"Flashy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ask your pardon," said the General, putting out his hand. "God knows who the failures of this life are; some of them go about very flashy semblances of success. In these parts we judge by the external signs, that are not always safest; for my son Sandy, who looks so thriving and so douce when he comes home, is after all a scamp whose hands are ever in his simple daddy's pockets." ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... from his wife, inasmuch as he regarded society as a great bore. Mrs. Chapman, however, was not a little disappointed at the way things had turned. They were flashy and rather fast people who came to her reception; people whom nobody of established respectability knew or cared to know—thoughtless young men, overdressed young women with matrimonial expectations, and a few needy foreigners with small titles. To make the matter worse, some of ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... toward its mark. Observe those whirling and swirling thought-forms as they are thrown off from that business-house. Across the street, notice that great octopus monster of a thought-form, with its great tentacles striving to wind around persons and draw them into that flashy dance-hall and dram-shop. A devilish monster which we would do well to destroy. Turn your concentrated thought upon it, and will it out of existence—there, that's the right way; watch it sicken and shrivel! But, alas! more of its kind will come ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... the Surrey theatre. It seemed a very nice tidy house, and my father seemed to have taken a liking for it. But when we were introduced into the room where I was to sleep, he observed an ultra-gay bonnet lying on the bed, with flashy bright ribbons hanging from it. This sight seemed to alter his ideas, and he did not take the lodgings; but took another where there ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... might mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... fought for the right of way, stopping the traffic as far as I could see. Dustmen, and sweeps, and even beggars, jostled you on the corners, bullies tried to push you against the posts or into the kennels; and once, in Butchers' Row, I was stopped by a flashy, soft-tongued fellow who would have lured me into ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... standing at the bar, and looking out of bleared eyes at a flashy lithograph tacked upon the wall which pictured a Spanish woman in short skirts and advertised "Espaniola Cigaroos," were two miners: one with curly hair and a pink-and-white complexion; the other, tall, loose-limbed and good-natured ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... entered with Joan's tea. Joan took an instinctive dislike to her. She was a large, flashy woman, wearing a quantity of cheap jewellery. Her familiarity had about it something almost threatening. Joan waited till she heard the woman's heavy tread descending the stairs, before ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Revolution to note that simple confidence and admiration with which the General-in-Chief was wont to regard officers under him, who had happened previously to serve with the King's army. So the Mexicans of old looked and wondered when they first saw an armed Spanish horseman! And this mad, flashy braggart (and another Continental general, whose name and whose luck afterwards were sufficiently notorious) you may be sure took advantage of the modesty of the Commander-in-Chief, and advised, and blustered, and sneered, and disobeyed orders; daily presenting fresh obstacles (as if ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... before LAURA'S eyes a panorama of the inevitable depravity that awaits her. She is torn from every ideal that she so weakly endeavoured to grasp, and is thrown into the mire and slime at the very moment when her emancipation seems to be assured. The woman, with her flashy dress in one arm and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realization of the future as it is terrifically conveyed to her. The negress, in the happiness of serving LAURA in ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... like a simp, David—'tain't luck. That's your way of working. And because there isn't anything flashy about it—you call it luck. Why, you poor fish—there isn't any other man in the country who'd have had the common sense to do what you did—to know that it would be a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... with pianoforte virtuosi, being better known under its German title of Hexentanz. MacDowell grew to detest its shallow outlook and the appeal it made to the flashy pianist, although he himself played it in public as late as 1891. He revised both the Two Fantastic Pieces some ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky, shallow, smelling of the ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Casey: he has been described as a ruffian and villain of irredeemable depravity—desperate to the last degree. James P. Casey was a young man of bright, intelligent and rather prepossessing face, neat in his person, inclined to fine clothes, but not flashy or gaudy in his attire. He was of low stature, slender frame, lithe and compact, sinewy, nervous, and very agile. His eyes were blue and large, of bold expression. His voice was full and sonorous. ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... dark, bluish-red complexion. He wore a flaring diamond ring around a glaring red necktie; and a loud checked suit that matched his voice perfectly. In fact, his whole make-up harmonised remarkably with the unearthly noise that issued from his throat. He was standing before a flashy-fronted building, on which was painted in large yellow letters, intended to be gold, the legend "Dime Museum." In the front entrance were several cheap wax figures of a theatrical nature, and some still cheaper ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... difficulty in recognising in the lieutenant a would-be rival. And this is just where his own modesty and self-depreciation have played him a scurvy trick. He has noted Walford's easy, nonchalant bearing, and his two or three flashy accomplishments; he has noticed, too, that the lieutenant is not altogether devoid of good looks, and has jumped—all too hastily, as we are aware—at the conclusion that, where a woman is concerned, a plain, straightforward, ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... and saw that the voice and hand belonged to the same person—a short, stout man, with sallow complexion and glistening black eyes. His dress was a curious compound of broad, glazed hat and blue shift of a sailor and the flashy check vest and ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... those of the Medes. Beware, lest you become a mere fashionable painter. Your colours, I observe, are not unfrequently selected in defiance of good taste; your drawing is often feeble, sometimes positively incorrect; your outlines want clearness. You run after a flashy kind of chiaro-scuro, the lighting up of your picture is meant only to strike the eye at the first glance. And you have a passion for the introduction of finery; a taste for dandified costume. All this is dangerous, and may lead you into the fatal habit of painting mere fashionable pictures, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of numbers in getting up their case, forty-six witnesses were assembled by the prosecution. Mlle Lievenne, the first of them to be examined, brought with her an atmosphere of the theatre, "adopting a flashy costume, in deplorably bad taste." "This," says a chronicler, "took the form of a blue velvet dress, a scarlet shawl, and a pearl-grey mantle." Altogether, a striking colour-scheme. But it did not help her. To the indignation of the examining-counsel, she ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... his eyes raised themselves, they saw this haunting face there—a face he no longer bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but a face that was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as is revered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his own familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring, fascinating face, with even—what?—a ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... generally cast the old ones into the middle of the street. Water was exceedingly scarce and in general demand, so that laundry work was high. It was the fashion of these gentry to wear their hair and beards long. They sported red shirts, flashy Chinese scarves around their waists, black belts with silver buckles, six-shooters and ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... I object to intemperance not simply because I think it is vulgar but because I know it is wicked; and Jeanette I have a young brother for whose welfare I am constantly trembling; but I am not afraid that he will take his first glass of wine in a fashionable saloon, or flashy gin palace, but I do dread his entrance into what you call 'our set.' I fear that my brother has received as an inheritance a temperament which will be easily excited by stimulants, that an appetite for liquor once a awakened will ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... rising; While not a grim phiz in that realm but was lighted With joy to see spirits so twin-like united— Or (plainly to speak) two such birds of a feather, In one mess of venom thus spitted together. Here a flashy imp rose—some connection, no doubt, Of the young lord in question—and, scowling about, "Hoped his fiery friend, Stanley, would not be left out; "As no schoolboy unwhipt, the whole world must agree, "Loved mischief, pure ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... extent includes writers of three different classes, and in speaking of success we must always be understood to mean the acceptance each writer gains in his own class; otherwise a flashy novelist might seem more successful than a profound poet; a clever compiler more successful ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... high-colored, deep-colored; doubly- dyed; polychromatic; chromatogenous[obs3]; tingible[obs3]. bright, vivid, intense, deep; fresh, unfaded[obs3]; rich, gorgeous; gay. gaudy, florid; gay, garish; rainbow-colored, multihued; showy, flaunting, flashy; raw, crude; glaring, flaring; discordant, inharmonious. mellow, pastel, harmonious, pearly, sweet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ground and then stand on it—it is hardly necessary to add, with decision and dignity. The applicant's personal appearance tells something of what she is: if slovenly, her work would be ditto; if flashy, with cheap finery and gew-gaws—well, she may be honest and reliable, but she may also make it difficult for you to be mistress in your own house. Be a little wary of the middle-aged servant; if she is really desirable, she is not apt to be casting ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... off the bandstand, his friend following; and as they walked in the direction indicated the trees fell away to right and left, and they saw a small, rather flashy hotel, such as is common in resorts—the hotel of the Saloon Bar rather than the Bar Parlour. Almost the whole frontage was of gilt plaster and figured glass, and between that grey seascape and the grey, witch-like trees, its gimcrack quality had ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... crafty schemers, brazen politicians, overdressed drummers, and flashy sporting men were pouring in to seek the "first aid to the weary," which the nearest available hotel affords to the cramped and ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... young men of his time. He had never lied, never seduced, never stooped to anything which seemed to him demeaning. He was splashed with vice from head to foot, but he was neither unnerved nor warped by it. A subject of constant gossip, of frequent scandal, with his teams of half-tame horses, his flashy clothes, his furious passions for worthless women, his moroseness and violence, he was still, so far, a very negative character, a mere mass of rough material, out of which a man might be made. But who should mould that matter? It is extremely difficult ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... compositions will convince one that Liszt is entitled to high rank as a musician of genuine poetic inspiration. The average music-lover is prone to dwell upon him as the composer of Les Preludes, the Hungarian Rhapsodies, and as the somewhat flashy transcriber of operatic potpourris, such as the Rigoletto Fantasie. But Les Preludes, notwithstanding a certain charm and the clever manner in which the music (without becoming minutely descriptive) supplements the poem of Lamartine, is yet barred from the first rank by its mawkishness of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Parade, for there I could wear my sword. It was my grandfather's sword, and I'm afraid I thought less of the romance of bearing it in defence of the Britain that he loved and the France where he lay buried than of its flashy appearance and the fine finish it gave to my uniform. I was a strange mixture, for, when the preacher, looking down the old Gothic arches, said: "This historic church has often before filled with armed men," I shivered with the poetry ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... integrity, economy, and rigorous business habits, here again came into play. I found myself driving a flourishing trade, and soon became a marked man upon 'Change. The truth is, I never dabbled in flashy matters, but jogged on in the good old sober routine of the calling—a calling in which I should, no doubt, have remained to the present hour, but for a little accident which happened to me in the prosecution ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... single word of what the orator was saying. Deans, indeed, denied this stoutly, as an insult at once to his own talents for expounding hidden truths, of which he was a little vain, and to the Laird's capacity of understanding them. He said, "Dumbiedikes was nane of these flashy gentles, wi' lace on their skirts and swords at their tails, that were rather for riding on horseback to hell than gauging barefooted to heaven. He wasna like his father—nae profane company-keeper—nae swearer—nae drinker—nae frequenter of play-house, or music-house, or dancing-house—nae ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Flashy," continued the poor victim, unconsciously warming with his theme: "why then, I'd draw my chair up and call for Betty, the gal wot tends to customers. Betty, my dear, says I, you looks charmin' this mornin'; give me a nice rasher of bacon and h'eggs, Betty my love; ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... passion. It does not trust the amiable weaknesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good intent, and patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither does it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal authority. Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and permanence. It looks before and after; and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the nature of constitutional ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... reflected from the exquisite perfection of his frame (which rendered all his senses so vigorous and acute) and his riotous fancy and his fitful energy, which was capable at times of great application, but not of definite purpose or earnest study. All about him was flashy and hollow. He had not the natural subtlety and depth of mind that had characterized his terrible father. The graft of the opera-dancer was visible on the stock of the scholar; wholly without the habits of method and order, without the patience, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and oh! such pretty curling hair! She is a mite of a woman, with a little thin face, not one of your noisy, flashy hoydens, ah, no!—Dear Henriette!" ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... right to say he has not, but he is a flashy slang style of youth, and I hope the young Wards will keep out ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flashy," Barby explained. "Too bright. Really nice people wouldn't have a boat that color. You wait and ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... subterranean activity, of a something being pushed up, and therefore naturally the land either gives way and lets it come through, or else is raised up by its violence. And so Mr. Darwin, being desirous not to merely put out a flashy hypothesis, but to get at the truth of the matter, said to himself, "If my notion of this matter is right, then atolls and encircling reefs, inasmuch as they are dependent upon subsidence, ought not to be found in company with volcanoes; and, 'vice versa', volcanoes ought not to be ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... choice specimens. When common sense has a chance of getting in a word with you, you'll understand what I now tell you. Wherever you look now-a-days there's sham and rottenness; but the most worthless creature living is one of these trashy, flashy girls,—the kind of girl you see everywhere, high and low,—calling themselves "ladies,"—thinking themselves too good for any honest, womanly work. Town and country, it's all the same. They're educated; oh yes, they're educated! What ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... coolly replied the brother as he carefully knocked the ashes off the end of his cigar, "not at all. Humbug is the order of the day. I'll get a flashy ring to represent the one presented to you by the queen. You know enough about stage business to play the part of Robert Macaire very respectably and you also know that I am not very slow in Jaques ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... name-plate at the top, with a best patent Bramah lock and six chaste and beautifully rich cut-glass bottles, and a plate-glass mirror at the top—a box so splendidly perfect, so beautifully unique, as alike to defy the powers of praise and the critiques of the envious; and thereupon he produced a flashy sort of thing that might be worth three and sixpence, for which he modestly required ten subscribers, at a shilling each, adding, "that even with that number the proprietors would incur a werry heavy loss, for which nothing but a boundless ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, and grew, and now for two months they had sat at the same table each evening, not ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was quick-witted and flashy. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... must have been in Byron's loose art, his voluble inadequacy—nay, even in his choice of subject—that was repellent to Mr Arnold: much more as there must have been in his unchastened conduct, his flashy affectations, his lack of dignity, morality, tenue of every kind,—yet there were real links between them. Mr Arnold saw in Byron an ally, if not an altogether admirable or trustworthy ally, against the Philistine. He saw in him a link with general European literature, a check and antidote to ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... accepted the story which The Era rejected; but it had paid only seventy-five dollars. Banneker did not care to go farther on that path. Aside from the unsatisfactory return, his fastidiousness revolted from being identified with the output of a third-class and flashy publication. Whatever The Ledger's shortcomings, it at least stood first in its field. But was there any future for him there, other than as a conspicuously well-paid reporter? In spite of the critical situation which his story of the Sippiac riots had brought about, ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... some brains," Marchmont went on, "though of rather a flashy sort, I think. Dick Benyon's been caught by them. But a more impossible person I never met. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder—Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... station by ten o'clock, arrived at Darminster at half-past eleven, and have been met by the personage whom Dolores recognized as Uncle Alfred. Constance was a little disappointed not to see something more distinguished, and less flashy in style, but he was so polite and complimentary, and made such touching allusions to his misfortunes and his dear sister, that she soon began to think him exceedingly interesting, and pitied him greatly when he said ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tavern the young men betook themselves, while the girls were partaking of aunt Hannah's hospitality; two or three of the upper rooms were full of commotion created by the change which each deemed necessary to his apparel, before he appeared in dancing trim before the ladies. Flashy vests were taken from overcoat pockets. The dickies, snugly curled under the lining of a fur cap or narrow-brimmed hat, came forth to be arranged under neck-ties of gay hues ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... hair if and where he chose. His eyes bulged like gooseberries. They were colourless, and lustreless in comparison with the diamond pin in his neckcloth. His frock-coat and pepper-and-salt trousers were of superfine material and flashy cut. They fitted him like a skin in all the wrong places. Get it into your heads—Here was a prosperous reach-me-down person of the sort you will find on any political platform, standing for Parliament or ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... end of the Square is a broad, well paved, flashy looking street, stretching away to the northward, crowded with street cars, vehicles of all kinds, and pedestrians. This is the Bowery. It begins at Chatham Square, and extends as far as the Cooper Institute on Eighth street, where Third ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... another raree-show. The College skeleton—framework of a long-passed don, so tradition stated—had been, by help of a screwdriver and patience, untombed from its dusty resting-place at the top of the Hall staircase. It had been dressed in some flashy Scotch tweeds well known as belonging to the junior tutor, and perched astride of the weather-cock. Again the position was impregnable, and again the trophy drew delighted ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... exist among the Hollanders; there is no shadow of it in their life nor any hint of it in their literature; the very language rebels against translating any of those numberless expressions which constitute the dubious, flashy, easy speech of that class of society in the countries where it is found. On the other hand, neither fathers nor mothers close their eyes to the conduct of their unmarried sons, even if they be grown men; family discipline ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... evening, after the concert, they had invited some of the performers to supper in a private room, and Vinson, in the course of the entertainment, was attracted, fascinated, by a tall girl with dyed hair, emaciated cheeks, and brilliant eyes, whose flashy manners smacking of some low suburb, had ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... literary criticism which can be met with." Murray, who had already entertained the idea of establishing such a review, naturally welcomed the prospect of so powerful an ally. Like a good Tory, Scott felt that the "flashy and bold character of the Edinburgh's politics was likely to produce an indelible impression upon the youth of the country." He ascertained that William Gifford, formerly editor of the Anti-Jacobin newspaper, was willing to take charge of the new review, which Scott desired ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... form of the confidence game is very old; yet in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-five a swindler by means of it succeeds not only in maintaining himself in dashing style, but also in sporting a flashy traveling companion ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... remember that a young man's strongest recommendation is his respectability. Some young men, apparently successful, may be flashy in dress, loud in manner, disrespectful to women and irreverent toward sacred things. But the young man who is respectable always wears best. The way a young man carries himself in his private life ofttimes means much to him in his business career. No matter where he is, or in whose company, ...
— The Young Man in Business • Edward W. Bok
... country he affected grey and a large grey cloth top-hat, except when motoring; then he would have a brown deer-stalker cap and a fur suit of esquimaux cut with a sort of boot-end to the trousers. Of an evening he would wear white waistcoats and plain gold studs. He hated diamonds. "Flashy," he said they were. "Might as well wear—an income tax-receipt. All very well for Park Lane. Unsold stock. Not ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Ruth stood still, looking at the two rather flashy actresses, and wondering if they really meant what they had insinuated. Then Alice's voice ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... morning something happened that upset his equanimity entirely. He had just started out for a walk in the park when a flashy person who looked like an actor walked impudently up to him and handed him a piece of paper in which was wrapped a silver half dollar. In a word Mr. Hepplewhite was subpoenaed and the nervous excitement attendant upon that operation nearly caused his collapse. For he was thereby commanded ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... Had to have a red bow pinned somewheres around all the months she was in bed and—and up to the very night she died. Gimme red every time. Dee Dee's the one that's always kicking against red; she says I got too flashy taste." ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... of Peters. As Tom had said, the man was too prominent not to be noticed. He might have disguised himself, though it seemed that the promoter was a proud man, and liked to be seen in flashy clothes, a silk hat, and with a ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... Christ was not crucified in a Catholic Church. He must remind himself every now and then that the great event transpired in the open air, and not in a gloomy, candle-lighted cell in a little corner of a vast church, up-stairs —a small cell all bejeweled and bespangled with flashy ornamentation, in execrable taste. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that freshness which it once may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term, fly-specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets. There are old illustrated newspapers from the States, cheap novels from the same, and the flashy covers of the London and Edinburgh sixpenny editions. But this is the dull season for literature, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... him, was a handsome enough man, though rather flashy in appearance. But the evil look that came quickly on his face, no less than his huge and burly build, indicated that he would have been more at home in a barroom or a street fight, than where he was. For just a moment he seemed about to say more, but apparently ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Mr. Harpworth, "that this crowd came here to-day only to eat Julia Templeton's auction luncheon. What's the matter with this here generation? You don't want things that are well made and durable, but only things that are cheap and flashy. Put 'er aside, Jake. We'll sell 'er yet to some historical museum devoted to the habits and customs of the ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... honesty and sterling qualities which the country teaches her children in the hard, but successful, school of experience, to offset the flashy supercilious lessons which the city teaches hers; for the city is a careless nurse and teacher, who thinks more of the cut of a coat than of the habit of mind; who feeds her children on colored candy and ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... delight, at the musical recital of the grand victories of old Spain. Peddlers moved along with an immense heap of miscellaneous wares fixed in boxes on the backs of their mules. Tall, stately negresses, with long, trailing dresses, of flashy green and yellow, walked along quite independently, as at Key West, smoking cigars which in New York would cost twenty-five cents a piece. One or two Cuban ladies hurried by, wearing satin slippers, silken dresses and mantillas of rich black lace. The Hotel de Europa, which I ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... their lean and flashy songs, Harsh grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw." ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... glad to see an old neighbor," the honest youth said, "for she did not know many folks in the city. 'Till had made some flashy acquaintances, of whom he did not think much, and they kept a few boarders, but nobody had called, and mother was real lonesome. He wished Miss Barlow would come; she would have no difficulty in finding them," and on a bit of paper he marked out the route of the Fourth Avenue cars, which ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... uses too many colors. (This term derives, of course, from the bizarre day-glo colors found in canned fruit salad.) Too often one sees similar effects from interface designers using color window systems such as {X}; there is a tendency to create displays that are flashy and attention-getting but uncomfortable ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the civil history, is not flashy or whiffling. The slow, deep English mass smoulders with fire, which at last sets all its borders in flame. The wrath of London is not French wrath, but has a long memory, and in hottest heat a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Yankee thousand-tonner could sail them out of sight with forty. The British excuse was that East Indiamen required a fighting crew as well as a trading one, and that British vessels were built to last, not simply put together to make one flashy record. But after the Napoleonic wars the British Navy could police the world of waters; so double numbers were no longer needed; and if East {96} Indiamen were built to last, how was it they only went an average ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... knowledge which he had at command, and thus his work never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy writer is inclined to disdain the men who are thorough in their studies; but, while his work grows thin and poor, the judicious reader's becomes marked by more and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of the Duke was above all a spiritual one. The nobility of his face and bearing was what most thrilled them as they went by; and those of them who had heard the rumour that he was in love with that frightfully flashy-looking creature, Zuleika Dobson, were more than ever sure there wasn't a word of ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... good specimens of Military Snobs,—the Sporting Military Snob, Capt. Rag, and the 'lurking' or raffish Military Snob, Ensign Famish. Indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging on horseback, about five o'clock, under the trees by the Serpentine, examining critically the inmates of the flashy broughams which parade up and down 'the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... so much grave and respectable authority, to prove the existence of these evil influences, that it requires a pen hardier than any we wield, to attack them without a suitable motive. "Flashy people," says the learned and pious Cotton Mather, Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of the Royal Society, "may burlesque these things; but when hundreds of the most sober people, in a country where they have as much mother wit, certainly, as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... Dewey in stimulating suggestions, which were refreshing as spring breezes. His mind gave hospitable welcome to each new fact disclosed by science, to all generous hopes for human refinement and ennobling ideals, while his discernment was keen to detect false sentiment or flashy sophisms. Again, some startling event would bring conventional customs and maxims to the judgment-bar of pure Christian ethics, when his moral indignation blazed forth with impartial equity against all degrading ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... in the most fashionable manner, and formed an utter contrast to the flashy dress of Gaston. He was smoking a cigar, and mechanically tapping his boots with an elegant walking cane. In a moment the features and figure of the Viscount were indelibly photographed upon Andre's brain. He particularly ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... soldier; nor can I doubt that, had Dr. M'Crie been a Scotch covenanter of the times of Charles II, the insurgents at Bothwell would have had what they sadly wanted—a general. The shrewd sense of his discourses had great charms for me; and, though not a flashy, nor, in the ordinary sense of the term, even an eloquent preacher, there were none of the other Edinburgh clergy his contemporaries to whom I found I could listen with greater profit or satisfaction. A simple incident which occurred during my first morning ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... sunset upon the Birralong road near Marmot's store at a moment when some of the residents were mutually encouraging one another to lose their tempers over Gleeson's swagger in the billiard-room. The appearance of Tony was hailed as a god-send. The story of how the "flashy," as they termed Gleeson, was swelling his chest up at the expense of the township, was poured into the ears of the new-comers, and Tony was adjured, by all the ties of patriotism and loyalty, to "sail in and knock him cold," as one of the crowd ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... God; we must dry up our tears and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar houses and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... mattress away from the front of the safe, and now, with a sharp, exultant exclamation, he stooped quickly and picked up a small object from the floor. He held it out, twirling It between thumb and forefinger, for Kenleigh's inspection—a flashy scarf pin, horseshoe-shaped, of ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... thin seedy-looking Irish girl I heard her talk to her husband about having their baby's life insured according to a wonderful plan an agent had described to her. As she spoke she was frowning anxiously—and she saw no harbor. Not far away a plump flashy young creature was smiling down on the bootblack who was busily shining her small patent leather shoes. Her bright blue petticoat lifted high displayed the most enticing charms, and as now she turned to look off toward the lights of the city ahead, she smiled gaily to herself. And she saw no ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... to Prudence some time later. "The difference between them two girls! They ain't to be spoke of in the same county, I declare. Look at that one, Prudence," he said, with a side glance at the newcomer. "Ain't she a sight with them thin and flashy clothes?" ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... skin withered to a parchment hung over the campfires, cooking. And at the loopholes pressed the braves and the bucks and the chief men exchanging beaver-skins for old iron, or a silver fox for a drink of gin, or ermine enough to make His Majesty's coronation robe for some flashy trinket to trick out a vain squaw. From dawn to dusk ran the patter of moccasined feet, man after man toiling up from river-front to fort gate with bundles of peltries on his back and a ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... benevolence, and charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly being? His vices even, if we may say so, are those of a man; there is nothing morbid or mawkish in any of Fielding's heroes; no passionate pleasing extenuation, such as one finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... her a pair of goggles and helped her to adjust them, I also got up, and we moved away again along that long white highway that traverses France by Sens, Dijon, Macon, Lyons, Valence, and Digue, and has its end at the rocky shore of the blue Mediterranean at Cannes—that land of flowers and flashy adventurers, which the ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... In many ways money is as dangerous to handle as gunpowder. You can't be too careful either as to who you are working with. Anyhow there was a mighty flashy burst up, a sensation, and—his familiar haunts knew him no more. But before he vanished he went to see Miss Moorsom. That very fact argues for his innocence—don't it? What was said between them no man knows— ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... rare occasions, especially round Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost of living. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... thought: "I suppose she is some flashy, pretty creature who has caught Hector's fancy, the poor darling. One never has chanced to find an Australian quite, quite a lady. I almost wish he would marry Morella ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... hopefully, and return with trunks and carpet-bags outside and diversified specimens of student-humanity within—a Freshman, in spite of his efforts, showing that his as yet undeveloped character is 'summa integritate et innocentia;' a Sophomore, somewhat flashy and bad-hatted, a hard student in the worse sense, with much of the 'fortiter in re' in his bearing; a Junior, exhibiting the antithetical 'suaviter in modo;' a Senior, whose 'otium cum dignitate' at once distinguishes ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is concealed for us by a number of legends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that the Press is flashy or trivial because it is popular. In other words, an attempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism as the natural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish. The democracy has no more to do with the papers ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... spirit. During the greater part of the nineteenth century, Rossini and Meyerbeer dominated the operatic world. The native operatic composers, Auber and Boieldieu, Adam and Halevy, combined the slacknesses of both without achieving anything at all comparable to their flashy brilliance. As far as the accent of their music went, they floated cheerfully somewhere between Germany and Italy. And when something recognizably indigenous did put in its appearance in the operas of Thomas ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... chums were in great evidence. The ball game had come out a tie, and even this barren honor swelled them up considerably. Banbury was gotten up in a flashy sporting suit, as though he was in for the championship of the world, and Mace was also overdressed. Bob wore his every-day clothes. He looked eager and hopeful as Frank helped him put on his ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... is absurd in plot, and like most first books, flashy and overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by inviting "the set" to her drawing-room to hear the great author ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... heartily. No one paying especial attention to him, he continued (happy in this new game with himself) for about fifteen minutes. Then The Trick Raincoat (that undersized specimen, clad in feminine-fitting raiment with flashy shoes, who was by trade a pimp, being about half Jean's height and a tenth of his physique,) strolled up to Jean—who had by this time got as far as my bed—and, sticking his sallow face as near Jean's as the neck could reach, said in a solemn voice: ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the ire in the flashy General, he became as "mad as a March hare," and wheeling his horse, dashed up to where the challenge appeared to have come from and demanded in an angry tone, "Who was that spoke? Who commands this company?" And as no reply was given he turned away, saying, "D——d if I only knew who it ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... she renewed the earnest effort to know Matthew Arnold. She doubtfully fingered at her throat a tiny chain that supported a tiny pendant. She slipped the thing under the neck of her waist. She feared that with her low neck—she thought of it as low—the bauble would be flashy. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... consider it a beautiful head, Mr. Smart. A very flashy blonde with all the earmarks of having posed in the chorus between the days when she posed for your artist. And your heroine has very dark hair in the book. Why did they make her a blonde on ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... happened at the beginning of August. More than a dozen 'Varsity men were thrown like Daniels into a den of mercenaries. We were awkwardly privileged persons—full corporals with a few days' service. Motor-cycling gave superlative opportunities of freedom. Our duties were "flashy," and brought us into familiar contact with officers of rank. We were highly paid, and thought to have much money of our own. In short, we who were soldiers of no standing possessed the privileges that a professional soldier ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... and slopped upon the table-cloth! The fat Dutchman who grunted when he ate, and then leaned back and panted! The yellow woman with the false teeth who gathered everything about her on the table! The flashy gentleman with the diamond scarf-pin and the dirty cuffs, who made a tower out of his dirty dishes and then ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... was barely acquainted with Goring. Sir John Ireton and the newspapers informed him that George Goring was a flashy, untrustworthy politician; and the former added that he was a terrible nuisance to poor Lord Ipswich and Lady Augusta. That such a man could attract Mildred would ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... a quarter in coin, and as Tom pulled out a handful of silver from his pocket, from which to select the change, the flashy young man said,— ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... "Oh, that there flashy bloke, Flanikin, 'e comes up, and says 'e, 'Jack Smith in?' says he—meanin' you, governor. 'Ain't no concern of yourn,' says I—not 'olding with them animals as comes to see yer. 'Yes it is,' says 'e, a blowin' with the run he'd 'ad. ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... so much about the married daughter that he lives with over in Jersey; but I don't think much about that until after I've let him tow me over to dinner once and met Son in Law Bennett. He's a flashy proposition, this young Mr. Bennett is, havin' an interest in a curb brokerage firm that rents window space on Broad-st. and has desk room down on William. Let him tell it, though, and, providin' some of his deals go through, he's goin' to have Morgan ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford |
