tragic fur, the smoke of lamps, The pent-up breath of an unsavoury throng To thaw him into feeling, or the smart And snappish dialogue that flippant wits Call comedy, to prompt him with a smile? The self-complacent actor, when he views (Stealing a sidelong glance at a full house) The slope of faces from the floor to the roof, As if one master-spring ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... inebriated United States official, who flings his spectacles overboard, and sings a flippant and absurd song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with his ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do. After which he crumbles, in an incomprehensible manner, into the bottom of the ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... this, in the case of another dog, it was suggested by one who was flippant that his epitaph might run—"And may our lives have fewer faults than thine." But while it is true that this one had run up quite a heavy bill in cats and committed many other enormities, the line ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling to me, said: 'Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy.' At dinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed, the Princess was 'flippant, rattling, affecting wit.' Poor George, I say again! Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not know how to behave. Vulgarity—hard, implacable, German vulgarity—was in everything she did to the very day of her death. The marriage was solemnised on ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... help men to work in the spiritual field. They are not like some yachts, just to carry bunting and paint to be admired. As for church affiliation, what I like to see is a hungry man going where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... by the appearance, in the opening of the tent, of a man whose solemn but kindly face checked the flow of flippant conversation. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... last appeal. What my answer was you will not care to know; but if it was brief, it was at least not flippant; and before writing it, I, in my turn, appealed for help, only my appeal was made upon my ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... a sick-bed, my dearest Matlida, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! and to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... I know I am right. You make my life appear shallow and trivial. What have I done in the last two years but attend carefully, from habit, to the details of business, and then amuse myself? And when I wrote I merely sought to amuse you. What were my flippant letters worth to one who was ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... Clever flippant writers may do a trifling service here and there by ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no permanence in such work, unless—which is seldom the case—it is ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... externals and never dreams of looking for "inward light"; and the proof of this is that he seems never consciously to endeavour to express a mood, but strenuously seeks to depict images called up by the words he sets. With no intention of being flippant, but in all earnestness, I declare it is my belief that if Purcell had ever set the "Agnus Dei" (and I don't remember that he did) he would have drawn a frisky lamb and tried to paint its snow-white fleece; and this not because he lacked reverence, but because of his ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... around with an egotistical complacency that would defy a pickaxe to penetrate. According to him a Mayo is beyond criticism, and his sister's reputation her own to deal with. The girl herself seemed, frankly, not to understand the seriousness of her position, and was very flippant and not a little rude. I wash my hands of the whole affair, and will certainly not countenance to-night's entertainment by appearing at it. I have already warned the manager that if the noise is kept up ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... acquainted with it beforehand. We are all ready for "O rare Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest." If I were dean of the cathedral, I should be tempted to alter the J to a G. Then we could read it without contempt; for life is a gest, an achievement,—or always ought to be. Westminster Abbey ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many pillars, its piazzas, its ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... away!" called a voice that was almost flippant. "I never did belong to that great sect whose doctrine is that each one should select—at least, I'm not going to belong to it any longer. Go ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... had one good point—at least, it turned out to be such in this case. She was a coward naturally, and her bad life made her dread nothing so much as death. Her former flippant indifference to his remonstrances now changed into abject fear. He saw her weak side, learned his power, and from that time forward kept her within bounds by a ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... there!" he shouted, waving a flippant hand and twinkling his eyes at the beautiful ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... a Victoria or a yacht, or in a sky-high position, would not be worthy to come within her shadow. If I were the head teacher, and Red Shirt I, Clown would be sure to fawn on me and jeer at Red Shirt. They say Yedo kids are flippant. Indeed, if a fellow like Clown was to travel the country and repeatedly declare "I am a Yedo kid," no wonder the country folk would decide that the flippant are Yedo kids and Yedo kids are flippant. While I was meditating like this, I heard ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... impressed,' she says, but, 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... had a certain gift of humour, which displayed itself