"Flippant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 another aspect. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... get you," he said. But his tone was not flippant. "The fact is, of course, that the early theory won't hold. There has been a crime, and the little old lady did not commit it. But suppose you find out who did it. How is that going ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... like offspring of the great round sun, fooling zealously with the universes at her feet, and just beyond her eye, with a loftiness of spirit and of exquisite trivialness seconded by none. Who has not read these flippant renderings, holding always some touch of austerity and gravity of mood, or the still more perfect "letters" to her friends, will, I think, have missed a new kind of poetic diversion, a new loveliness, evasive, alert, pronounced in every interval and serious, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... there!" he shouted, waving a flippant hand and twinkling his eyes at the beautiful girl in ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... the speaker made to appear flippant and at his ease showed her how deeply he was moved. His wife felt this without fully reasoning it out, and the consciousness that this self-controlled man was so stirred awoke in her a strange and powerful excitement. She turned a shade paler, as she looked silently down into her ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to grow on you you'll lose all hold on the solemn realities of life and become a totally useless ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... ourselves to print Mr. Sharp's very flashy, flippant speech. Suffice it to say, that, not content with asserting vehemently on his conscience as a Christian, on his honour as a man, that Simon Jennings was an innocent, maligned, persecuted individual; labouring, perhaps, under mono-mania, but pure and gentle as the babe ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... not how, fell into discussing the characters of forward and flippant women; and I told him it was my fortune to be, in general, a very great favourite with them, though I felt so little gratitude for that honour, that the smallest discernment would show them it was ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... very much in Claire; I can't help believing that she thinks it is smart or funny. And you encourage her. If Claire had been different—no, don't interrupt me— this would never have happened. You may say what you like about her good breeding: she's been too flippant. I felt that last night. Claire doesn't accept her obligations seriously enough. She's kept herself lovely looking, but that isn't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... you make speeches of that kind you will force me to be flippant, quite against my sense of the fitness of things at this moment. Not that I want to be too tragic, but my state of mind is rather a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... livelihood." I wish they had taken me into the partnership. It's the sort of thing I'd have liked well; ay, and I could have done it, too! I wonder,' said he aloud—'I wonder if I were an emperor should I marry Letty Clancy? I suspect not. Letty would have been flippant as an empress, and her cousins would have made atrocious princes of the imperial family, though, for the matter of that—Hullo! Here have I been smoking without knowing it! Can any one tell us whether the sins we do inadvertently count as sins, or do we square ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... heard. His excuse for not personally communicating the story which he had allowed to drift to the governor's ears by chance, was that he thought that what he had heard must have come to King's knowledge also: a supine and almost flippant explanation of neglect in a matter which was serious if the allegations were true. He affirmed also that one of the French officers had pointed out to him on a chart the very place where they intended to settle. It was in what is now known as Frederick Henry Bay, in the south ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... was three-and-twenty years old, a student by fits, and a young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined that Algernon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That flippant remark broke the tension and the driver climbed gingerly out and viewed the bare hub. "It's lucky," he ruminated, "I had you fellows in back there. If you hadn't been there I guess she'd have turned turtle ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... is a pregnant memento of the manner in which the vain words of flippant orators fall, innocuous, to the ground, when they attempt to stigmatize, with contemptuous terms, the truly noble. "Squatter" is now, in the west, only another name for "Pioneer," and that word describes all that is admirable in courage, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had started and stared to see—not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his horse, with a rifle. At that his heart ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... making-up lovers—that I actually cherish the bill collector as the only real, genuine acquaintance whom I have in Boston. Certainly there's no slightest trace of pretence about him!... Excuse me for being so flippant," she added soberly, "but you see I haven't got any sympathy left even ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... young man talking in a flippant way about sowing his wild oats, I don't laugh. I feel more like crying, because I know he is going to make his gray-haired mother reap in tears; he is going to make his wife reap in shame; he is going to make his old father and his innocent children reap with him. Only ten or ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... able to do at any time, and to do at once. For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his. How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... opponent, the last atom of his patience exhausted by the speaker's flippant criticism. "You cur, you deserve a good thrashing, and I'm going to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... 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 ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... for gentleness of the man's tone, the simple dignity of his words, went straight to Chloe Elliston's heart. She felt suddenly ashamed of her air of flippant defiance, felt mean, and small, and self-conscious. She forgot for the moment that this big, quiet man who stood before her was rough, even boorish in his manner, and that he was the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... 