"Flippancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy; she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking people. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and surprised at the rare pleasure he received from the vigour and liveliness of their conversation. These were the men whom he had despised as slow, yet what a contrast between their way of talking and the inanities of Fitzurse or the shallow flippancy of Bruce. As he sat there and listened, his very face became softer in its lines from the expression of a real and intelligent interest, and they all thought that he was a better fellow, on closer acquaintance, than they had been accustomed to suppose. Ah me! how often one remains unaware of the ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... constitution speak more eloquently than any words that could be used to amplify them in portraying the hideousness of a system of government that, if permitted to continue, must inevitably crush out the home in large part by the flippancy with which marriage and divorce are regarded, by the refusal of permitting the land to be held in private ownership, and by refusing the parent the right at death to pass on to his wife or to his children the fruits of years ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... staring at her, she seemed so accurate, according to his own mental gauging, and so unmoved in her flippancy, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Jangled' was to appear almost immediately, and he had come to have high hopes of it; it looked most imposing in proof—it was so much longer than 'Illusion;' he had worked up a series of such overwhelming effects in it; its pages contained matter to please every variety of taste—flippancy and learning, sensation and sentiment, careful dissection of character and audacious definition and epigram—failure seemed to him almost impossible. And when he could feel able to lay claim legitimately to the title of genius, surely then the memory of his fraud would cease to reproach ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... flippancy came back to him, since an ancient custom is not lightly broken; and John Bulmer smiled sleepily and shook his head. "Here am I on my honeymoon, with my wife locked up in the chateau, and with me locked out of it. My position savors too much of George Dandin's ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... The girl's flippancy broke out again. "Say, lemme know when the weddin' is and I'll send you a salad bowl," she flashed at him saucily as he turned ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... situation with a sang-froid equaling that of a camp harpy, a few of whom Pierce had seen; then, too, she was, or had been, married to a no-account foreigner to whom she referred with a calloused and most unwifely flippancy; moreover, she bore herself with a freedom, a boldness, quite irreconcilable to the modesty of so- called "good women." Those facts were enough to classify her definitely, and yet despite them she was anything but common, and it ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... which Olga continued to annoy the learned small man with her irreverent flippancy, and Mrs. Carew seemed to fascinate the two gentlemen who hovered about her like eager moths around a lamp. Then the host and Congressman came in together, and Regina saw her guardian cross the room, and murmur something to his ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... stopped for a moment to listen. His face, which at first had worn an expression of smiling flippancy, now changed its aspect. He recognized the music, and felt his heart heat wildly. With a commanding gesture, he motioned Matuschka to withdraw, and noiselessly ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... evidently cost its author great pains; it is filled with detail, and with considerable gossip concerning the hero, which is piquant, and, if true, important. The style is meant to be lively, and in some passages is pleasant enough; but it is marked with a flippancy, which, after a few pages, becomes very disagreeable. It abounds with the slang usually confined to sporting papers. According to the author, a civil man is "as civil as an orange," a well-dressed man is "got up regardless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... have remembered the words—the trees for medicine and healing, even the fish,—why I never thought there could be anything like that in the Bible! You chose it purposely, of course?" The young man did not reply for an instant. A hint of flippancy in the speech of his companion seemed to create ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... wife. Ladies have often been recommended to the baths to be cured of sterility; and, from what we have seen, we think there are far more unpromising places. Doctors, whose names only are known, but who were probably men of learning, have written on these salutary springs, and modern flippancy has at present forborne them. We have no Quack to patronize them; the "numen aquae" is not violated in print at least by jobbing apothecaries; but there is Gentile di Foligno, and Ugolino di ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,—food, cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... by the paint-pots, the intrigues, and the wild confusion of the dressing-room, Millicent had been able to commune with herself, and to foresee and take arms against the peril of an anti-climax. By sheer force, ingenuity, vivacity, flippancy, and sauciness, she lifted her lines to the level, and above the level, of the rest of the piece. She carried the audience with her; she knew it; all her colleagues knew it, and if they chafed they chafed in secret. The performance ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... things, too," said Tom, ignoring Archer's flippancy. "He used to talk to me while he was eating his lunch. The way he got started telling me about the different way they do things in Europe was when he put the shutters on the big shack. He put the hinges at the top ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... looking at any matter, and the atmosphere of intense and morbid gloom which Poe casts over so many of his weird tales is not characteristic of the short story in general. At the same time I am far from advocating flippancy or superficiality, for both are deadly sins in literature. I merely wish to impress upon you the absurdity of the solemn tone which some amateurs seem to think a mark of depth of thought or feeling. An apt, simple phrase is the most ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... easy declaration with a frown. If it were true he should not show that flippancy; if it were not he should not ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... she said, wounded at what appeared to be his flippancy. He did not mind the entreaty, but the tone with its delicate note of pathos was like a reproach. He could not explain; he could not tell her that he had penetrated her mood and understood. He said nothing except to ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... recalled to honour and grim actuality, he realises with dismay his breach of trust—he, who in their earlier days in London had called out that sprightly little emigre merely for the vulgar flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own across the face—ay, and ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... calls it, and fellow-dignity; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the stout-heartedness of being ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... acquaintance, that heaviness which leaves to others the whole weight of discourse, and whole search of entertainment, is the most fatiguing, but, upon a longer intimacy, even that is less irksome and less offensive, than the flippancy which hears nothing ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... love; let us eat and drink in thy fear—for CHRIST's sake——LORENZO, take your fingers out of that plate!' was a grace once said in our hearing, but evidently not in that of the spoilt boy, 'growing and always hungry,' who could not wait to be served. We should prefer to such insensible flippancy the practice of an old divine in New-England, who in asking a blessing upon his meals, was wont to name each separate dish. Sitting down one day to a dinner, which consisted partly of clams, bear-steak, etc., he was forced in a measure ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... George, with the flippancy of his class; "but still I must repeat, if you do not mount instantly, we will be late; and my master, the count, is not one ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... Richey's flippancy is often a cloak for deeper feeling. He dropped it now. "Yes," he said, "she's after the notes, of course. And I'll tell you I felt like a poltroon—whatever that may be—when I turned her down. She stood by the door with her face white, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Gilchrist."—"He did not think there was a man in the kingdom who would pretend ignorance, &c. &c. except Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not conceive that one man in the kingdom would utter such stupid flippancy, &c. &c. except Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not think there was one man in the kingdom who, &c. &c. could so utterly show his ignorance, combined with conceit, &c. as Octavius Gilchrist."—"He did not believe there was a man in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... met my gaze with a steady regard. I had expected scorn, but found grief and hurt. Accused by the sight, I wrapped myself in a cold flippancy. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... In spite of the flippancy with which I had striven to beguile Chigi, I was vaguely but none the less genuinely troubled. Unable to sleep, I strolled toward dawn in the garden. A lamp burned in the tiny room assigned to Margherita, and to my surprise there flitted across the window the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... she commanded, with hard flippancy. "Of course I might have known that Captain Strawn's theory about a gunman was just dust in our eyes, and that only a miracle could keep you from fastening on poor Ralph, since he and the gun are both missing.... Naturally it wouldn't occur to you that it might be an outsider, ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Flippancy, flippancy, of course. London would be better (for your friends) as a residence for you, than Wittemberg can be; and for that, and no other account, I could be sorry that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... nor sympathetic; and her manner all the evening had a nervous dryness that took away the pleasure of their tete-a-tete. Any old friend of Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, and sinks into ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... concluded with this amiable remark, I looked round for Cousin John, and rode away from her in disgust at her flippancy, and sick at heart to think of such a man as Captain Lovell wasting his smiles on such a creature. To be sure, he only said three words to her, for when I looked round again at the carriage he was gone. There is something very amusing to me in the bustle of a racecourse; and yet, after talking ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the political book which closed this period with the political book that opened it, do we find things much better, even long after "the Wilderness" had been mostly left behind. There is indeed less falsetto and less flippancy; perhaps Mr Arnold had silently learnt a lesson, perhaps the opportunities of regular essays in "three-decker" reviews—of a lay sermon to working men, of a speech at the greatest public school in the world—discouraged the playfulness which ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... said Malka with festival flippancy. "While I must hurry off my supper so as to buy the fish, and Milly and Leah must sweat in the kitchen, you can squat yourselves ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... and looked at her closely. The sweater and the sunshine had brought a faint tinge of wild-rose color to the transparency of her skin. The flippancy and boldness so prominent in her eyes the day before had disappeared. She looked more as she had when she was asleep in the moonlight. A wave of kindness and brotherliness swept ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared—but Effie's wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... doctor had not been Railsford's only support at present, he would have resented this professional flippancy more than ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... too, that although he was in the opposition now, they might, nevertheless, profit by them. And there was the influence of his personal presence on the train—his gravity of manner and his weighed and measured speech were a useful antidote to the flippancy ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... prominence. He attempts the most nonchalant air, tells Mr. B. to proceed and state his case. This was not the first time that he had been requested to perform this incipient step of the law's demand, and he does it with such astuteness and flippancy, and how he had been wronged and persecuted by the plaintiff, that tears, unbidden, are ready to glisten in your eyes. Injured innocence and your sworn duty to your profession inspire courage and induce you to take his case. Later on the tyro will have learned that ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... distinguishes this scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents especially that element in human nature which is perhaps the meanest ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... to a wedding reception, and among the serious presents some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club—"a wife-beater" he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly: this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to him—for a lurid instant he saw Winifred's husband wielding it. Oh, abomination of his sex! And did he ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... came mincing in about nine o'clock, disposed for flippancy and gossip; but neither Neville nor Rita encouraged them; so after a while they took their unimpaired cheerfulness and horse-play elsewhere, leaving the two occupants of the studio to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... to improve the occasion. "I deplore this growing spirit of flippancy," he said. "I tell you I deplore it! It is not right! If this Fire Brigade is to be of solid use, there must be less of this flippancy. We must have keenness. I want you boys above all to be keen. I—What ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... there is more in it than meets the eye. I mean more wisdom. Flippancy, like comedy, is but a matter of visual first impression. That world was not very wise. But there was in it a certain amount of common working sagacity. That, however, was mostly worked by the neutrals in diverse ways, public ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... through the growing haze and gloaming a short dark figure with a walk apparently founded on the imperfect repression of a negro breakdown. Something at once in the familiarity and the incongruity of this being moved Michael to even heartier outbursts of a healthy and humane flippancy. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... at heart. He had treated with flippancy the chance she had given him. Would an innocent man have ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... partly natural, partly intentional. In the darkest hours of his country's trial, he affected a serenity he was far from feeling; so that his apparent gayety at momentous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not comprehend its philosophy, nor applaud the flippancy of William the Silent. He went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows with a smiling face."—Motley's Rise of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... human; he was also humane, in the sense of humanitarian. He sketched an ideal, or rather perhaps a fanciful social system, with something of the ingenuity of Mr. H. G. Wells, but essentially with much more than the flippancy attributed to Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not fair to charge the Utopian notions upon his morality; but their subjects and suggestions mark what (for want of a better word) we can only call his modernism. Thus the immortality of animals is the sort of transcendentalism which savours of evolution; ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain, nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a foreigner. And now his mad old grandmother, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... This deplorable flippancy would overlook the serious fact that permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers of young men and young women is a great social evil. The consequences of that evil we shall observe ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... batteries! He complained to the Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and the flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by a gentleman whose pseudo- scholarly attainments should at lest have taught him the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire variety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the letter to which he refers me contains ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... that old, old feminine instinct, which made the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their portraits painted by you—beauty being so much in the eye of the beholder!" returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the defence behind which ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... this flippancy, he fell silent for a space, and together they moved on, through the thick ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... conviction that most of them are profoundly unworthy of the author of The Dop Doctor. Few of them even aspire to anything beyond "first serial" quality; and though there is often present a certain easy flippancy of phrase it impressed me only as the crackling of thorns in a pot-boiler. Perhaps the best is the first or title tale, which tells of a young wife goaded to hard words by her constant anxiety for an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... and his conversation has that spice of freedom which renders it specially acceptable in the boudoirs of the smart. The experience of a few years makes plain to him that, in social matters, the serious person goes down before the trifler. He therefore cultivates flippancy as a fine art, and becomes noted for a certain cheap cynicism, which he sprinkles like a quasi-intellectual pepper over the strong meat of risky conversation. Moreover, he is constantly self-satisfied, and self-possessed. Yet he manages to avoid giving offence by occasionally assuming a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... paid for it," said Florimel, whose innocence must surely have been supplemented by some stupidity, born of her flippancy. ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... girl, and I used to nurse her—I fancy it was our little Sally's death that killed her; she took to her bed after the funeral, and never left it till she went to her own," said Mary Ann, with unconscious flippancy. "She used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was going to little Sally, and I remember I was such a silly then, I brought mother flowers and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally with my love. I put them on her pillow, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... and what are you going to do with yourself?' asked Joe, with foolish flippancy. He felt quite safe himself. Without listening for an answer, he turned aside, worked a grain of tobacco to the tip of his tongue, and spat it out. He did not care about anything, since ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... fortune's buffets have left him still a tender interest in life, but pity rather than hopefulness gives color to his mood. Dickens's sentiment seldom rings perfectly true; too often it is sharped to flippancy, or flatted to mawkishness. The tone of Irving, in sentiment or in humor, is the clear and even utterance of a healthy nature. It was a period of sickly sentimentalism in which he began to write; men drew tears frequently and mechanically then, as they drew corks. The sentimentalist ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... me of flippancy, and this young lady states that I don't talk seriously. Yet a fellow has a right to dislike the danger of being unjustifiably placed in the category of meritorious people. I couldn't very well tell ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... with a few introductory chapters of plantation-slavery in Louisiana. Its principal merit is its burning earnestness of feeling and purpose; and earnestness is sacred from criticism. Whenever the warm, pulse of an author's heart can be felt through the texture of his story, criticism is mere flippancy. But, at the risk of making our author's lip curl with disdain of the sordid insensibility that refuses to join in his enthusiasm throughout, we shall venture to remind him that enthusiasm is no proof of truth, whether ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... versifiers are the persons who talk with elaborate flippancy of the 'simple common-places' of this noble poet! The reviewer adds: 'LONGFELLOW has a perfect command of that expression which results from restraining rather than cultivating fluency; and his manner is adapted to his theme. He rarely, if ever, mistakes 'emotions for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... the world," returned Quinton Edge, and Esmay smiled involuntarily at frankness so unblushing. Whereupon and curiously enough, Quinton Edge became suddenly of a great gravity, the flippancy of his accustomed manner falling from him as a cloak drops unnoticed from a man's shoulders. He rose to his feet, strode to a window, and stood there for perhaps a minute looking out upon the moonlit waters of the ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... The flippancy revolted Keith. It was Larry all over! Last night horrified and humble, this morning, "Don't care" and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... conveys, of a joyous, artless confidence in himself and in life, easily depressed, but quickly reasserting itself; and in which the eagerness for new experiences had freed itself from the rebellious impatience of boyish days. The self-confidence had its touches of flippancy and conceit; but on this side it must have been constantly counteracted by his gratitude for kindness, and by his enthusiastic appreciation of the merits of other men. His powers of feeling, indeed, greatly expended themselves in this way. He was very ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... days that they had journeyed together Lady Sidmouth had been greatly pleased with the attention and character of Harry Furness. He was always cheerful and courteous, without any of that light tone of flippancy which distinguished the young Cavaliers of the period, and her little daughter was charmed with her companion. Harry received the hearty thanks of Sir Henry Sidmouth for the care with which he had conducted his wife through ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... that it touched me to think of such a life so spent, and that I came to myself and implored him to give it all up. I don't think I went on my knees over it. But I am afraid I did cry; and that was the end. He pretended not to notice anything, and then in an instant he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me more than all the rest. I remember that I wanted to shake hands at the end. But Mr. Raffles only shook his head, and for one instant his face was as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of the time. Then he went as he had ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... entered—pale, her eyes showing traces of recent tears. Susie was absent, having no heart for food or company, and preferring to sit beside her mother for the brief time which remained to her. Even Meeteetse Ed shared in the general depression, and therefore it was in no spirit of flippancy that he observed as he replaced his cup ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Jackson, sternly, "there are some things over which it is unbecoming to jest. I wish to be as gentle as possible with you, but I may remind you that flippancy is not the best course ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... with 'Uncle Sim.' That's Mr. Simkins, Greek instructor. If you can look as if you'd lost all your friends and bitten your tongue you'll make a big hit with him. He doesn't know a joke even when it's labelled and can't stand any flippancy. I made a pun in class once; I've forgotten what it was, but it was a bright and scintillant little effort; and Uncle Sim told me I'd end on the gallows. He's never forgotten that and still views me ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of mine is so elementary. He secretly imagines that he's one of the most complex of men. But in a good many things he's as simple as a child. And I love him for it, although I believe I do like to bedevil him a little. He is dignified, and hates flippancy. So when I greet him with "Morning, old boy!" I can see that nameless little shadow sweep over his face. Then I say, "Oh, I beg its little pardon!" He generally grins, in the end, and I think I'm slowly shaking that monitorial air out ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... debates. We hear eloquent orations about the merits or demerits of socialism, without any effort being made to define clearly for what end it is useful or useless. It is meaningless to claim that socialism is good, if we do not know for what it is good, and the whole flippancy of the discussion too often becomes apparent when we stop and inquire what purposes the speaker wants to see fulfilled. We find a wobbling between two very different possible human purposes, with the convenient scheme of exchanging the one for the other, ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... rocket to get a full-sized man to the moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back—all in a sixty-ton rocket. That's just ten per cent of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a Unitarian!" as if ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... girl's sorrow was genuine, in strange contrast to Flavia's voluble flippancy. She laid her hand affectionately on ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... him, so complete was his overthrow. Disraeli said that he had watched him during Johnny's speech, and doubted whether the hanging of the head, etc., was merely acting; but before he had spoken two sentences he saw he was a beaten fox. Many said that the extreme flippancy and insolence of his manner was more remarkable than ever, from their being evidently assumed with difficulty. I have always thought Palmerston very much overrated as a speaker; his great power arose from ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... till you threw him off. No, don't be angry: I am only talking in that careless slang we all use when we mean nothing, just as people employ counters instead of money at cards; but I like him: he has that easy flippancy in talk that asks for no effort to follow, and he says his little nothings nicely, and he is not too eager as to great ones, or too energetic, which you all are here. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... crack a few jokes upon Reddy's inconsistency in struggling so hard to get away from his brother, and then struggling so hard to go back to him, but Tug told Jumbo that the subject was too tender for any of his flippancy. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... and the wide range of intellectual accomplishments that were much more than superficial, made him a source of incessant and varied stimulation. Even those, and there were some, who thought that his gaiety bordered on flippancy, that his genial self-content often came near to shockingly bad taste, and that his reminiscences of poor Mr. Fitzball and the green-room and all the rest of the Bohemia in which he had once dwelt, were too racy for his company, still found it hard to resist the alert intelligence ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... had been Ranson's captain in the Philippines, and who was much his friend, had been appointed to act as his counsel. When later that morning he visited his client to lay out a line of defence he found Ranson inclined to treat the danger which threatened him with the most arrogant flippancy. He had never seen him in ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... saying "Al-Saj's faj'a"—prose rhyme's a pest. English translators have, unwisely I think, agreed in rejecting it, while Germans have not. Mr Preston assures us that "rhyming prose is extremely ungraceful in English and introduces an air of flippancy": this was certainly not the case with Friedrich Rueckert's version of the great original and I see no reason why it should be so or become so in our tongue. Torrens (Pref. p. vii.) declares that "the effect of the irregular ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... garrulity; multiloquence^, much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet^, caquetterie [Fr.]; blabber, bavardage^, bibble-babble^, gibble-gabble^; small talk &c (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words; flux de bouche [Fr.], flux de mots [Fr.]; copia verborum [Lat.], cacoethes loquendi [Lat.]; furor loquendi [Lat.]; verbosity &c (diffuseness) 573; gift of the gab ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... preached it? For such a temple, the time has surely come—a nook sacred to God, and untainted by the breath of Mammon, where we could adore our Creator "in spirit and in truth." The evils of nineteenth-century cynicism and general flippancy of thought—great evils as they are and sure prognostications of worse evils to come—cannot altogether crush out the Divine flame burning in the "few" that are "chosen," though these few are counted as fools and dreamers. Yet they shall be proved wise and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... resignation, contained two shillings' worth of sympathy and fourpence-halfpenny worth of religion. It was too expensive as it stood, and boiled down, he was surprised to find that it became unfeeling to the verge of flippancy. Ultimately he embodied it in a letter, which he preceded by a telegram, breaking the sad news in as gentle a form as ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a saucy creature. I know, if I do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and cogent ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... of your loyal wrath, and let your vengeance fall upon his devoted head. Then it was that the overflowings of your 'native malignancy' hurled the tears of loyalty down your pallid cheeks. Then it was that your natural flippancy gave rapid birth to the most gross, unqualified and unjustifiable abuse I ever heard heaped, not only upon a member of Parliament, but even upon the commonest member of society. 'Am I,' said you, 'the son of a U. E. Loyalist, who fought and bled for his ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... his mind that the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put—a kind of spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any outward flippancy, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... inveighing against the trammels of the law. Clarendon was forced to submit to daily encroachments upon regularity of procedure, which found encouragement from the King. His personal dignity was injured, and his temper was daily chafed, by the insults of those who carried their insubordination and their flippancy to the Council Chamber, where he could ill brook their presence; and they did so under cover of the secret sympathy of the King. Day by day he found his own influence more surely undermined; and it was none the less irksome because he saw the work of his life undone amidst the ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... of the French writers of comedy to treat love seriously,[107] but, though he freed the theme from the malice or flippancy with which it had been treated by his predecessors, he was nevertheless a stranger to that intense and passionate love that we have come to associate with the romantic drama. Some have gone so far as to say that it is not amour at all that he portrays, but ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... in the heavens which common men mistake for idolatry. Others again, reversing the old Pythagorean maxim, and wearing the image of God upon their ring, have expressed it by unworthy familiarity, a continual adverting to the gifts of the spirit, and the experience of the soul in the flippancy of ordinary conversation, as did some of the fanatics of the Commonwealth. Others have represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging upon the face of society the frown of a rebuking fretfulness, ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... and flippancy, of ignorance and presumption, found in the productions of the apostles of the new infidelity of Oxford, (of which we shall have a few words to say by-and-by) are the natural and instructive, though most painful, result ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... but it was not infectious as respected the occasion of it. He shook his head mournfully, and said, "The flippancy of rude health—the inconsiderate laugh ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... luncheon together," returned Miss Martha, indignant at her friend's flippancy. "Do you suppose I cared whether I ever ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... It was as though she spoke of something very sacred. Then very musically Lady Drogheda laughed, and to the eye she was all flippancy. "La, William, I can't bury myself in the country until the end of time," she said, "and make interminable custards," she added, "and superintend the poultry," she said, "and for recreation play short whist with ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... "Not its flippancy, father," said Mary, quickly, fearing that her mother would be displeased. "It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... not, of course, proper subjects for conversation at all times, or at any time in a spirit of levity and flippancy. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... glad you chaps have come so early," he said, with a sort of schoolboy flippancy, "for we can all start for France together. Yes, I'm in the force right enough," and he flicked a blue card towards them lightly ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of requesting from me an offer in writing and then refusing to read it when I comply with your request. Why subject me to that annoyance when you knew you intended to refuse any offer I might make you? I do not relish your flippancy at ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... quite appalled as she entered the schoolroom, not only at Mervyn's fulfilment of his threat, but at Bertha's flippancy and shrewdness. Hitherto she had been kept ignorant of evil, save what history and her own heart could tell her. But these ten days had been spent in so eagerly studying the world, that her girlish ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... aloud, and Mr. Stanhope could hardly preserve his gravity, but Sir William gave Melange a look that seemed a deathblow to his flippancy, for he moved off directly to the care ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of faith. Some one quoted Heb. xi. 1, and the lecturer's answer was, "You could not have given a worse definition." My old friend, a "broad" but most reverent Churchman, referred to this as an instance of painful flippancy. It may have been so. But I am prepared to think that the lecturer may not have meant it so at all. He may only have expressed rather crudely his view, the right view, to my mind, that we have here not a definition of faith at all but a description of faith as an operative force, an ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... than was David Crockett. And he can be hardly blamed for this. The savages had some idea of the Great Spirit and of a future world. David was as uninstructed in those thoughts as are the wolves and the bears. Many years afterward, in writing of this occurrence, he says, with characteristic flippancy, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... had made his little speech in answer to Mr. Turnbull with good-humoured flippancy, had recorded his vote in favour of the seven boroughs with a sore heart. Much as he disliked Mr. Turnbull, he knew that Mr. Turnbull was right in this. He had spoken to Mr. Monk on the subject, as it were ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... over! We have made our debut," she said, a little recklessly, as they walked back to Beach House, where Mrs. Challoner and Dulce were still staying. And as Nan looked at her, a little shocked and mystified by this unusual flippancy, she continued in the same ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... said Mr. Vere, "by the flippancy of speech, and pertness of argument, by which you have disgusted Sir Frederick, and given me of late ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... seriousness, and in no spirit of flippancy: "Should women think?" They gain in power perhaps, but do they not lose in happiness by thinking? If women must always labor under unjust economic conditions, receiving less pay for the same work than men, if women must always submit to the unjust ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... new lectures for the coming season. She was a rather serious-looking woman of about forty with a straight figure, good features, and a pleasant, but infrequent smile, suggesting that its owner was not susceptible to flippancy. However, she navely admitted that she had come away for pure recreation and to forget ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... to open the seance with a few moments of earnest, silent meditation—a few moments of dwelling "in the silence," as some have well called it; and these moments should be observed in a religious and devotional state of mind, all frivolity and flippancy being carefully avoided. If some present feel moved to prayer, then by all means let the prayer be made, for there can scarcely be a more fitting occasion for reverent prayer than a properly conducted seance. A few moments ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... rejoined Gabriel coolly, for he was hurt by the piece of flippancy and was thinking the worst of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... candid mind of Machiavelli shows itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The style of Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, from the mysterious conciseness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian coxcomb, is employed to disguise the fallacy of some positions, and the triteness of others. Absurdities are brightened into epigrams; truisms are darkened into enigmas. It is with difficulty that the strongest eye can sustain the glare with which some parts are illuminated, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... best he could; he did not know exactly what. He was in no mood for flippancy. He assumed a dozen different positions in a short space: first sitting on a camp-chair beside her, then hurried walking up and down, then careless prostration upon the grass. The old, useless argument was gone through with again. She told him at last that it annoyed her, that he was very inconsiderate. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... distress the mother of a little son. For all unexpectedly, suddenly, her house built of cards of carelessness, flippancy, thoughtlessness, had fallen round her. She struggled among ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... is lengthy and it will no doubt be reprinted in book form. I repeat what I said in my first paragraph as to the major part of it, but I assert that the objectionable part of the manifesto is so objectionable in its flippancy, in its perversity, in its injustice, and in its downright inexactitude as to amount to a scandal. Mr. Shaw has failed to realize either his own importance or the importance and very grave solemnity of the occasion. The present is no hour for that disingenuous, dialectical bravura which ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... bloodhound when it comes to detecting the false from the true. Take that little sketch, 'Trapped,' you sent me out to see last week. A more sophisticated audience might have mistaken its brittle epigrammatic quality for brilliancy and its flippancy for cleverness. But not your ten-twenty-thirty's. In real life a husband doesn't psychanalyze his wife's lover. He horsewhips him. And that lovely blank-verse fantasy that you attempted on your own. That is the sort of thing you are going ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... the most remarkable and the most unflinching. But the sceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to change their ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or care for his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat the superficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century. Two things have been specially insisted on. We have been told that if we are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our minds from the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a later theology, and try to form our impressions first-hand ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... well kill a man as scare him to death," he said, with an attempt to get back to his customary flippancy. But the effort was somewhat pitiful, and he felt guiltily conscious that a salt, warm tear was creeping slowly down his face, and that a lump that would not keep down was ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... me to think him unconcerned, but beneath the flippancy I saw the nerves jerking. Then quite simply he began to tell me. He spoke in a low, even monotone, dispassionately, as though for him the incident no longer was ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... she might have been privately a little shocked by such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