in flippant witticisms generally at the expense of others. He undoubtedly possessed the art of provoking laughter, but there was always malice behind his frivolity. In appearance he was elegant without being engaging, and one felt the spitefulness of the dark eyes beneath the abundant hair, and ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Sir Arthur, "St. Chrysostom's will not be a pleasant Sunday morning and evening resort for rich people any longer. That is, perhaps, a somewhat flippant way of putting it, but of course you know ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... beings he loves and reveres the sportsman. One is made to feel that the true sportsman, whether he shoots or hunts or fishes, is an August being, as he ought to be in Great Britain, and Leech has done him full justice with his pencil. He is no subject for flippant satire; so there he sits his horse, or stalks through his turnip-field, or handles his rod like a god! Handsome, well-appointed from top to toe, aristocratic to the finger-tips—a most impressive figure, the despair of foreigners, ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... powdered wig of the period, a man of middle age, with clever, well-cut features, and a large, humorous, and rather sensual mouth. His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written. The style, though flippant, is remarkable for a cynical but always good-natured humour, and on the rare occasions when he thought it professionally incumbent on him to be serious, as in his discussion of the best dietary for long voyages, and the physical effects of privations, his remarks ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... slowly through the high, aromatic grasses, discussing earnestly every angle of policy to be assumed in regard to M'tela. At its close all the white men were called together and given instructions. Even the youngest and most flippant knew natives well enough to realize the value of the structure Kingozi had built, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... be flippant, and say that there were probably several dotted about the globe, if we only knew them; but I dared not, under those eyes—absolutely dared not. Instead, I remarked inanely that I was sorry to hear his father ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... foreman for Annie Malasek to come to my office right now?" I asked. Sara is flippant when things are going along all right, but she knows when to buckle down and do what she's asked. She gave me no personal ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... the most extraordinary I ever saw, but there is more of the mountebank than of greatness in all this. It may do well enough for Sefton, who is as ignorant as he is sharp and shrewd, and captivated with his congenial offhandism, but it requires something more than Brougham's flippant ipse dixit to convince me that the office of Chancellor is such a sinecure and bagatelle. He had a levee the other night, which was brilliantly attended—the Archbishops, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, a host of people. Sefton goes and sits in his private room and sees his receptions of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the Jew to-day converts into drafts on art-merchandise. Who would imagine that this great work has been cemented with the sweat and toil of genius for two thousand years," he exclaims in the exasperation of his soul at these flippant time-servers who dominated in the concert-hall and on the stage. Naturally the legion of their followers did not become his friends. They controlled the press, and it is due to this, that his most important writings are known even to-day only by ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot feel her aspect more grandly than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape than any of the last twelve months,—and that is saying a good ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... not be mortified when they see their children, perhaps, deficient at nine or ten years old in the showy talents for general conversation; they must bear to see their pupils appear slow; they must bear the contrast of flippant gayety and sober simplicity; they must pursue exactly an opposite course to that which has been recommended for the education of wits; they must never praise their pupils for hazarding observations; they must cautiously point out any mistakes that are made from a precipitate survey ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... revolutionary army, and none so well as he could tip the barb with biting sarcasm and satire. Heine's personality was full of seemingly inconsistent traits. He was both fanciful and rational, serious and flippant, tender and cynical, reverent and impious; and he could be at once a patriot and an alien. He was, to use his own phrase, an "unfrocked romanticist"—at once a brilliant representative of the poetry of self-expression and personal caprice, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... seventeen or eighteen years of age, with sharp, knowing-looking features, a forward, impudent carriage, and a pert, flippant voice, standing upon one of the trunks, and surveying all our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... scholarship. He himself has told us of his love of port and bananas, his joy in early morning celebrations in the chapel of Pusey House, his tea-parties, his delight in debates at the Union, of which he became President, and of his many friendships with undergraduates of a witty and flippant turn of mind. Like many effeminate natures, he was glad of opportunities to prove himself a good fellow. In spite of no heel-taps when the port went round, he won the Hertford in 1907, the Ireland and Craven in 1908, and in 1910 took ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... fatal creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For coquetry ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... genial, and he made a suave, impressive offer of his personal services, in response to which Mrs. Taylor regarded him with smiling incredulity—a smile which Selma considered impertinent. How dared she treat his courtly advances with flippant distrust! ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... conference transferred themselves from Mantes to St. Denis. On Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel le d'Estrees, "Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset that brings down the house" (le, saut perilleux). A few hours after using such flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long conference with the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... They will find the air cool, shady walks, good food, and reasonable prices. Their rooms will not be charged for, but they will do well to give the same as they would have paid at an hotel. I saw in one room one of those flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici match-boxes on which there was a gaudily- coloured nymph in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette. Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised that such a ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... honor, my lord, that does not often befall men of my humble condition," said the master of the house, in the flippant utterance of a vulgar cockney; "but I thought it would be more agreeable to your lordship, to receive the a—a—here, than in the place where your lordship, just at this moment, resides. Will your lordship please to rest yourself, after ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs. Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... always, moderate and reasonable; but above all the wonderful element was the quick wit and ready skill with which he turned to his own service every query which was designed to embarrass him; and this he did not in the vulgar way of flippant retort or disingenuous twistings of words or facts, but with the same straightforward and tranquil simplicity of language with which he delivered evidence for the friendly examiners. Burke likened the proceeding to an examination of a master by a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... so bad as that. Believe me, I should rejoice for you if you had children. Leonore would have made a wonderful mother. Even I might be respectable if a woman such as she loved me as she loves you. But," he grew flippant again, "to marry one of those nose-in-the-air, soulless, school-teacher prudes—Never! And in any event, my dear, I am not so sure I want to marry your heiress. I am very well as I am!" He shrugged his shoulders. A moment later, though, he put a ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... affable and pious soul who gives alms,—a strange thing in this family who cheat everybody. Anissme often sends home beautiful letters and presents. One day, he comes unexpectedly; he has an unquiet, and, at the same time, flippant air. His parents have decided to get him married, and, although he is a drunkard, ugly and vulgar, they have found him a pretty wife. The girl is Lipa, daughter of a poor widow, a laborer like her mother. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... take things with brutal logic, ought not to be allowed the fairy tale in its more limited form of the supernatural; whereas, if presented to older children, this material can be criticized, catalogued and (alas!) rejected as worthless, or retained with flippant toleration. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... of "Jack and the Beanstalk" is from Jacobs' English Fairy Tales above cited. Jacobs states that this telling came from Australia. It is the best version known to the editor—in fact, the only possible change to be desired is in the flippant ending, "The ogre fell down and broke his crown." This is too serious a ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... house was a meeting-place where politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really cynical ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... and I think a slander on us! We all like these things, but we all like higher things too, and we need to encourage the higher part of us because it so soon dies away. You know better than I do how much of your own talk may be silly chatter—or worse—flippant or wrong talk, which you would stop if an older person were by. I have heard High Schools strongly objected to because they made the girls so full of gossip, about what this or that teacher said, or what some girl did, till their ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy,[A] and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for that ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... high-fed and haughty dame, The boy was dandled, in his dawn of fame; Listening, she smiled, and blest the flippant tongue On which the fate of unborn tithe-pigs hung. Ah! who shall paint the grandam's grim dismay, When loose Reform enticed her boy away; When shockt she heard him ape the rabble's tone, And in Old ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... He spoke with a flippant self-confidence that annoyed his cousin. But she knew very well that she was poorly off in the gifts that were required to scourge him. And there already was the light form of Nelly, on the footbridge over the river. Farrell looked up and saw ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... life in lodgings. But they are not absent there. Friends come in, and we will suppose that you and they are waited upon at your meal. What does the servant hear? Much talk about other and absent persons? Unkind or flippant criticisms? Idle, frivolous words? Very likely not, thank God; for we do want to remember our Lord. But let us take heed. Nothing is more conspicuously inconsistent in the Christian than needless, unloving discussion of the characters ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule |