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 beyond a reasonable hour I shall leave the ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... this humour that she came back from Cacouna the evening before the wedding. Bella had been more flippant than usual, until even Mrs. Bellairs had completely lost patience with her, and the incorrigible girl had only been stopped by the fear of her guardian's displeasure from insisting on driving Lucia home, while Doctor ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... interrupted Benedick with saying: 'I wonder that you will still be talking, signior Benedick: nobody marks you.' Benedick was just such another rattle-brain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased at this free salutation; he thought it did not become a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests upon. And as there is no one who so little likes to be made a jest of as those ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and the suit-case, removed his straw hat, and grinned, with a fair imitation of cheerfulness. He had never learned how to handle Aunt Mirabelle, and small wonder; for if he listened in silence, he was called sulky; if he disputed her, he was called flippant; if he agreed with her, she accused him of fraud; and if he obeyed his natural instincts, and treated her with tolerant good-humour, she usually went on a conversation strike, and never weakened until after the twelfth apology. Whatever he did was wrong, so that purely on ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... "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 turning ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled instances of the necessity for power in ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of —, and you will be saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as have done most of the late fashionable novel-writers, repair to their instructors—the lady's-maid, for flippancy in ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the appointed day—glib and curt, smiling and flippant, tight of face and supple of figure. Her name was Mademoiselle Virginie, and her family had inhumanly deserted her. She was set to work the moment she was inside the doors of the Grifoni establishment. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... love with Adrien Leroy. It simply added a zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their mutual friends' houses, or beneath the trees of Brierly Park, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... at all!" came the flippant retort. "It's merely that you haven't really taken a good look at me lately—until just this minute. So, of course, I'd look a bit ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... 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 ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... hall—a woman in black hair and a white garment, suggestive of repose, strolling at midnight by the banks of the prattling East River, foot of Grand Street, and set a house afire at the end of the third act. That is the BOUCICAULT style, and as the flippant EDWARDS goes on to observe, it draws like a factory chimney in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... day, as they walked together up the Old Trail to Sammy's Lookout, the girl tried to show him some of the things that had been revealed to her in the past months. But the young fellow could not follow where she led, and answered her always with some flippant remark, or with the superficial philosophy ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... my child, to have you listen to the flippant sacrilege of this young man, or be subjected to his influence in ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... ashamed to appear flippant, for Mr. AINLEY played with exquisite feeling and a fine sincerity. And I have to thank Mr. VACHELL for giving us some excellent studies of character—not character developed before our eyes by circumstance (except perhaps a little at the last), but admirably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... her sharply. "I should think, my dear young lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing life is to any one in this condition. Instead of that I fear at times that you are—shall I say—flippant?" He turned about and looked at the children. "How do you do?" ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... boat is an 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 boat, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... was very much offended. Sarcasm from the young to the old pained him: flippant behaviour towards himself hurt him. Courteous in his simple way to all persons whom he met, he expected a like politeness from them. Hetty perfectly well knew what offence she was giving; could mark the displeasure reddening on her partner's honest face, with a sidelong glance of her eye; nevertheless ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... myself by positively stating my 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Guynemer, had high rank in the Legion of Honor, and enjoyed world-wide fame. In his 'prentice days when, in workshops or in the presence of well-known builders, he would make confident statements, inveigh against errors, or demand modifications, people thought him flippant and saucy. Once somebody called him a raw lad. The answer came with crushing rapidity: "When you blunder, raw lads like myself pay for ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... nod—an act—which she considered as too flippant for the solemnity of devotion—but she gently bowed her head, and closed her eyes in assent—upon which was heard a somewhat cheerful groan, replete with true unction, inside the parlor, followed by a voice that said, "ah, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... covertly watched the play. He soon perceived that Harry was paying little or no attention to the game—although it was poker—his attention being almost entirely fixed on Nellie, who was flirting outrageously with her admirers. Every time her flippant laugh reached him a pained look crossed his sensitive face, but she pretended to be as unconscious of it as she appeared to ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... although whimpering, had far more grit than I anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Coit Tyler of Cornell said: "My observation has been that under the joint system the tone of college life has grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and lead instead of drag, and their lapses from good health are rather, yes, decidedly, less numerous than those alleged by the men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it not quite the thing, you know, to be in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... sometimes attached to this flippant expression, 'Muscular Christianity,' which is utterly immoral and intolerable. There are those who say, and there have been of late those who have written books to shew, that provided a young man is sufficiently brave, frank, and gallant, he is more or less absolved ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... and perplexed at Clifford's absolutely frank confidence. There was nothing flippant about it either. It was the simple expression of a nature that had nothing to conceal. There was not even a hint of gossip about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the expression ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... 