"Flippantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in solitude?" hazarded Sara flippantly. She was still nervous and talking rather at random, scarcely heeding what ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Barber, sarcastically. "You can understand plain English!—Yes, dear Mister Perkins, I mean that I don't want y' round." With that he continued on to the hall door, and opened it. "This way out," he said flippantly. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... marriage; and he hated the attitude the head adopted towards classical literature. There was no doubt that he was a fine scholar, and he was engaged on a work which was quite in the right tradition: he was writing a treatise on the trees in Latin literature; but he talked of it flippantly, as though it were a pastime of no great importance, like billiards, which engaged his leisure but was not to be considered with seriousness. And Squirts, the master of the Middle Third, grew ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... notice that the little star, with her pert, upturned face, seemed more anxious to have Kennedy go along than she was to meet the mysterious individual mentioned without name by Manton. For an instant she was on the point of addressing him, flippantly, no doubt. Then, I think she was rather awed at ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... of their hypotheses. Thus, indeed, "the dead bury their dead," while all the strange, mysterious, inner powers of nature, which the philosophers of the Middle Ages, as Psellus, Albertus Magnus, Trithemius, Cardanus, Theophastus, &c., did so much to elucidate, are at once flippantly and ignorantly placed in the category of "Superstitions," "Absurdities," and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... fallen debris, to a room where a young woman had been sleeping. She had literally been blown to fragments. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, were splotched with—well, it's enough to say that that woman's remains could only have been collected with a shovel. In saying this, I am not speaking flippantly either. I have dwelt upon these details, revolting as they are, because I wish to drive home the fact that the only victims of this air-raid on Antwerp ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... must have told him of Pierston's symptoms of tenderness. This girl, whom, for her dear mother's sake more than for her own unquestionable attractiveness, he would have guarded as the apple of his eye, how could she estimate him so flippantly! ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... so,' answered my unhappy colleague flippantly. 'I think you and I are bigger blackguards than ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... over you shelteringly, madame," I rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt; for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the fluctuations of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... I flippantly spoke of our expedition as "driving out to pay calls," how nearly my thoughtless words were to be realised. We started immediately after an early dejeuner, sitting side by side in a little low-swung carriage, a superior ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... which fellow your aunt saw," she answered flippantly. "There's so many of them at the classes. I can't tell which it might be. Did she tell you what he ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... time,' Sir George answered flippantly, as he emptied his glass. 'You know Selwyn's last upon that? It came by bones, and it is going ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... away, Paula became less reasonable in her desires, and proceeded to wish that Somerset would arrive; then that anybody would come; then, walking towards the portraits on the wall, she flippantly asked one of those cavaliers to oblige her fancy for company by stepping down from his frame. The temerity of the request led her to prudently withdraw it almost as soon as conceived: old paintings had been said to play queer tricks in extreme cases, and the shadows ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... itself frequently in the careers of all men of any public distinction. In his days of comparative obscurity, or in some position of "greater freedom and less responsibility," even when he ceases to be obscure, a man deals faithfully, but perhaps a little flippantly, with this or that person, thing, nation, subject, doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine, which necessitates, if not exactly a distinct recantation in the humiliating ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... French society. German Rationalism, empirical or spiritual,(72) in two parallel developments, the philosophical and the literary, neither coldly denied Christianity with the practical doubts of the English deists, nor flippantly denounced it as imposture with the trenchant and undiscriminating logic of the French infidels; but appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a poetical genius, and regarding it as one phase of the religious consciousness, endeavoured, by means of ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... doesn't," replied this elegant young gentleman, flippantly. Extremes meet. The naked savage has a fairly low estimate of the value of his womankind, but it is many degrees higher than that of this ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... terror. Ali raised his whip to strike the ruffian who had spoken so flippantly of Monte-Cristo's daughter, but the indignant mute was instantly overpowered and ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... this form is justified only by condemning an established usage of the language; namely, the passive sense in some verbs of the participle in ing. In reference to this it is flippantly asked, 'What does the house build?' 'What does the letter write?' etc.—taking for granted, without attempting to prove, that the participle in ing can not have a passive sense in any verb. The following are a ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... they dismember'd him So entirely, that e'en when they came to his wrists, With those great sugar-nippers they nipped off his "flippers," As the Clerk, very flippantly, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Clemence felt sorry for having misjudged her, as she saw a bright silver piece glitter in her hand the next Sabbath, as she sat beside her during the weekly collection of contribution for the missionary fund. Maria was wrong, and she was sorry she laughed when she spoke flippantly of Mrs. Little's magnificent gift of a penny a Sabbath amounting to fifty-two cents annually. She ought to be more careful to give people the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... thought it was a ham he grabbed hold of," remarked Steve, flippantly, as he pointed to Bandy-legs' rather plump lower limbs, of which he was rather vain, in spite ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... people to the stress and strain of life, has without a doubt increased. The most casual of observers will tell you that the generation of the Great War is a neurasthenic generation. It takes its pleasures too intensely, its pains too seriously, its troubles too flippantly. But what is neurasthenia? Beard himself regarded it as a chronic fatigue and loss of tone of the nervous system, a literal interpretation of his term. That the conception, as far as it goes, is valid is proved by the fact ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... his military tailoring), Mr. Silk Buckingham and Lord William Lennox, Mr. Samuel Carter Hall and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth. Tennyson once, and once only, wrote for Punch, a reply to Lord Lytton (then Mr. Bulwer), who had coarsely attacked him in his "New Timon," where he had spoken flippantly of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... High Executioner!" said Piers flippantly. "Well? Who is the latest victim? And what have you ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... men against changing in any manner that which He has revealed or commanded. These solemn denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead men to regard lightly the law of God. They should cause those to fear and tremble who flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence whether we obey God's law or not. All who exalt their own opinions above divine revelation, all who would change the plain meaning of Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... which gossip found no difficulty in accounting. Did not all the world know of the treachery and death of Duke Michael? Nevertheless, George bade Bertram Bertrand be of good cheer, "for," said he flippantly, "a live poet is better than a dead duke." Then he ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... it with the Vatican, Millicent?" asked Anna, flippantly. Millicent turned a distant, starry ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... realization of the situation. Such girls can live under such conditions and be safe. Others resent the implication that these conditions are dangerous, feeling that their own virtue is questioned. Others treat the matter flippantly. ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... discontent are unwise, and should be frowned upon. The mistake of these individuals lies in the fact that they fail to see that the chief cause of humanity's triumphs is found in the works performed by those thinkers who in all ages have corresponded to the persons flippantly characterized pessimists at the present time: they who have assailed the existing order of things, who have thrown into the congregation of the people the shells of doubt; who have confronted the priests and potentates ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... how dare you?" she cried. "How dare you speak flippantly of such things?" His suavity was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... A man so strong, so fortunate until his latter years; so magnificent in his court, which he made the most brilliant of modern times; so lauded by the great geniuses who surrounded his throne, all of whom looked up to him as a central sun of power and glory,—is not to be flippantly judged, or ruthlessly hurled from that proud pinnacle on which he was seated, amid the acclamations of two generations. His successes dazzled the world; his misfortunes excited its pity, except among those who were sufferers by his needless wars or his cruel persecutions. His virtues ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... German Army Service Corps contain bitter complaints of the enormous strain thrown upon the already over-taxed railway system in Germany by the KAISER'S repeated journeys to and fro between the Eastern and the Western Theatres of War. He is referred to (rather flippantly) as "The Imperial Pendulum" (Perpendikel). The writer, while recognising the eager devotion with which the KAISER is pursuing his search for a victory in the face of repeated disappointment, congratulates himself that the Imperial journeys, though they are not likely to be discontinued, will ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood through it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips were continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising his eyebrows that was contemptuous ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... present, I'll deny it flat. When I sit in the company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, I shall turn it to a jest. I shall engage the table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the fellow talks!—he jests to satisfy a grudge. In appearance I am whole as the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... equation, of course." It was a statement, not a question. The Lensman ignored as completely as did the observer, if not as flippantly, the distinct possibility that at any moment the observatory and all that it contained might be resolved ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... the knowledge of evil anything but distressing—except Mrs. Guthrie Brimston, and she only delights in it so long as it is made a jest of. But they are all alike in that set she belongs to. Their ideas of propriety are bounded by their sense of pleasure. So long as you talk flippantly, they will listen and laugh; but if you talk seriously on the same subject, you make the matter disagreeable, and then they ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... following your ladyship's good example," answered her bride's-maid, flippantly,—at the same time springing forward from the detaining grasp, regardless even of the rent she made in her lace dress, she hurried, or was hurried on by ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Grand-aunt Marjorie was a very different person in the days before the war! In those days you didn't have to be in earnest about anything. You didn't even to have any principles that showed. Life wasn't real and earnest a bit. People just went to tea-dances and talked flippantly, and some of the men had drinks. And everybody laughed a great deal, and it was decadent, and the end of an era, and a lot of shocking things—but it wasn't half as hard as living now, because there weren't standards, except when they were had by aunts and employers and ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... existence of God. Many of them believed not in his being. It was a calm, cloudless, brilliant night. The heavens, the work of God's fingers, canopied them gloriously. The moon and the stars, which God had ordained beamed down upon them with serene lustre. As they were flippantly giving utterance to the arguments of atheism. Napoleon paced to and fro upon the deck, taking no part in the conversation, and apparently absorbed in his own thoughts. Suddenly he stopped before them and said, in those tones of dignity which ever overawed, "Gentlemen, your arguments are ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... Calapnitan, king of the bats. He is so powerful and capable of mischief that in exploring a cave where bats are likely to have congregated the natives will speak in the most respectful terms of this deity, for he would be sure to hear them if they spoke flippantly of him, and might swoop from the cave roof and whip their eyes out with his leathern wings or tear them with his claws. Hence they bow their heads and speak with reverence of the Lord Calapnitan's cave, the Lord Calapnitan's stalactite, even ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... be futile to attempt to draw a comparison between the two men. The one was a colossal human genius, and the other, extraordinary in the art of his profession, was entirely without the faculty of understanding or appreciating the distinguished man he flippantly raged at ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... young girl has its drawbacks. She is—I say it with all reluctance—irreverent, from her forty-dollar bonnet to the buckles in her eighteen-dollar shoes. She talks flippantly to her parents and men old enough to be her grandfather. She has a prescriptive right to the society of the man who arrives. The ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... incorrigible!" laughed Miss Crawford, fairly carried away by the irresistible current of the wild girl's humor. "How can you talk so flippantly of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... that I have been so silent, when I had announced a war between the House of Commons and the City—nay, when hostilities were actually commenced; but many a campaign languishes that has set out very flippantly. My letters depend on events, and I am like the man in the weather-house who only comes forth on a storm. The wards in the City have complimented the prisoners,[1] and some towns; but the train has not spread much. Wilkes is your ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... a mocking little smile to the other girl's face; her quick comprehension evidently detected the rebuke, but she only answered flippantly: ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... he'll toy with my young affections?" she answered flippantly. "Very well—let him try! Goodness knows he's labeled loudly enough. Every time he comes within a mile somebody says that about him. Everything about him says it for itself, for the matter of that. It isn't any secret. Let him toy! It amuses ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... he had followed her without pausing to remove the stains of travel, Strefford showed himself immensely interested in the last chapter of her history, greatly pleased at its having been enacted under his roof, and hugely and flippantly amused at the firmness with which she refused to let him see Nick till the latter's daily task ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... flippantly, "if you will set up as a little tin god on wheels, you must expect them to say their ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the eleventh story in the elevator she rehearsed her opening scene with Hilmer. She decided to take her cue flippantly. She would banter him at first and gradually veer to more serious topics... But once she stood in his rather austere inner shrine of business, she decided against subterfuges. He had stepped into the main office, the boy who showed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... not be neither," said Amy flippantly. In those days, they always put two nots together when they meant to speak strongly. They did not see, as we do now, that ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... longing to do or say something dreadful to him—to shock his propriety—to scandalize the five senses out of him! (To Catherine perversely.) I don't care whether he finds out about the chocolate cream soldier or not. I half hope he may. (She again turns flippantly away and strolls up the path to the corner ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... smart people all over the world belong to it so as to appear as though they held death in scorn. Then, once they get here, they feel obliged to be cheerful that they may not appear to be afraid. So they joke and laugh and talk flippantly, they are witty and they become so. At present it is certainly the most frequented and the most entertaining place in Paris. The women are even thinking of building ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Jerome complained of this abuse, saying that whilst there are masters and experts in every art and science, only on matters of theology and Holy Scripture, the foundations of all arts and sciences, can few be found to speak well. Yet questions relating to them are discussed most flippantly at table, and in public places; the hare-brained youth, the uneducated labourer, and the dotard, give their opinions freely on the highest ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... "Flippantly, my dear?" returned he. "I'm sure I don't know why you should use that word. If a man takes his life, why shouldn't I speak of it,—to you, that is; of course I ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... humble opinion that for an American woman an English husband was at least an experiment; Salemina declared that for that matter a husband of any nationality was an experiment. Francesca ended the conversation flippantly by saying that in her judgment no husband at all was ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... mistaken, and plenty of spirit, too, when she's roused, I should anticipate. But at present, in her childish ignorance, she's yielding where she should resist, and she'll be brutalised if no one comes to the rescue. I don't trust that man Maclure. A man who speaks flippantly of things that should be respected is not a man who will be scrupulous when his own interests are concerned; and such a man has it in his power to make the life of a girl a hell upon earth in ways which she will not ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... dare you speak those words so flippantly!" said Cora severely, looking at her sister in ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... going to leave in five minutes! I've got to get out of these clothes and have a bath and it's hardly necessary to tell me all that—one glance at you is sufficient," said Edith flippantly. ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... time that would repay a long and arduous pilgrimage if they were what they purported to be; as, for instance, a feather of the angel Gabriel, the snout of a seraph, a ray from the star of Bethlehem, two skulls of the same saint,—one taken when the departed saint was somewhat younger, as flippantly explained to an astonished tourist, who found in two cities the same ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... woman from Shyuamo," flippantly observed Shotaye; "it will make Turquoises cheaper." She turned away with an indifferent air. Her careless manner struck the young man, and when he saw that she would not speak, but only gazed at the sky, he went off with the present he had received. He felt differently; he took the matter ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... feat the construction of the canal was nothing remarkable. Any youth knowing the principles of running lines and following the course of least resistance might have planned it. In Cairo and Alexandria it is flippantly said that De Lesseps traced with his gold-headed walking-stick the course of the canal in the sand, while hundreds of thousands of unpaid natives scooped the soil out with their hands. The work was completed with dredges ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... the divine right of—well, of just doing it. But, even so, a lot of the men are rather afraid of me in their hearts. They suspect the bluestocking. Let 'em suspect! The market is plenty good enough," declared Io flippantly. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... soldiers cannot maintain their health in the tropics, and that "when troops come home sick and worn, it is a part of war"; but, in view of the record made at Guantanamo Bay, we may say to them, seriously and respectfully, rather than flippantly: "Tell ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... woman, it might have been the stoicism of her race would have saved her from further humiliation, but when she saw him walking with Nellie Shuter, saw the love-light in his eyes when he looked at her, and noted how flippantly, in return, Nellie treated him, her love swept away all feelings of pride, and she seized every opportunity of speaking to him. Naturally such a course only added to his distaste ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... regarded the prince who thus flippantly defied the law of which he was the guardian, but his face was firm and his voice authoritative as ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... handed on from ministry to ministry as a kind of necessary appendage, the public never knew why—the minister's second wife, an attache from the Austrian embassy, two members of Parliament, and a well-known journalist—Ashe said to himself flippantly that so far the trumps were not many. But he was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for her bag, and made her put on her cloak, with cousinly civility. In the omnibus on the way to the house he and ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and looked across the lake, which the wind, brisk at sea, barely ruffled. Colonel Sullivan remarked that they had a little more land under tillage than he remembered, and Ulick Sullivan assented. And then again there was silence, until the girl struck her habit with her whip and cried flippantly, "Well, to dinner, if we are to have dinner! To dinner!" She turned, and led the way to the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... was performed in Brussels, where Mr. James Binnie, who longed to see Rosey wedded, and his sister, whom we flippantly ventured to call the Campaigner, had been staying that summer. After the marriage they went off to Scotland, and the Colonel and his son and daughter-in-law came to London—not to the old bachelor quarters ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... pleasure except indeed when he tries to be droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. A wise ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... more to foment, certainly nothing has assisted more to continue, the agrarian disturbances in Ireland, than the statements, made so flippantly by journalists and pamphleteers, of the great excess of rent exacted in Ireland over that paid by the English tenantry. Those writers have invariably assumed the truth of the assertions made in this particular; yet nothing can be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... young people being fond of each other?" Miss Altifiorla remained silent for a while, feeling that she owed it to herself to awe her present companion by her manner before she should crush her altogether by the weight of the name she would have to pronounce. Mrs. Green had received her communication flippantly, and had probably felt that her friend intended to demean herself by some mere common marriage. "Who is to be the happy swain?" ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... Davis flippantly, "as long as we delay our decision, we shall continue to be persons of importance in the eyes of the faculty. It's comical to see how deferential they all are. I took dinner at the Burton Sunday, and afterward Miss Raymond invited a few of us into her room for coffee. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... her efforts were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to this, early in 1699, a roughly worded Royal ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... latter weak under Bernal's gaze, and there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: she was less than she had thought—he was more. Bernal had proved ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... therefore belongs somewhere in the literature of the day. Perhaps it would have been for the good of some of our readers, if we had done this sooner. But, indeed, to treat with entirely condign justice a book which deals very freely and flippantly with the literary and even the personal character of one who, though an eminent and to some extent a public man, was still only yesterday a private gentleman among us, a neighbor and a friend, is a matter of some delicacy. By the extraordinary alacrity with which this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... which she scolded him duly and without mercy, she knew he meant to do his best. His impending retirement had been one of her greatest triumphs. She was sick to death of the circle of City people, of what she flippantly called "Square milers," and that had been the main reason she had given to her husband in urging him to give up business and go into ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... right of the whites to unite against this tremendous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence and has now been solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia—a state now under fierce assault for this alleged crime—cast in 1888 seventy-five per cent of her ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... dangerous power of the house of Austria. Summoned to Germany by the Protestant princes who were being oppressed and despoiled, and assured of assistance and subsidies from the King of France, Gustavus Adolphus had, no doubt, ideas of a glorious destiny, which have been flippantly taxed with egotistical ambition. Perhaps, in the noble joy of victory, when he "was marching on without fighting," seeing provinces submit, one after another, without his being hardly at the pains to draw his sword, might he have sometimes dreamed ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... what his feelings are towards me. After injuring me as he has, he can afford to be magnanimous. After robbing me of my hopes and my reputation, he can talk very flippantly about burying the hatchet. I tell you again there must be no relations of any kind between his family and mine. I am astonished and indignant, Edward, to think that you should allow yourself to be caught ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... truly said. People stood in deep dread of him on that account; for they thought that there must be something supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold and so confident. All men speak in bitter disapproval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not flippantly; but Father Adolf's way was very different; he called him by every name he could lay his tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard him; and often he would even speak of him scornfully and scoffingly; then the people crossed themselves and went quickly ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... with Doctor Sevier, said the Doctor, "That chap's working himself to death, Anna," and gave his fair guest such a stern white look that she had to answer flippantly. ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... reputation for a disregard of the rights of others, which makes them obnoxiously uncivil. They enter a church where worshipers are kneeling and audibly criticise the architecture and decorations, or the faith to which it is consecrated. They comment flippantly on great pictures in art galleries, and snicker over undraped statues, evincing the commonness of their minds and their lack of knowledge of art. But one of the worst lapses of decorum is to sit in a theatre and anticipate the action of the play, or the development of a ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... "Don't speak so flippantly of it! How can you? And don't think for one instant. that I doubted your word. I didn't. But it didn't seem possible that such a thing—Mr. Brice!" she broke off earnestly. "You mustn't —you can't—think that Milo knew anything of this! I mean about the—the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... opinion, there are many clergymen who will have to answer for the sin of extravigance: There are many more who will have to answer for the sin of slothfulness. The Bible says: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work." Ah! there is a part of the commandments too often skipped flippantly over. Many a clergyman would be horrified if asked to do any labor on the seventh day; but would be equally horrified if accused of sinning by attending to a foreign business, thereby neglecting to do all his labor during the six ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... required some measure of specious ingenuity to explain his errand as he wished; but Mr. Carruth, being used to squirming legatees, understood and came to the point with a candor which made Pelgram wince. After first flippantly suggesting that the plumbing business would at least afford Pelgram the chance to indulge his taste in porcelains, he eased the artist's mind by a phrase as soothing ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Ribera. But we note a fat and buttery impasto in Guercino, which distinguishes his work from the drier and more meager manner of the Roman-Neapolitan painters. It is something characteristic of Bologna, a richness which we might flippantly compare to sausage, or a Flemish smoothness, indicating Calvaert's influence. More than this, Guercino possessed a harmony of tones peculiar to himself, and strongly contrasted with Guido's silver-gray gradations. Guido's coloring, at its best, often reminds ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... early, and age and gray hairs do not command that tender regard and that careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disrespectful terms of those whose experience gives them the right to counsel and command. Young men talk flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder why men who have been buried once will not remain quietly in their graves. Of course, when such a spirit as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, no respect for place and position, and no genuine and hearty loyalty. We ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... That's why he has to have a buyer honest though poor—he couldn't check him in the least. I shall tell him that, however many the things you might lie about, you are a George Washington where your precious bric-a-brac is concerned, because it's the one thing you care about too much to take it flippantly." ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... come to leave that out?" Schnitzel answered flippantly. "What about Coleman, the foreman at Bahia, and that German contractor, Ebhardt, and old Smedburg? They talked too much, and they died of yellow-fever, maybe, and maybe what happened to them was they ate knockout drops ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... of every hue were playing about the streets, looking as merry and happy as children ought to look,—now that the evil shadow of Slavery no longer hangs over them. Some of the officers we met did not impress us favorably. They talked flippantly, and sneeringly of the negroes, whom they found we had come down to teach, using an epithet more offensive than gentlemanly. They assured us that there was great danger of Rebel attacks, that the yellow fever prevailed to an alarming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... write the history of Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and also ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... and in which he continues the liberal hospitality for which it was eminent. Dr. Johnson esteemed him much. He hung up in the counting-house a fine proof of the admirable mizzotinto of Dr. Johnson, by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him somewhat flippantly, 'Why do you put him up in the counting-house?' he answered, 'Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there.' 'Sir,' (said Johnson,) 'I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I believe you speak ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... assurance on a later page, will produce a feeling of wonder at the hardihood of him who not only conceived, but penned and dared to publish them as well, against the gentlemen whom we all know to be foremost in the political agitation at which Mr. Froude so flippantly sneers. An emphatic denial may be opposed to his pretence that "they did not complain that their affairs had been ill-managed." Why, the very gist and kernel of the whole agitation, set forth in print through long years of iteration, has been the scandalous ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... around him, with a motion due to the gloom and the tormenting fever that racked his brain; each monstrosity grimaced at him, while the portraits on the canvas closed their eyes for a little relief. Every shape seemed to tremble and start, and to leave its place gravely or flippantly, gracefully or awkwardly, according to its fashion, character, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... the K——s, one of those families of women which, if I did not value their delicacy more than my own inclination, I should like to describe, in contradiction to those who, viewing only the surface of American society, have so flippantly ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... certain fixed rules that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to be ...
— Reginald • Saki
... the Spectator, which had circulated at one time to the extent of 4000 copies a-day, was discontinued, and in a few weeks the Guardian supplied its place. It was two months ere Addison began to write, and during that time it was flippantly dull; but when he appeared its character changed, and his contributions to the new periodical were quite as good as the ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... replied flippantly, rising. "I think I'll go up; and I almost think I will kiss you again." He grumbled a protest, and watched her trail from the room, the silver girdle and chiffon emphasizing her thin, vigorous body, the lamplight falling on her bare, sharp shoulders. ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... all that, would we not have the constitution broken up. Somebody says, "In Heaven there will be no secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were a revelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foundations of society. Clairvoyance—if there ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... which was performed at Brussels, Uncle James and the lady, his sister, whom we have sometimes flippantly ventured to call the Campaigner, went off to perform that journey to Scotland which James had meditated for ten years past; and, now little Rosey was made happy for life, to renew acquaintance with little Josey. The Colonel and his son and daughter-in-law ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interval there occurs the inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were material for another kind of study of this little group of church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times. But circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock Quire in the following ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... tossed his answer off so flippantly that Yeager scowled at him. "Mr. Keller, you're a newcomer here. I wonder if you know what the Malpais country would be liable to do to a man caught ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... was always a theatrical man, sir," the Major said, annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of any person of Sir Charles's rank and station. "He has been occupied with theatricals since his early days. He acted at Carlton House when he was Page to the Prince; he has been mixed up with that sort of thing: he could ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so easily scared at the very shadow of trickery, who is so flippantly pronounced to be a ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the world this 'thorough talk' is going ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... rather flippantly on this topic; but that is only because I dare not trust myself to be serious. I realize as much as any one that the life is a shameful life, and all that sort of thing; but I boil with indignation at the hundred shamefulnesses which ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... not reply flippantly, Make them all Wards in Chancery; yet that would be enough to put any sensible person on the track of the reply. One would think, to hear the way in which people sometimes ask the question, that not only does marriage prevent the difficulty from ever arising, but that nothing except divorce can ever ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... splendor of "Ciro's" and a keeper of the vestiaire in scarlet breeches and silk stockings. Afterwards they were to go to the little bon-bon play-house up by the more pretentious bon-bon Casino. He was to watch the antics of a band of actors toying with some mimic fate, flippantly, to the sound of music, when his own destiny swung trembling on the last silken thread of tortured suspense! Yet it was better than moping alone, he told himself. He hated loneliness. And until the last few weeks he had scarcely known ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the crocodile heaven," said Bones, flippantly; "for I'm one of those dead shots—once I draw a ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... looking down the corridor toward the desk when she saw something that caused her to change her mind. There was the young lady who had been talking so flippantly to the woman with a grievance, and she was now talking, of all people, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... (judged by any higher scale than that which finds the chief ends of existence to be to feverishly make money during one-half of it, and by some "amusement," or perhaps foreign travel, flippantly kill time, the other half,) and consider'd with reference to purposes of patriotism, health, a noble personality, religion, and the democratic adjustments, all these swarms of poems, literary magazines, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... provides, beyond yea or nay, for the absolute unity of Ireland as one distinct nation. Unless this essential unity is recognised all proposals for settlement, no matter how generous in intent otherwise, must fail. Mr Lloyd George grossly offended Irish sentiment when he flippantly declared that Ireland was not one nation but two nations. This is the kind of foolishness that makes one despair at times of British good sense, not to speak of British statesmanship. Mr Asquith, ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... as his sleep is sound it's little we care how or when he gets it," announced Jack, flippantly. "And when you give the word, Tom, we'll all be ready to ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... passing of the old regime, for lack of a safer theme; and he had spoken flippantly of the decadence of the old families—his arm around her and her pale cheek against ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... elderly men to refer either flippantly or with gentle humor to their days of courtship, forgetting (or ignoring) the tremulous eagerness, the grave questioning and the tender solemnity of purpose with which they weighed the joys and responsibilities of married life. It is ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... his head. "You have done everything in your power. Dysart has been fairly warned. Besides, who knows?" he added rather flippantly. "They may strike a hundred inches of water, as ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... she approves of my doings, but complains that I write rather flippantly, at times. Considering that she has bidden me to avoid carefully all matters relating to the tender passion what else can I do? She says that if I persevere I shall realize that I am doing good work. We are all seeking achievement, she tells me, and she is sure I ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... any rate by its authors. It was not. A few weeks later the Premier ordered the publication of the text of the Treaty, although, in the meantime, it had not been signed by M. Poincare. "The excuse founded upon Article 8 was, therefore, a mere humbug," flippantly wrote an influential journal.[87] ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... his father's sermons and parish talks, come to mind. Most of these are approved, but some seem strangely grotesque. To Oswald's tense perception the general tenor is along severely orthodox lines, but as to occult verities the style appears flippantly superficial. Many comments upon "rewards of virtue" and "refined craft in uprightness" seem gayly ironical. Such jar upon ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... distant, and she was conscious of a slight shock, as if she had run against one of the hard places in his character. "Well, I've done my best," she thought impatiently. "If he doesn't want to be friends he needn't be." Then, with a change of manner, she observed flippantly: "Sometimes one's relatives are useful and sometimes they're not." Really, he was impossibly heavy except in a crisis; and one could scarcely be expected to produce crises in order to put him thoroughly at ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... young man, in a large company, descanting very flippantly on a subject, his knowledge of which was evidently very superficial, the Duchess of Devonshire asked his name. "'Tis Scarlet," replied a gentleman who stood by. "That may be," said her Grace, "and yet he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... said Thuillier, flippantly, "you said we were in want of a romance-feuilletonist; but really, after this, I sha'n't be uneasy. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... nature was out of adjustment and demanded a violent reaction before it could get to running again at average speed. Also, it is evident that his destruction had been planned on high, for he was mad enough to answer flippantly: ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... fireworks, I am afraid," said Caroline flippantly, as her father described the lurid ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... not," whispered Billy flippantly in Bertram's ear. "I'm sure I don't want to stay here till to-morrow! I want to go ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... of it," said the Admiral, flippantly. "He never went down at all. He floated, just like a cork, ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... it from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about things—but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery, and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything for a man ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... have given a good deal to be out of that room. There was something in Mr Smith's voice and manner and frightened eyes which made the question, coming from him, very different from the same inquiry flippantly thrown out by one of my old comrades. And yet I ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... sorry to hear you speak so flippantly on a solemn subject," said Milburgh. "As I say, I waited a little too long; but I was anxious for complete darkness to fall before I made my way into the flat. This I did easily because Odette had lent me her key. I found her bag with ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace |
