"Flippant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you a little flippant hint or two. But since you wish to be thought superior to all our sex in the command of yourself; and since indeed you deserve to be thought so; I will spare you. You are, however, at times, more than half inclined to speak out. That you do not, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... flippant to him. But I am grave, too, grave as he, and I long to go, and the car and I, we are trustworthy. I do, indeed, ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... two stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew from the whole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men and women whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he found it in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed were for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud of their corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures very lifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom one could admire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... James Mill, but, if Bowring is to be trusted, spoke of him with great harshness.[354] Bowring was not a judicious reporter, indeed, and capable of taking hasty phrases too seriously. What Bentham's remarks upon these and other friends suggest is not malice or resentment, but the flippant utterance of a man whose feelings are wanting in depth rather than kindliness. It is noticeable that, after his early visit at Bowood, no woman seems to have counted for anything in Bentham's life. He was not only never in love, but it looks as if he never even talked to any woman ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... trying to recover himself. Into what a grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be, he still thought Mr. Beebe rather ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great majority of the entertaining works ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... landing. With September begin the north-east winds, and we had an average experience that afternoon. Was it not a farce—a great deal more than a farce: a saucy, flippant imposition on the tender mercies of Providence—for an individual who could not endure a few hours of tossing on the bosom of the ocean without becoming deadly sick, to imagine that he possessed the hardihood to establish a home even in this lovely ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... crawled like a conger eel into our fishing-boat. It seemed as if he had cast off his manner with his raiment, for he behaved to my mother during supper with an air of demure gallantry which sat upon him better than the pert and flippant carriage which he had shown towards us in the boat. Truth to say, if he was now more reserved, there was a very good reason for it, for he played such havoc amongst the eatables that there was little time for talk. At last, after passing from the round ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him. He had some natural wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: "He talks almost like a gentleman with a hat." Fauchelevent belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the chateau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Fauchelevent, though sorely ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to be staring into space. In reality they were watching the doughy countenance before him. "What do you propose to do?" Lablache asked, ignoring the other's flippant tone. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... by mentioning some of the refuted criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. Reading the criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in 'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old and young, are tempted to pick them. With regard to the 'Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that Raphael had made the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. But Raphael made ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Leroy. It simply added a zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their mutual friends' houses, or beneath the trees of ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... concerned, are existing merely to help men to work in the spiritual field. They are not like some yachts, just to carry bunting and paint to be admired. As for church affiliation, what I like to see is a hungry man going where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can ...
— What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... the callow and awkward ways of a young giraffe, but, though only a three-year-old, he was sedate as an old maid and had the dignity of a churchwarden. His behaviour was an example to his flippant colleague. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... condemned, although whimpering, had far more grit than I anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost story better ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... answer, and duly repented the flippant tone he had taken. He would have been greatly surprised could he have learned that this last letter was destined to produce a greater effect upon his life than all he ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... 'rose, Endang'ring modesty and self-repose, Till the good host his prudent counsel gave, Then listen'd all, the flippant and the grave. "Let not applauses vanity inspire, "Deter humility, or damp desire; "Neighbours we are, then let the stream run fair, "And every couplet be as free as air; "Be silent when each speaker claims his right, "Enjoy the day as I enjoy the ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... Russell," said Mr. Hopewell, "or a little chap, or such flippant names, I don't like to hear you talk that way. It neither becomes you as a Christian nor a gentleman. St. Luke and St. Paul, when addressing people of rank, use the word '[Greek text]' which, as nearly as possible, answers to the title of 'your Excellency.' Honour, we are told, should be ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... It sounds flippant in one who has devoted his life to this work to say, "Really I don't care what its future may be." I am content to leave the future with God. No true sportsman wants to linger on, a wretched handicap to the cause for which he once ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... were other Gentlemen nearer, and I know no Necessity you were under to take up that flippant Creatures Fan last Night; but you shall never touch a Stick of mine ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... wherever you will, in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, in the aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions,—you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... a long vanished fashion. These offer opportunities enough for bad jokes; but no one makes them. It is as if there were an invisible something emanating from the stately figure that prevents the rise of flippant thoughts. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... princesses of the royal house. Nuper—in former days—I too have militated; sometimes, as I now think, unjustly; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you never committed an imprudence? Have you never had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong? So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent mania. His rage ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exactly what Billy Magee wanted to know as, closing the waiting-room door behind him, he stood staring just inside. Were the features against which that frail bit of cambric was agonizingly pressed of a pleasing contour? The girl's neatly tailored corduroy suit and her flippant but charming millinery augured well. Should he step gallantly forward and inquire in sympathetic tones as to the cause of her woe? Should he carry chivalry even to the lengths of Upper ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... satisfaction from the authors who please him, the bent of his intellect and cast of character can be very accurately judged. If other testimony were wanting, these sentences would prove the gravely philosophical temper of Montaigne's mind, notwithstanding the flippant confessions of frailty which he mingles sometimes so incongruously with the reflections of a sage. Most of the extracts are from Latin and Greek authors, but not a few are from the Books of Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiasticus and the Epistles of St. Paul. Here one sees written by the hand of the sixteenth ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... the speaker made to appear flippant and at his ease showed her how deeply he was moved. His wife felt this without fully reasoning it out, and the consciousness that this self-controlled man was so stirred awoke in her a strange and powerful excitement. She turned a shade paler, as she looked silently down into her wine-glass. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... for a livelihood." I wish they had taken me into the partnership. It's the sort of thing I'd have liked well; ay, and I could have done it, too! I wonder,' said he aloud—'I wonder if I were an emperor should I marry Letty Clancy? I suspect not. Letty would have been flippant as an empress, and her cousins would have made atrocious princes of the imperial family, though, for the matter of that—Hullo! Here have I been smoking without knowing it! Can any one tell us whether the sins we do inadvertently count as ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... out of her silence. "Dick has rather strong opinions on this subject, Charles, so please don't be flippant about it! Will you give ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... strength and majesty of bearing the stripling beauty of John Oxon would have seemed slight and paltry, a thing for flippant women to trifle with. ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and when I asked him how on earth he ever expected to liquidate the indebtedness he smilingly replied that the deluge would take care of everything that stood in need of liquidation when the date of maturity came round. He was even flippant on ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... my work," she said. "Take it upstairs again." The perfectly trained servant, marveling privately, obeyed once more. Horace, in silent astonishment, advanced to the sofa to observe her more nearly. "How grave you look!" she exclaimed, with an air of flippant unconcern. "You don't approve of my sitting idle, perhaps? Anything to please you! I haven't got to go up and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... would have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to grow on you you'll lose all hold on the solemn realities of life and become a ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... privately, Dicky learned that Mrs. Portheris had for some time been seriously considering the effect of his, to her, painfully flippant views, upon the opening mind of her daughter—the child had only been out six months—and that his distressing announcement of this morning left her in no further doubt as to her path of duty. She would always endeavour to have as kindly ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... their full garniture, the sons of Servius Sylla, both beautiful almost as women, with soft and feminine features, and long curled hair, and lips of coral, from which in flippant and affected accents fell words, and breathed desires, that would have made the blood stop and turn stagnant at the heart of any one, not utterly polluted and devoid of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Sir Charles, are those women? Are they not generally of a class with those men? Flippant women love empty men, because they cannot reproach them with a superiority of understanding, but keep their folly in countenance. They are afraid of a wise man: but I would by no means have such a one turn fool to please ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... material I cannot tell. So far, "Paris Decadent" would be a good title for anything I should write of it. It is not that I have seen only the worst side of it but that that seems to be so much the most prominent. They worship the hideous Eiffel Tower and they are a useless, flippant people who never sleep and yet do nothing while awake. To-morrow I am going to a pretty inn surrounded by vines and trees to see a prize fight with all the silly young French men and their young friends in black and white who ape the English manners and customs even ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... India-inky woods, relieving a lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this picture glimmered sadly. I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the vandal who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again the mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... numberless skippable pages are not consumed in photographic description of the ill-assorted furnishings of the heroine's room or cosmos; nor in setting forth the myriad phases of thought undergone by the hero in seeking to check the sway of his pet complexes. (This drearily flippant slur on realism springs from pure envy. I should rejoice to write such a book. But I can't. And, if I could, I know I should never be able to stay awake long enough ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... that. In the chase it gave weak men their innings beside the strong. Man could kill at long range, with little danger to himself, or even with none at all. And then in the wild beast world the great final struggle for existence began. Man's flippant phrase,—"the survival of the fittest,"— became charged with sinister ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... rising superior to all prejudices of education and illusions of romance—to whom enthusiasm is only another name for affectation—who, where the cultivated and the contemplative mind finds ample matter to excite feeling and reflection, give themselves airs of fashionable nonchalance, or flippant scorn—to whom the crumbling ruin is so much brick and mortar, no more—to whom the tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii is a stack of chimneys, the Pantheon an old oven, and the Fountain of Egeria a pig-sty. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... and Papists, Blount was perfectly impartial. He was an infidel, and the head of a small school of infidels who were troubled with a morbid desire to make converts. He translated from the Latin translation part of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and appended to it notes of which the flippant profaneness called forth the severe censure of an unbeliever of a very different order, the illustrious Bayle. [385] Blount also attacked Christianity in several original treatises, or rather in several treatises purporting to be original; for he was the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... red-rusty from time's dye. But "Aunt Sallie" was a character in Henrico county; and noted withal for the sharpest of tongues and a fierce pair of undimmed eyes, which now shone under the dingy-brown poke bonnet. Toward her sallied the flippant young underling, with ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically. Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness stole ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... her sister. "You should not talk like that, Grizzel; it is flippant, and you know ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... her side that ever was in one human creature towards another."(10) Pope alludes in a letter to Sheridan to the illness of Swift's "particular friend," but with the exception of another reference by Pope, and of a curiously flippant remark by Bolingbroke, the subject is nowhere mentioned in Swift's correspondence with his literary and fashionable ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... flippant about the banishment of important local subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... finished, Sir Harry knew all about the household in Lowder Street, and had formed a tolerable estimate of every member of the family,—the depressed father; the care-worn and some what stern mother; the boys, clever and handsome and flippant; the girls in all stages of awkwardness; and the quiet, talented Grace, who was every one's right hand, and who had come to the ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... in this early stage of the party, struck home to Kate's bosom, and brought the blood tingling to her face. One was the flippant contempt with which the guests evidently regarded her uncle, and the other, the easy insolence of their manner towards herself. That the first symptom was very likely to lead to the aggravation of the second, it needed no great penetration to foresee. And here Mr ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... Philip, that in whatever company he had been he had never been ashamed to stand up for the principles he learned from his mother, and neither raillery nor looks of wonder turned him from that daily habit had learned at his mother's knees.—Even flippant Harry respected this, and perhaps it was one of the reasons why Harry and all who knew Philip trusted him implicitly. And yet it must be confessed that Philip did not convey the impression to the world of a very serious young ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... of blackmail, so effectual with the Highlanders, did not secure the border counties from these flippant fighters, and in sooth Normans were much too proud for any such evasion ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... fine day, as was his habit, He was dozing in the sun, When a young and flippant rabbit Happened by the ditch to run: "Come and race me," he exclaimed, "Fat inhabitant of puddles. Sluggard! You should be ashamed. Such a life the ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... to their flippant remarks, for just then I felt very solemn and thoughtful. I hope I was not priggish. No, I am sure I was not; every word I uttered was too sincere, though they chaffed me afterwards, and I have thought since that they felt more seriously than ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... scaffold then and there, he would have accepted them bravely; but it was a different thing in the raw, cold morning, after an agitating night, and the Master away at the far end of the great hall. A flippant maid's tongue was enough to finish ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... suppose," replied Sir Arthur, "St. Chrysostom's will not be a pleasant Sunday morning and evening resort for rich people any longer. That is, perhaps, a somewhat flippant way of putting it, but of course you know ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Lady Milborough. It was the end of July, and she would already have been down in Dorsetshire, but for her devotion to this good deed. For, in truth, what she was doing was not occasioned by any express love for Nora Rowley. Nora Rowley was all very well, but Nora Rowley towards her had been flippant, impatient, and, indeed, not always so civil as a young lady should be to the elderly friends of her married sister. But to Lady Milborough it had seemed to be quite terrible that a young girl should be left alone in the world, ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... point—at least, it turned out to be such in this case. She was a coward naturally, and her bad life made her dread nothing so much as death. Her former flippant indifference to his remonstrances now changed into abject fear. He saw her weak side, learned his power, and from that time forward kept her within bounds by a ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... flippant. You always did have a maddening habit of being flippant at the wrong time. Haven't ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... Mr. Carlyle had a dinner party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of a man, named Lewes,[17] author of a "History of Philosophy," and now writing a life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... amaze most people have who look for the first time at Botticelli's Judith tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. You say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. For answer, I refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... doctor, you would make the little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The gay Cornelia describes her reception ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... "Don't think I'm flippant if I ask: How do these men who, in their maturity, become great spiritual forces, escape being caught ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... to say for himself. Poor Luke was particularly jovial and flippant, and startlingly unlike his former self. The padre went on staring out of the window, and talking in a loud forced tone about the astonishing miracles of the 'Ecstatica' and 'Addolorata;' and the poor vicar, finding ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Yet mere flippant excitement and superficial entertainment is nothing but a cheap counterfeit of what is needed. Voluntary effort is needed, and this is the field where the psychotherapist must put in his most intelligent effort. There is no one for whom there ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... imposing mother of young Richie Gardiner, a handsome, florid lady, who had inherited a large fortune from the miner husband whose fortunes she had gallantly shared through some extraordinary adventures in Nome. Mrs. Gardiner idolized her son; she was not inclined to be generous to the little flippant actress who had broken his heart. Richie would not go to the healing desert, he would not go to any place out of sound of Miss Clay's voice, out of the light of Miss Clay's eyes. Mrs. Gardiner had no objection to Magsie's person, nor to her profession, the fact being that her own origin ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... resent any imputation to the contrary"—just what I said he would say and that he entirely agrees with my denunciation of secret diplomacy and undemocratic control of foreign policy and that I am a perverse and wayward harlequin, mischievous, unveracious, scurrilous, monstrous, disingenuous, flippant, unjust, inexact, scandalous, and objectionable, and that on all points to which he takes exception and a good many more I am so magnificent, brilliant, and convincing that no citizen could rise from perusing me ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... that again," said Meldon. "I quite believe you. And as for the murder of Simpkins being a joke, I assure you it's nothing of the sort. I may be flippant—several people have called me flippant—but I draw the line at making jokes about murder. It's a serious subject. In fact I've more than once hesitated about going into this business at all. It's mainly for your ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but, then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she wanted to give ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... time. I have expressed my opinions at various times in Congress, and some of the predictions which I have made have not been altogether falsified by subsequent events. I must therefore be permitted, Gentlemen, without yielding to any flippant newspaper paragraph, or to the hasty ebullitions of debate in a public assembly, to say, that I believe the plan for an exchequer, as presented to Congress at its last session, is the best measure, the only measure for the adoption of Congress and the trial of the people. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... of his day, loathed the crimes committed in its name, and who was sceptical of any reforms which could not be carried on without a wanton destruction of the foundations of society itself. He was also a Christian who planted himself on the certitudes of religious faith, and was shocked by the flippant and shallow infidelity which passed current for progress and improvement. Next to the infidel spirit which would make Christianity and a corrupted church identical, as seen in the mockeries of Voltaire, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... excusing himself; so that when he had them, he enjoyed them without affectation, and when he had them not, he did not want them. No one could ever say of him that he was either a sophist or a [home-bred] flippant slave or a pedant; but every one acknowledged him to be a man ripe, perfect, above flattery, able to manage his own and other men's affairs. Besides this, he honored those who were true philosophers, and ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... graver still. He refused to be drawn into this kind of flippant conversation. He, at any rate, was respectably married; he had no sympathy whatever with the larger majority of people ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... ungainly brute in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing. ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... after I have asked her," was Elfreda's flippant retort. "I have an idea that she will feel dreadfully hurt if no one ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... it is smart or funny. And you encourage her. If Claire had been different—no, don't interrupt me— this would never have happened. You may say what you like about her good breeding: she's been too flippant. I felt that last night. Claire doesn't accept her obligations seriously enough. She's kept herself lovely looking, but that isn't the ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... favours. From this time forward he begins to abandon the merely frivolous air that has hitherto distinguished him. He lays in a mixed stock of solemnity, mystery, and importance, and occasionally awes the friends of his flippant days by assuming the reticent look and the shake of the head of one who is marked off from common mortals by the possession of secrets the revelation of which might, perhaps, imperil the peace of the world. In ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... He wasn't flippant any more, and I had a sense of triumph in forcing his return to sobriety. I wanted to ask him what his name was, once we were back to earth again. But as that seemed a little too direct, I merely inquired where ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... an amusing child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is certainly an ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... better made, At once I must forswear my trade. You send me such ill-coupled folks, That 'tis a shame to sell them yokes. They squabble for a pin, a feather, And wonder how they came together. The husband's sullen, dogged, shy; The wife grows flippant in reply: He loves command and due restriction, And she as well likes contradiction: 20 She never slavishly submits; She'll have her will, or have her fits. He this way tugs, she t'other draws: The man grows jealous, and with cause. Nothing can save him but divorce; And here ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... cold in winter, it's warm in summer," retorted he, flippantly; and Addie giggled approvingly, for the reason that it sounded flippant and smart. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... literature. Pure literary enthusiasm sheds but few rays. To be lively is to be flippant, and epigram ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... sweetly in her pretty, childish tones, looking into his face with those blue eyes so like to liquid skies. Almost there was a hint of tears in them. He had been wont to kiss them when she looked like that. Now he felt only disgust as some of the flippant sentences in her letters to Harry Temple came to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... robbery is got up between a young woman who seems to have been the confidential friend rather than the maid of Lady Eustace, and that other witness whom you have heard testifying against himself, and who is, of all the informers that ever came into my hands, the most flippant, the most hardened, the least conscientious, and the least credible. That they two were engaged in a conspiracy I cannot doubt. That Lady Eustace was engaged with them, I will not say. But I will ask you to consider whether such may not probably have been the case. At any ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... opponent, the last atom of his patience exhausted by the speaker's flippant criticism. "You cur, you deserve a good thrashing, and I'm going to give it to ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Devers watched his hated persecutor, almost divining what was his purpose,—what would be his first question. He saw him halt and the office-door open and Sergeant Haney come forth. Haney, who could be flippant and independent in the presence of his own lieutenants, stood like a statue before that dark, saturnine face. Officer or man, no soldier in that garrison ever took a liberty with Leonard. Devers realized that he had made a fatal error at ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... only, and that point, observe, the one from which it is impossible to detach the exponent as the patroness of a whole universe of inferior souls. This is what everybody would mean in objecting to these notes (supposing them to be published), that they are too smart and too flippant. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... observed thim flyin' away wid a foal in their jaws, the rapparees! F' all that I do be remarkin' that whin one of the effete European variety is afther ticklin' you in the short hairs you step very free an' flippant, Johnny acushla. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... sum to make a fuss about! But, as usual, we hide our real feelings behind this flippant mask. Reading between the lines we confess to strange apprehensions. Why has the Princess so gravely exceeded her dress allowance? Has she, on behalf of her beloved country, been collecting war-ships? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... revolution. So much has been written upon the exact location of sovereignty in the American federal State that it is difficult to escape the legalistic attitude, and to treat the matter purely as history. So various, so conflicting, and at times so tenuous, are the theories, that a flippant person might be forgiven did he turn from the whole discussion saying impatiently it was blind man's buff. But on one thing, at least, we must all agree. Once there was a king over this country, and now there is no king. Once the British Crown was the sovereign, and now ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... imperatively, his face assuming a terrible aspect, "you are an idiotic girl, you are trying to ruin me by listening to this pasteboard fellow, this scoundrel, this flippant rascal." ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... escaped observation. In vain had she looked, in his declarations of sentiments, for high moral purposes—for something elevated and manly in tone. In their place she found only exceeding worldliness, or the flippant commonplace. ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... whole ground again and again, in a sort of blinding rush. She was convinced of his lack of honor more by his tone, his inflections, than by his words. His lack of deep regret, his readiness to leave her to bear the whole shock of thediscovery- these were in his flippant tones; and everytime she thought of them the hot blood surged over her. At such moments she hated him, and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... least likely to be deceived in others; you judge of others by yourselves, and therefore measure them by an erroneous standard whenever your autometry is false. This is one reason why the empty critic is usually contumelious and flippant, the competent one as generally equitable ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... the first touch of her hand on the knob, Charley's flippant voice greeted her with, "Won't you come in, Gabriella?" and swallowing her angry retort, she entered stiffly, with the glass held out straight before her. Charley, on his knees beside the bed, with his ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... of old-fashioned stately courtesy, ending our conference by devoutly kissing the tip of my little finger, to the infinite edification of my party, upon whose minds I duly impressed the vast superiority of this respectful style of gallantry to the flippant, easy familiarity of the present day. These old beaux beat the young ones hollow in the theory of courtship, and it is only a pity that their time for practice is over. Commend me to this bowing and finger-kissing! ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... a lady whom you do not wish to compromise, and quite another to be snubbed by that lady before the moment of final separation. Though he never put the idea into words or even defined it in his mind—for Geoffrey was far too anxious and unhappy to be flippant, at any rate in thought—he would at heart have wished her to remain the same, indeed to wax ever tenderer, till the fatal time of parting arrived, and even to show appreciation of ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... pleasure in his face, He saw the honours of his race, He saw their lineal glories rise, And touch'd, or seem'd to touch, the skies: Not the most distant mark of fear, No sign of axe or scaffold near, Not one cursed thought to cross his will Of such a place as Tower Hill. 680 Curse on this Muse, a flippant jade, A shrew, like every other maid Who turns the corner of nineteen, Devour'd with peevishness and spleen; Her tongue (for as, when bound for life, The husband suffers for the wife, So if in any works of rhyme Perchance there blunders out ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... supposing the dispute to be just, yet in him was so mercenary, that none would have descended to act his part but a divine of fortune. And even lawyers take themselves excused from being of counsel for the King himself, in a cause where they have been entertain'd and instructed by their client. But so flippant he was and forward in this book, that in despight of all chronology, he could introduce Plato to inveigh against Calvin, and from the Platoniques he could miraculously hook-in a Discourse against the Nonconformists. (Cens. Plat. Phil., pp. 26, 27, 28, etc.) ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... writers of the silver-fork school to write out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of ——, and you will be saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as have done most of the late fashionable novel writers, repair to their instructors—the lady's-maid, for flippancy in the vein spirituelle; to a London footman for the vein critical; ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... or churches. It is much easier to figure upon a platform than to establish educational institutions, or to preach the Gospel throughout new countries. Those who have been in Canada twelve months can do the former, and sneer at the latter. The flippant allusions of certain speakers at the late Toronto meeting to the Methodists and to Victoria College ... were as unfounded as ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Houseman, with that tone of coarse, yet flippant jocularity, which afforded to the mien and manner of Aram a still stronger contrast than ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... flippant claim of the French Ministers to settle the affairs of neighbouring States in accord with their own principles has often been ascribed to Pitt himself. This is doubtful. I can find no proof that he intervened directly in the affairs of the Foreign Office ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... in it a little too much imitation of Montesquieu. This abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating a subject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see the details too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude of sparks gives but a poor ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... shall reply, if you feel Annoyed at being needlessly shaken; And butchers, of course, be flippant from Steele, And pig-drivers well versed in Bacon. From Locke shall the blacksmiths authority brave, And gas-men cite Coke at discretion; Undertakers talk Gay as they go to the grave, And watermen Rowe ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... and perplexed at Clifford's absolutely frank confidence. There was nothing flippant about it either. It was the simple expression of a nature that had nothing to conceal. There was not even a hint of gossip about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... told him the story of Mrs. Grant, who, when an awkward young man had broken one of her priceless Sevres after-dinner coffee cups, dropped hers on the floor to meet him on the same level. "Any woman who, to put any one at ease, will break a priceless Sevres cup is heroic," I said. His answer, though flippant, was pleasant: "Any man who would not smile across the table at a lovely woman ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... The somewhat flippant remark, "Speak for yourself," might have been appropriately made by some of her sisterhood, but they were all too anxious about the impending danger to ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... on any and every occasion. I am speaking now to the more serious teachers of the American people; for it is a deplorable fact that even the best of those teachers when speaking of the House of Lords use language which is generally flippant, nearly always contemptuous, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... his valedictory message. The document is very much like the man. He disapproves of the reports of the Chief of Police and Clerk of the Police Commissioners, because they declare that liquor saloons and brothels cannot be closed, and he even reproves the latter for his 'flippant manner' of dealing with the subject. Barnum must have his joke or two, withal, and he can no more subsist without his fun than could a former Mayor of this city. He ventures to allude in this solemn document to the management of the New York and New Haven Railroad ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... West, the newspaper press is by no means the only or, as we look at it, the best vehicle for serious criticism of public affairs. To us, the judgments of your newspapers on such themes seem generally to have been crude and flippant, as well as deeply tinctured with prejudice and bitterness. In so far as they may be taken as expressing public opinion, they give an unfavorable impression of the popular intelligence, while so far as they may have formed public opinion, the nation was not to be ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... /n./ [indirectly, from the book "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche"] A particular sub-variety of hacker: one possessed of a flippant attitude toward complexity that is arrogant even when justified by experience. The archetypal 'Real Programmer' likes to program on the {bare metal} and is very good at same, remembers the binary opcodes for every machine he has ever programmed, thinks that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... group of men, who were sheep-dipping with him, that the parasites of the sheep, which are formidable in appearance, never troubled him until they reached his head. "Into them curls, I suppose, John?" said a flippant bystander. John was pleased that his most attractive feature ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... appears to have belonged to a sort of Christy Minstrel Company over here) cracked jokes all the time with a gentleman amongst the audience in a good-natured but flippant and very unspiritual manner, and even the ladies joined in the undignified punning and "play upon words" that went ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... built a small kitchen apart for himself, under one of the big willows. On this occasion Hansie did not feel pleased at "Jim's" appearance either, for it was one thing to teach the self-contained and reverent Sesuto, and quite another to instruct the flippant "Gentleman Jim." ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... say, by a clergyman of either of the national churches), and I came upon a sermon or lecture on Woman. You can imagine the kind of thing it was. It was by no means devoid of talent. The writer is plainly a clever, flippant person, with little sense, and no taste at all. The discourse sets out with a request that the audience 'would kindly try to keep awake by pinching one another in the leg, or giving some nodding ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... a flippant young fool—wise in your own conceit; I say it to my sorrow! 'Twas your dishonesty spoilt all. That lady would have been my wife by fair dealing—time was all I required. But base attacks on a man's character never deserve to win, and if I had once been ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... action incited some discussion, and much acrimonious comment, in her family and among their friends. Johnson upheld his course. Sheridan, in this instance, understood himself and understood the times. He knew of the flippant attitude of the young blades of the town toward all public performers; so he sought to save her, who was so sacred to him, from such insult, insincere adulation, and insinuation as she had heretofore suffered from. They retired to a cottage at East Burnham; and there she, who ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... "You are flippant, Humphrey. I say if this woman had had educational advantages and—and if my affairs had looked up a little, well—there's no telling! And yet, to tell you this to-day does ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... in Evelyn Hope, Count Gismond, In a Gondola, Dis Aliter Visum, Youth and Art, and other poems; and its noblest expression is perhaps in that wonderful scene in the crowded theatre at Arezzo; whilst the flippant audience are gazing at a silly musical comedy, the sad eyes of Pompilia encounter the grave, serious regard of Caponsacchi, and the two young ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... not admit of moralising very much, therefore we beg the reader to moralise on that, for him—or herself. The subject is none the less important, that circumstances require that it should be touched on in a slight, almost flippant, manner. ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... John Kane's huge worsted stockings pulled over one little hand, while she darned away at it with the other. At sight of Lucy her pride instantly waked up within her and rose in arms. Hetty stared in dismay at smart flippant Lucy, and felt the old bad feelings rush back on her. Tears started to her eyes as she saw all her lately acquired goodness flying away down the garden path, as it seemed to her, and out ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... already dead, more than the living which are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais le neant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the day is the evil thereof," was Mrs. Ogilvie's flippant remark. "But that attitude is much encouraged by you. You make ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... to admire, despising everything which has not yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint of a certain dexterity in assorting the mere husks of opinion gain the applause of ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes |
