"Glibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presented himself before the Thing on the appointed day, and glibly reciting his pedigree, he named so many more ancestors than Angantyr could recollect, that he was easily awarded possession of the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... consulted? Has their will been counted as any part in the estimate of collective volition? They are a part of the population. However natural in the country itself, it is rather cool in English writers who talk so glibly of the ten millions (I believe there are only eight), to pass over the very existence of four millions who must abhor the idea of separation. Remember, we consider them to be human beings, entitled to human rights. ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... bet! Blake, I'm no betting man; but you'd better be certain what Ray's doing before you champion him so glibly. Perhaps I know more ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... he said with relief; and ran on glibly,—"That is the natural thing. Every girl should get married early. But you must take good care, my dear girl, not to make a mistake. You might be very unhappy, you know. He might not treat you right." And with a ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... said Doyle glibly, as one who had foreseen every emergency. 'My friend here is controller of the Strand. When the Strand is up he is responsible, and it has the largest circulation in the—I mean it's up oftener than any other street in the world. We cannot inspect ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... would not want to leave as long as her father was here," Fendrick answered for her glibly with a smile that said ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... preferring to take their chances in a world of their own making... And he began to question, too, either the beauty or contentment of the heaven which offered the vacuous delights of idleness. It seemed, perhaps, that the theologians had mixed their revelations, and that the paradise they offered so glibly was really a ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... game of 'Here's the Robbers passing by,' and Gladys stood still, watching them with a kind of quiet, tender interest, trying to understand the words, to which they gave many strange meanings. They grew shy of the scrutiny by and by, and the spell was broken by an oath which fell glibly from the lips of a small boy, showing that it was no stranger to them. Gladys looked inexpressibly shocked, and hastened into the stair, which was very dirty, and odorous of many evil smells. The steps seemed endless, but ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... two pairs of keen eyes, could cause two little faces to blanch to an unwholesome and sickly hue, could cause two little hearts to beat anxiously, and could so affect the moral equilibrium of two very steadfast little souls, that lies would fall glibly from their lips, and the coward's weapons of deceit and subterfuge would be gladly ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... high into the air, has a boy climb it until he is lost to view. He can even have the feat photographed. The camera will click; nothing will appear on the developed film; and this, the performer will glibly explain, "proves" that the whole company of onlookers was hypnotized! And he can be certain of a very profitable following to defend ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... below. The rule itself is short, and all of the exceptions could be learned "for keeps" by a pupil in an hour. But pupils must have drill in applying the rules or they may be able to repeat the rules perfectly and glibly and not be able to spell the words coming ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... much stuck—" Raymond began glibly enough, and then, becoming conscious that he might betray an opportunity to ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... getting sort of impatient," he confessed glibly, at the same time drawing her up till her feet left the floor, and getting outside ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... Endicott, "you are familiar with the popish device, practice will enable you to answer the more glibly." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... ee afore that you had a sifflicated Missee. But I was afeard as that you wur a too adasht. But I tellee it will do! Father's own lad! An ear-tickler! Ay, ay! That's the trade! Sugar the sauce, and it goes down glibly. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... feared the usual delay, but while they were still in the hall the bell jangled, and the night-clerk of the hotel in Crystal responded—little to a cheering effect to the listener, though of this he was unaware. Mr. Bayne had already set out, he stated glibly. He must be five miles away by this time (the clerk evidently thought that he pleased his interlocutor by his report of the precipitation with which Mr. Bayne had obeyed her summons). Mr. Bayne was a good judge of horse-flesh, and the clerk would venture to ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Glibly enough, Tuppence ran through her imaginary career on the lines suggested by Mr. Carter. It seemed to her, as she did so, that the tension ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... against their acceptance. She could not bear now to wear the dresses proffered by Miss Smith, and momentarily made up her mind not to go to the ball at all. Then again her heart failed her as her companion glibly ran over the names of those who were to attend, and Cissie thought how she would like to enter the room on Horace Gibson's arm in the presence of Miss Williams and the rest. Horace Gibson was a clerk in the Bank ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... whose tongues "the fathers," "forefathers," "ancestors" (hardly including ancestresses) and the like rolled so glibly, the "Pilgrim Fathers" were glorified long before the "Pilgrim Mothers," and hardly yet has the mother of the "father of his country" received the just remembrance and recognition belonging to her who bore so noble and so illustrious a son. By and by, however, it is to be hoped, we shall ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to explain that," the young man said glibly. "If you can look at yourself with the same eyes with which you see other people, it won't take long. Make a looking-glass of me, and ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... crochet while Dr. Volta talks to her; and then, at the right moment, she says just the right thing, and makes him laugh, or makes him cry, or makes him defend himself, or makes him explain himself; and you think that there is a particular knack or rule for doing this so glibly, or that she has a particular genius for it which you are not born to, and therefore you both propose hermitages for yourselves because you cannot do as she does. Dear children, it would be a very stupid world if anybody in it did just ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... two or three officers of our regiment whom I know to be fools; but d—n me if I am ever seen in their company. If a man hath a fool of a relation, Dick, you know he can't help that, old boy." Such jokes as these the old man not only tools in good part, but glibly gulped down the whole narrative of his nephew; nor did he, I am convinced, in the least doubt of our as readily swallowing the same. This made him so charmed with the lieutenant, that it is probable ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... around me, and pressed me with questions, and mocked me, and threatened me with hell flames and utter extinction. I held my ground against them all obstinately enough, though my argument was exceedingly lame. I glibly repeated phrases I had heard my father use, but I had no real understanding of his atheistic doctrines. I had been surprised into this dispute. I had no spontaneous interest in the subject; my mind was occupied with other things. But as ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... "raw material" so glibly, with an aesthetic contempt for that which the art of man has neither manipulated nor reorganized, we show our own coarse appreciation, if not ignorance, of the wonderful inherent beauty and microscopic delicacy ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... narrowly commercial lines. And our standards of judgement have risen: we do not worship quite so blindly mere names, whether of the past or of the present, nor exalt the performer quite so dizzily above what is performed. Nor do we quite so glibly disguise our indifference to vital distinctions by talking about differences of taste: we know that, however catholic we may rightly be within the limits of the good, whether grave or gay, there comes sooner or later, in our judgement of musical as of all other spiritual values, a ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... herself culpable of. Sadie had rebelled against her first child, but when shown the consequences had cheerfully applied the lesson, while she, Elizabeth, had been unable to put into practice later the very precepts she had so glibly given her neighbour. None of her friends had ever committed the folly of falling in love with men who ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... two there are not a few that fail. The most precious work is performed with a noble, though not idle ease, because it is the sincere, seasonable, and, as it were, inevitable flowering into expression of one's inward life; and work utterly, glibly insincere and imitative is often done with ease, because it is so successfully separated from the inward life as not even to recognize its claim. Accordingly, pure art and pure artifice, sincere creation and sheer fabrication, flow; from the mixture of these, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... a timid creature, Elspeth showed best among the timid, because her sympathetic heart immediately desired to put them at their ease. The more glibly they could talk, the less, she knew, were they impressed by her. Even a little boorishness was more complimentary than chatter. Sometimes when she played on the piano which Tommy had hired for her, the visitor was so shy that he could not even mutter "Thank ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... explanation to look at something else. Only those whose friendship and understanding have been tested will be likely to be told of that which is sacred lore. However, if the tourist insists upon having a story with his basket or pottery and the seller realizes that it's a story or no sale, he will glibly supply a story, be he Indian or white, both story and basket ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... between sisters-in-law, so it's really up to you!" he replied glibly. "Don't trouble to answer; the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... quite as matter-of-fact a fashion as though she had been living here ever since that day instead of only the matter of a few minutes. When she came downstairs, Nora herself seemed to accept her on that basis. To her suggestions, she replied, "Yes, Mrs. Pendleton," as glibly as though she had been saying it all ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... without my luggage," explained Pen glibly, "but I can trim out clothes as easily as I can animals, and if you have any stray pieces of cloth I can very quickly duplicate what ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... of working man I knew. I perceived that the latter was not going to change, and indeed could not under any stimulus whatever be expected to change, into the former. It crept into my mind as slowly and surely as the dawn creeps into a room that the former was not, as I had at first rather glibly assumed, an "ideal," but a complete misrepresentation of the quality and possibilities ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... did not change beneath his scrutiny. During a rather long moment she was silent, then her answer came glibly enough. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... firm and most stoically resolved: at last, however, come it does; and now our chief friend Philosophy, like many other friends, is found most weak when most needed. In vain do we invoke his approved maxims, hitherto so glibly dealt out to silence all gainsayers; yet now, they are either found inapt or are forgotten wholly, until, after a paltry show of defence, braggart Philosophy fairly takes to his heels, and leaves us abandoned to the will of old mother Nature. Now, indeed, arrives the tug; and I, for ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... priest who plays me to you so glibly doesn't understand what I am talking about half so well as you do, who can't read a word I write! He had to learn my language note by note from the best music-master in Brussels. It's your mother-tongue! You learned it as you sucked at your sweet young mother's breast, my ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... English landscape painter, Turner, at the praise which was so glibly lavished on Claude—an indignation that caused Turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the trustees of the National Gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'Claudes,' known as 'The Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca' and 'The Embarkation ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... in this field belongs to my lord marquis of Carabas, you shall be chopped as small as mince meat." The king accordingly passed a moment after, and inquired to whom the corn he saw belonged? "To my lord marquis of Carabas," answered they very glibly; upon which the king again complimented the marquis upon his noble possessions. The cat still continued to go before, and gave the same charge to all the people he met with; so that the king was greatly astonished at the splendid fortune of my lord marquis of Carabas. Puss at length arrived ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... taught the few simple fundamental rules of nutrition until they are second nature. A thorough knowledge of the fact that it is very injurious to eat when there is bodily or mental discomfort is worth ten thousand times as much to a child as the ability to extract cube root or glibly recite, "Arma virumque cano Trojae," etc. The realization that underchewing and overeating will cause mental and physical degeneration is much more valuable than the ability to demonstrate that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. This knowledge can be ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... that she was the honestest woman he had known; she gloomily made out that she was, she supposed, 'straight'; she liked clear, firm things, and she liked to keep a bargain. It didn't seem to her a very arresting array of virtues; but then—no, she couldn't settle Franklin's case so glibly as that; if it wasn't what she might have of charm that he had fallen in love with, it wasn't what she might have of virtue either. Perhaps one's soul hadn't much to do with either charm or virtue. And, after all, whatever it was, he was gazing at it, ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... fleets are engaged, I have got a cousin who is as dear to me as a brother," observed Archie, "and I don't want any harm to happen to him. You youngsters talk glibly of fighting; but let me hear what you have to say about it when you have seen the thing in reality. It is a necessary evil, but ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... "Never again can I speak flippantly of the ocean; never again can I use the expression, 'crossing the pond.' The sea is too vast and too sublime for that." He had achieved reverence. Many a child in school can spell the name of the ocean and give a book definition rather glibly, who, nevertheless, has not the faintest conception of what an ocean really is. The tragedy of the matter is that the teacher gives him a perfect mark for his parrot-like definition and spelling and leaves him in crass ignorance of the reality. The boy deals only with the husk and misses the kernel. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... rivals breakfasted together the next morning. Not a word was said on either side upon the matter discussed the previous evening so glibly and so hollowly. Stephen was absorbed the greater part of the time in wishing he were not forced to stay in town ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... queen. Why should I not? I am her leal and true subject, which is more than thou canst say even if thou didst rattle off her welcome so glibly in Latin. As for my dress, it is my own. Why should I not wear it, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... into a nursery talc—heaven transformed into a pretty pleasure-house—and hell and its horrors brought as bugbears to frighten children in the dark. Do you think I would have my child turned into a baby saint, to patter glibly over parrot prayers, exchange pet sweetmeats for missionary pennies, and so learn to keep up a debtor and creditor account with Heaven? No, Miss Rothesay, I would rather see her grow ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... be left Regent, the King's brother—Bedford, who, whatever else he were, was no Lollard, and was not likely to let a Lollard escape his fangs. And on this interesting topic York's tongue ran on glibly—how King Henry meant to march at once upon Paris, proclaim himself King of France, be crowned at Saint Denis, marry one of the French Princesses—which, it did not much signify—and return home a conquering ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... lord. He will not get me into trouble through displaying his manhood before me. He hath besides a a face long enough for three roundheads, and a tongue that can utter glibly enough what soundeth very like their jargon. Tom is the right fool ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... smiled. His teeth were perfect. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," he announced, glibly. ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... mentioned to you any books except my own; but we have been amused with the Invisible Gentleman. You must swallow one monstrous magical absurdity at the beginning, and the rest will go down glibly—that is, amusing. ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... walking. The Bungalow was ugly, of yellow brick pointed with red. It lay about two-thirds up between the main road and cliffs, and had a rock-garden and a glaring, brand-new look, in the afternoon sunlight. He opened the gate, uttering one of those prayers which come so glibly from unbelievers when they want anything. A baby's crying answered it, and he thought with ecstasy: 'Heaven, she is here!' Passing the rock-garden he could see a lawn at the back of the house and a perambulator out there under ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have seen him, Gabriella," she cried, and her tongue ran glibly while I plunged my face in a basin of cold water, ashamed of the traces of selfish sorrow. "You have seen my own dear brother Ernest. And only think of your getting the first glimpse of him! What did you think of him? What do you think of him now? ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... impersonated by the Author. As a character orally portrayed, Cobbs was fully on a par with Doctor Marigold. Directly the Reader opened his lips, whether as the Boots or as the Cheap Jack, the Novelist seemed to disappear, and there instead, talking glibly to us from first to last just as the case might happen to be, was either the patterer on the cart footboard or honest Cobbs touching his hair with a bootjack. His very first words not only lead up to his confidences, but in the same ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... waiting for Marie on a grey afternoon when she returned from a lecture, for which, a year ago, she would have needed a dictionary, but which now entered her brain glibly and was at home there. All that afternoon she had been listening to an exotic discourse on "Woman and her Current Philosophy"; and now—here was Osborn's letter, suggesting calmly, proprietorially almost, his re-entry into her life. Was it possible that he had ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... German glibly, "because England is the World Enemy. Throughout the ages she has been ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... "That there," she glibly rattled off, "is the organic remains of a three-toed woolly bronsolumphicus of the carboniferous limestone, or Upper Silurian trilobite period. I believe I have the name correct. It was dug up out of a dry lake in Wyoming that years ago got to be mere loblolly, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... words, hastily came up to the priest, "What were you so glibly holding forth?" he inquired. "All I could hear were a lot of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... employed in a case where a purchaser of a Fiddle had been imposed on as to its value. He found it necessary to prepare himself by reading all about Fiddles in the encyclopaedias, &c., and having got the names of Stradivari, Amati, &c., glibly on his tongue, got swimmingly through his case. Not long after this, dining at the Duke of Hamilton's, he found himself left alone after dinner with the Duke, who had but two subjects he could talk of—hunting and music. Having exhausted hunting, Scott thought he would bring forward his lately acquired ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... has blue eyes, what can be clearer than that he inherited them? If the father stammers and the son stammers, who can doubt but that it came by inheritance? If the father is a musician and the son a musician, we say very glibly that the talent was inherited. But what does inherited mean? In no case does it mean what inherited usually means—something external, like money, collected by a father, and, after his death, secured by law to his son. Whatever else ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... first to speak. She was the only one who had had the opportunity to summon her story to her tongue's end. She began glibly ...
— Mrs. Christy's Bridge Party • Sara Ware Bassett
... left in the pan was proof positive that the claim was making good. It did strike him as strange, however, that when he selected a pan of dirt and washed it unassisted he found nothing. At such times Bill explained glibly enough that no pay dump carried steady values, and that an inexperienced sampler was apt to get "skunked" under the best of circumstances. Concentrates lay in streaks and pockets, he declared. Then to prove his assertions Bill would help ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... he returned glibly. Then his pinched face shaded. "If I can git back before she comes down," he hesitated, wavering between kindness and fear. "I guess I can," he decided, and ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... robbed me of one hundred and fifty dollars," said the man, glibly. "I fell in with him in the Boston cars, and he relieved me of a roll of bills which I had drawn from a ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... do not know. I was at the other end of the house. The Fraeulein was frightened and called to me," she lied glibly. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... that land of which we speak so glibly and picture each of us according to our personal fancy, and of which we are so absolutely ignorant—in that future state there surely must be love. Was a wonderful human love like this to come to an abrupt end—to be left ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... a big blowout, unknown to The Laird and Donald, to celebrate the boy's return to health. I'm planning to shut down the mill and the logging-camps for three days," he replied glibly. Of late he was finding it much easier to lie to her than to tell the truth, and he had observed with satisfaction that Mrs. Daney's bovine brain ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... of course, repeating what he had told Lebedeff the night before, and thus brought it out glibly enough, but here he looked suspiciously at the prince out of ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... results gave the 'Laughing Water' claim to its present owners, by right of prior location, after the opening hour, as the claim was included in the tract." He had uttered this speech before. It fell very glibly from his tongue. ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... glibly as she had written it. The formula had been a favourite one of her late father, when roused to fall upon offending ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... half as stuck up about it as you might think, Mr. Smart," interrupted Jasper, Jr., glibly. "She prefers to let people think her ancestors were Dutch instead of merely German. Dutch ancestors are the proper thing in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... you, perhaps, if you had been in the same berth," returned Wicks; and he told the whole story of the rotten water, the long calm, the squall, the seamen drowned; glibly and hotly; talking, with his head in the lion's mouth, like one pleading in the dock. I heard the same tale from the same narrator in the saloon in San Francisco; and even then his bearing filled me with suspicion. But ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... me went up to her ma-in-law's cousin's, on Forty-ninth Street, to find the kid," Gladys cut in, glibly, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... glibly, but with a nervousness which, more and more, cropped out through his noisy joviality. Now, under the coldly unwavering smile of Hade's snakelike eyes, he stammered, and his booming voice trailed away to a mumble. Again, Claire sought to mend the rickety ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... He spoke glibly, and the captain appeared to credit his statements. The boys listened with interest, and with a new appreciation of Fletcher's character. They could easily have disproved one of his statements, for they knew very well ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... hated your poor dear uncle like a blackamoor before we were married; and yet, you know, my dear, what a good wife I made him." Such is my learned friend's argument, to a hair. But finding that this doctrine did not appear to go down with the House so glibly as he had expected my honorable and learned friend presently changed his tack and put forward a theory which, whether for novelty or for beauty, I pronounce to be incomparable; and, in short, as ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... room, against whose dark background stood out darker canvasses of an army of now celestial Penrhyns; an army whose numbers would have been a morning's task to count. The ancient Penrhyns had been princes, like most of their ilk; and the titles which Weir glibly recited, and the traditions of valor and achievement which she had at her tongue's end, finally wrung from Dartmouth a ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... I believe, Fred Oakes and I betrayed ourselves genuine adventurers. Any fool could have talked glibly about setting the town on fire; any coward could have yelped about the danger of it, and improbability of success. It needed adventurers to size up instantly all the odds against the idea, recognize the one infinitesimal chance, and plump for ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Ah! your modesty again!—I'll tell you what, Jack; if you don't speak out directly, and glibly too, I shall be in such a rage!—Mrs. Malaprop, I wish the lady would favour us with ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... wear the look of sympathy. A fortnight after M. de Nailles's death, between the acts of Scylla and Charybdis, the principal parts in which were taken by young d'Etaples and Isabelle Ray, the company, as it ate ices, was glibly discussing the real drama which had produced in their own elegant circle much of the effect a blow has upon an ant-hill—fear, agitation, and a tumultuous rush to the scene ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... "Oh, pretty glibly, sir," replied the mate; "we can scarcely tell what headway we are making, for we are obliged to keep the middle of the river, and there is the shadow of a fog rising. This wood seems rather better than that we took in at Yellow-Face's, but we're ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... course, it is. But what is the matter with idealism? What really is idealism? Do one-tenth of those who use the phrase so glibly know it true meaning, the part it has played in the world? The worthy interpretation of an ideal is that it embodies an idea—a conception of the imagination. All ideas are at first ideals. They must be. The producer brings forth an idea, but some dreamer ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... phenomena involved are curious, and suggest that we are either wrong about our history or else that we enormously exaggerate the periods required for the pre-natal acquirement of habits. In the nineteenth century we talked very glibly about geological periods, and flung millions of eons about in the most lordly manner in our reaction against Archbishop Ussher's chronology. We had a craze for big figures, and positively liked to believe that the progress made by the child in the womb ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... "She does," replied Amarilly glibly. "She kin do 'em orful keerful, and we dry the colored stuffs in the shade. And our clo'es come out snow- white allers, and we never tears laces nor git in too much bluin' or starch the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... off glibly, though a year ago she had never heard of the painter, and did not, even now, remember whether he was an Old Master or one of the very new ones whose names one ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... the time," said Toni, really angry now. "It's only in your presence he's so silent; when we're alone he can talk glibly enough." ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the case," replied Carrington glibly, and with neither more nor less of the contemptuous superiority with which he would have referred to any other Old Bailey trial; but the man himself was quick to see the brutality of such a statement, and quicker yet to tone ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... gets well on such talk could well have afforded to be even sicker. What ethical teacher has not an abundance of rules for good living so long as they exist only on his lips? But it is clearly a much harder task to express them in actual life. Mechanics, individually, talk glibly about their own arts, but not one of them so lightly vies (in practice) with the architect or the boxer. It is the same in every other line. So it is very easy to talk about definition, arguments, or genus and the like, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... that is surrounded with a very hard shell," said Mrs Jefferson glibly. She liked discussions, and was accustomed to say she could talk on any subject—having indeed come from a country where women did talk on any subject, whether they were acquainted, with it or not. ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... to a laborious writer, a student or a thinker. Week by week there pours forth an unending deluge of love fiction, and week by week this deluge is absorbed into the systems of millions of human beings. We speak glibly of the world-wide fame of some classic, when, in point of fact, the people familiar with that classic are isolated specks in the vast, solid mass to whom some novelettist is a household god. The classic ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... lit up as all our heavy guns were letting themselves go a bit; I suppose they knew the machine guns had been unkind to us and were trying to show their sympathy. The sentry challenged, I replied with our names and ranks. He glibly replied "Pass friends, all's well." As we were passing him to go to the C.T. (communication trench) I noticed something funny about his face, so I asked him what was the matter with it. He answered that he was wearing a gas helmet. I asked him if it was for amusement, ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... enough in the legs to make a pair of mittens to Mrs Balwhidder, were delivered to me by her executor, Mr Caption, the lawyer. Saving, however, this kind of flummery, Miss Sabrina was a harmless creature, and could quote poetry in discourse more glibly than texts of Scripture—her father having spared no pains on her mind: as for her body, it could not be mended; but that was ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... the morning's events, was careful to avoid using the harshest of Barry's terms, but earnestly embellished the account of Kenny's interference with some rather formidable expressions of her own, putting them glibly into the mouth of her champion. Once her mother ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... can trust us," replied Polly, glibly. "Everything will be all right. There's no occasion to make a fuss, or to be frightened. We have got to be firm, and rather old for our years, and if either of us puts down her foot she has got to ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... features of city government? Instead, the gentlemen seem to delight in wandering across the seas, telling what might happen if we would be indulgent enough to pattern our form of organization after that of France, Germany, or Bohemia. Yet they glibly refuse to consider that the city problem of this country is distinctly American and is due to conditions peculiar ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... court. The ladies, in truth, seemed much taken with his society. They put fifty questions to him about the play—the assembly—the sermon—marriages—deaths—christenings, and what not; the whole of which he answered with surprising volubility. His tongue was the only active part about him, going as glibly as if he were ten stones, instead of thirty, and as if he were a Tims in person as well as in name. In a short time I found myself totally neglected. Julia ceased to eye me, her aunt to address me, so completely were their thoughts occupied with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... your tongue runs very glibly, but if you think I am going to stand the bore of the company of you girls all day you are mistaken, and, good lack, look at my handkerchief, with a hole in it a dog could ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Polly went glibly on: "Don't listen to Tom, my dear. What does he know about what a man wants his wife to take an intelligent interest in? Once a woman knows about her husband's business, he's finished with her and ready for the next. Tom's ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... state," he said glibly, "the objects we propose to accomplish: the downfall of the money power, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... quoth he, panting and wiping the sweat from his brow, "what say the Scriptures that you quote so glibly?—Be not weary of well doing. You must carry me back again or I swear that I will make a cheese-cloth ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... chapter of his knowledge of the woman who was so compelling in her helplessness and her childlike faith? He would read: something silly, if he had it at hand. The large matters of the mind and soul were not for this unwilling vigil; and at this intruding thought of the soul he smiled, remembering how glibly he had bartered the integrity of his own to add his fragment to the rising temple of Tira's faith. He had strengthened her at the expense of his own bitter certainties. It was done deliberately and it was not to be regretted, but it did open a window upon his private ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... those times when she had sat for him. He could recall Del Ferice's mock heroics, Donna Tullia's ill-expressed invectives, and his own half-sarcastic sympathy in the liberal movement; but the young fellow in an old velveteen jacket who used to talk glibly about the guillotine, about stringing-up the clericals to street-lamps and turning the churches into popular theatres, was surely not the energetic, sunburnt Zouave who had been hunting down brigands in the Samnite ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... at these novel manoeuvres upon the ice. It is amusing to read their elaborate descriptions of the wonderful appendages which had enabled the Hollanders to glide so glibly into battle with a superior force, and so rapidly to glance away, after achieving a signal triumph. Nevertheless, the Spaniards could never be dismayed, and were always apt scholars, even if an enemy were the teacher. Alva immediately ordered seven ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a chum at your elbow so close a student of the manly game of war that he can glibly reel off for you every important manoeuvre of all the great battles of history, from those of Alexander the Great ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... "You talk as glibly as the Seven Sages, little eagle, but I will not argue with you. We must make the best of a bad world, and the best way is ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ragged, and shapeless sentence after another, and will have expressed himself sensibly, though in a very rude manner, before he sits down. And this is quite satisfactory to his audience, who, indeed, are rather prejudiced against the man who speaks too glibly. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