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 judicious ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Silly, silly child!" he went on, shaking his forefinger at her. "I tell you women have done their greatest work in the world when their brains have been covered with a pretty hat. . . . There she goes, he growled," as she left the room. "Thinks I'm a flippant old windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her, Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... indeed as all right that he should be Count Otto Vogelstein; this appeared even rather a flippant mode of disposing of the fact. By way of rejoinder he asked her if she desired of him the ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... said, trying to be flippant. "You are not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with such sweet ingenuousness that I was only charmed. The simple sincerity of the confession seemed to me much better than the flippant jest and pert talk with which I had heard such subjects treated while making my observations upon what my city-acquaintances had assured me was good society. Is it not Sterling who exclaims that a luxurious and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... appeared to be staring into space. In reality they were watching the doughy countenance before him. "What do you propose to do?" Lablache asked, ignoring the other's flippant tone. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... passengers to be careful as they alight, which is couched in these terms: "Cinema actors risk their lives for pay! Don't do it for nothing!" a New York journalist remarks that "an American advertisement on that subject would be serious; the British are more flippant in their ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... little limited point only, and that point, observe, the one 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. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... worked out her contrasts very strikingly, and tells her story in a cleverly flippant way, which keeps the reader on the qui vive for the cynical but bright sayings she has ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great majority of the entertaining ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... from the stain that the outrages of that day have left upon his memory. It may be said, however, that the details of the coup d'etat were left to his subordinates, and that probably both success and infamy are due in large part to the flippant Morny. ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... my under-graduate days was rarely my habit—I drank till I was considerably excited. Hanmer saw it, and got the match resumed at once to save me, as he afterwards said, "from making a fool of myself." I insisted, in spite of his advice "to cool myself," upon going in first. My flippant acquaintance of the dinner-table stood point, and I knew, if I could but see the ball, and not see more than one, that I could occasionally "hit square" to some purpose. I had the luck to catch the first ball just on the rise, and it caught my friend point ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... and Sweden, in 1830 and 1831. It is one of the hop-step-and-a-jump tours that your fashionable folks make for making acquaintances and then making books. The gallant author does not stay long enough in a place to be dull; for he is lively and flippant in every page, and throws a dash of the service into every chapter. He feels that Dr. Granville has left him nothing to say which may not be found in his two great big books; yet the Cholera and the Polish war have supplied him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... Medora. Once more the interviewer sought his views on political questions. Roosevelt made a few non-committal statements, refusing to prophesy. "My political life," he remarked, "has not altogether killed my desire to tell the truth." And with that happily flippant declaration he was ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... spiritual expansiveness. On the other hand, he may have been the incarnation of paganism in the sense that Christ was the incarnation of Christianity. As Christ expressed how great a man can be humble and humane, Caesar may have expressed how great a man can be frigid and flippant. According to most legends Antichrist was to come soon after Christ. One has only to suppose that Antichrist came shortly before Christ; and Antichrist might ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... that Anna was in earnest. Anna had a wretched habit of being in earnest when she said flippant things. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clothing him whose will is strong. Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice! On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, The bold, significant, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... me in your last letter of being flippant in what seems to you tragic circumstances. I am sorry that I make that impression on you. I am not a bit flippant. I can only advise you to come over here, and live a little in this atmosphere, and see ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... saw poor Boldrick's death put her in a conflicting light to me. Now I thought I saw in her unusual gentleness, again an unusual irony, an almost flippant and cruel worldliness; and though at the time she was most touched by the accident, I think her feeling of horror at it made her appear to speak in a way which showed her unpleasantly to Mr. Devlin and his daughter. It may ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... old days. The sons of Islam were reverent, yet happy and at home on the threshold of Allah's house, and Stephen began to understand, as Nevill and Josette already understood, something of the vast influence of the Mohammedan religion. Only Madame de Vaux remained flippant. In the car, she had laughed at the women muffled in their haicks, saying that as the men of Tlemcen were so tyrannical about hiding female faces, it was strange they did not veil the hens and cows. In the shadowy mosque, with its five naves, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... words in considering the flippant form here used in a discussion of an unspeakably bloody and world-historic conflict. But this expression in very pregnant form makes Russia appear in the light in which the London powers-that-be desire ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... wonder how it feels to have a peculiar something in your face. Bertram, too, says she has it. He's trying to 'catch it,' he says. I wonder now—if he does catch it, does she lose it?" Flippant as were the words, the voice that uttered them ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... too angry to be flippant. "The fact is you care for nothing but yourself and your horrid old business. I always told you ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... the study of it; nay, they will spend years in learning to translate some of their own good poetry into the hypothetical language—to do so with fluency being reckoned a distinguishing mark of a scholar and a gentleman. Heaven forbid that I should be flippant, but it appeared to me to be a wanton waste of good human energy that men should spend years and years in the perfection of so barren an exercise, when their own civilisation presented problems by the hundred which cried aloud for solution and would have paid the solver ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... remained; yet no one ventured to suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of "saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the external one had come over her, so gradually that Lucy had not observed it till now, when the place brought back so vividly the recollection of the gay, flippant Stella of old. She had certainly grown more thoughtful, more quiet, even more serious; and Lucy observed that her former levity had quite departed, and that a flippant remark never now fell from her lips. Her old wilfulness of manner continued to ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... an inauspicious landing. With September begin the north-east winds, and we had an average experience that afternoon. Was it not a farce—a great deal more than a farce: a saucy, flippant imposition on the tender mercies of Providence—for an individual who could not endure a few hours of tossing on the bosom of the ocean without becoming deadly sick, to imagine that he possessed the hardihood to establish a home even in this lovely ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... been written on the administration of justice. But perhaps enough has been given to show that great care is taken to protect the interests of the innocent and to do equal and exact justice to all. In view of flippant remarks sometimes made regarding courts of justice, it is pertinent and proper to go at least so far into detail. The study of Civil Government will have been pursued to little purpose if respect for law be not ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... defendant, Mr. Learned Bore, had not even got the plea of childishness to excuse some of the very reprehensible, if not flippant, statements he had dared to ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... writers, although they have taken so arrogant a tone. As we have said, we do not attempt to analyze the argument or the statement of which we thus speak. We have only to say that it is positive, and not negative,—constructive, and not destructive,—reverent, and not flippant,—courteous to opponents, and never denunciatory. These are characteristics of a work of theology of which those can judge who do not affect to be technical theologians. Had we to give our own views of the matters presented in so interesting a form, we should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... interests of those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... speech, his arm, and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free gift of anything ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... other ordinary, common, everyday man! Why should not my blood boil when I think of it? Then, too, when I recall how often my addresses are ignored in the local press, ought not I to be aroused to fierce ire? When a hotel clerk fails to recognize my national importance and gives me a flippant answer when I ask for information should I not deem it time that the Secretary of State interfere and write a State paper ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, rather ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... less pleased with each other than they were at the commencement of their interview. Lissac felt that in some fashion or other, he had wounded Rosas even in adopting the flippant tone of the lounger, without any malice, and the Spaniard with his somewhat morose nature, retired within himself, almost gloomy, and reproached Guy for the first time for smiling or jesting on ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... not exist, is sketched in the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set out and ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... flippant, sir. (seizes hat and waves it) You're deceiving my girls, two girls with but one Single thought, two ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... science. It must contain an element of truth. All religions, however, assert that their God is for us not altogether cognisable, that God is a great mystery. The higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. It is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popular religiosity offends. It talks of God as if he were a man in the next street. It does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches into the truth, and presumably ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Island, and called it "Boredom." Gorki at Coney Island is like Dante at a country fair. Thomas Carlyle was invited out to a social dinner-party once upon a time, and when he came home he wrote savagely in his diary of the flippant, light-hearted conversation among the men and women about the festive board, saying, "to me through those thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat glaring." What a charming guest he must have been on that ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... more flippant by his solemnity. "Surely I can laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy, especially when ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and—I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must—she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my duty ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... pointed crown, his blue overcoat the narrow collar and padded shoulders of a long vanished fashion. These offer opportunities enough for bad jokes; but no one makes them. It is as if there were an invisible something emanating from the stately figure that prevents the rise of flippant thoughts. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... studious and quiet, people say He is grouchy, he is old before his time; If he's frivolous and flippant, if he treads the primrose way, Then they mark him for a wild ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... ladylike in his bearing. His alert, dark eyes were set too close together, and his face had a narrow, sinister look that made them all feel uncomfortable. He spoke with a decided English accent, in a light, flippant voice which sent a quiver of dislike up and down David's spine, and made Reddy Brooks give his right arm a vigorous twirl as if he would have liked to pitch something at ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... reader who learns from the living voice and visible actions of his fellow-creatures as well as from the dead printed pages is on the way to placidity and strength and true wisdom. Thus much I will say—the flippant devourer of books can neither be wise nor strong nor useful; and it is his tribe who have discredited a pursuit which once was noble and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... folks come to our time of life without marrying, nine times out of ten there has been a mess; and what I said a moment since is just the flippant talk we use to cover it up. By 'our time of life' I don't mean, of course, that we're of an age, you and I, but that we've fixed our fate, formed our habits, made our beds and must lie in 'em as comfortably as we can manage. . . . ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... first touch of her hand on the knob, Charley's flippant voice greeted her with, "Won't you come in, Gabriella?" and swallowing her angry retort, she entered stiffly, with the glass held out straight before her. Charley, on his knees beside the bed, with his arm under his wife's pillow, ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow |
