"Glib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fast, man," said Marcus, as the shepherd concluded his glib recital. "Couldst thou identify these knaves, if once ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... done little to incur the mine-owner's enmity—at least, nothing to call for cold-blooded murder in reprisal. Yet the man was acting very curiously. Much of the time he scarcely appeared to hear what Miss Brewster was saying to him. Moreover, he had lied. Lidgerwood recalled his glib explanation at the meeting beside the displaced rail. Flemister claimed to have had the news of the disaster by 'phone: where had he been when the 'phone message found him? Not at his mine, Lidgerwood decided, since he could not have walked from the Wire-Silver to the wreck in an hour. It was ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... for a century or two past in every-day Japanese speech. Those who know most about these facts, are most modest in attempting with English words to do justice to Japanese thought; while those who know the least seem to be most glib, fluent and voluminous in showing to their own satisfaction, that there is little difference between the ethics of Chinese Asia and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... son of the Duc de Rohan, who had given him the title I have just named. He had served in one campaign very indolently, and then quitted the army, under pretence of ill-health, to serve no more. Glib in speech, and with the manners of the great world, he was full of caprices and fancies; although a great gambler and spendthrift, he was miserly, and cared only for himself. He had been enamoured of Florence, an actress, whom M. d'Orleans had for a long time ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... understands no English language," says the native, as glib as before. "He be glad to know how you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... restrain a joyful exclamation. "So that was it!" he cried. "You were at the McIntyre house, and gave the poison to Turnbull there—and not in the court room—four hours before he died. You'll swing for that crime, my buck, in spite of your glib tongue and slippery ways." ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of 37,—my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger—preferably of the working class. Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... our agreeable cheer, a man about thirty years of age came in, he said, to make our acquaintance. He was quite a sharp-looking fellow, with small, keen black eyes, a "glib" tongue, and told us that he was an out-and-out rebel, proud to meet us and ready to oblige. Steve forthwith proposed, as evidence of his good-will, an exchange of headgear. He dilated eloquently on the historic value of his own cap, and, while it did ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... turned to his sergeant with a triumphant expression. "Just what I thought. Anybody that can't give a better account of himself than that had better be locked up. Spies—aha! Another of you came ashore a while ago—a glib-tongued, story-telling gentleman who fooled us into letting him off, but we've got you safe and sound and here you'll stay! Sergeant, arrest ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... managed, easily accomplished; within reach, accessible, easy of access, for the million, open to. manageable, wieldy; towardly[obs3], tractable; submissive; yielding, ductile; suant[obs3]; pliant &c. (soft) 324; glib, slippery; smooth &c. 255; on friction wheels, on velvet. unembarrassed, disburdened, unburdened, disencumbered, unencumbered, disembarrassed; exonerated; unloaded, unobstructed, untrammeled; unrestrained &c. (free) 748; at ease, light. [able to do easily] at home with; quite ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... denied opportunity, instruction, and sympathy. As he looked from them at last to the questioning face of the priest, and considered out of what disheartened and solitary patience they must have come in this city,—dead hundreds of years to all such endeavor,—he could not utter some glib phrases of compliment that he had on his tongue. If Don Ippolito had been taken young, he might perhaps have amounted to something, though this was questionable; but at thirty—as he looked now,—with his undisciplined purposes, and his head full of vagaries of which these ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... far counter to the ideas of his patrons as to teach Cobbett's grammar at school, he always recommended it to me as the one by which alone I could learn to write good English. The learning of anything, especially of arithmetic and grammar, by the glib repetition of rules was a system that he held in contempt. With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... ahead, knew nothing of the love scenes just behind them. They talked of many things, of the moonlight and the river and the scent of the flowers, but all the time Hugh felt diffident and tongue-tied. He had not the glib tongue of Gavan Blake, and he felt little at ease talking common-places. Mary Grant thought he must be worried over something, and, with her usual directness, ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... his, a niece of Mr. Cheng's wife, a Miss Wang, and has now been married for the last two years. This Mr. Lien has lately obtained by purchase the rank of sub-prefect. He too takes little pleasure in books, but as far as worldly affairs go, he is so versatile and glib of tongue, that he has recently taken up his quarters with his uncle Mr. Cheng, to whom he gives a helping hand in the management of domestic matters. Who would have thought it, however, ever since his marriage with his worthy wife, not a single person, whether high or low, has there been who has ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... conceipt himself fully witty, And's counted one o' th' wits o' th' City,) Till by him (with a stately grace,) A Spanish Don himself doth place. Then (cap in hand) a brisk Monsieur He takes his seat, and crowds as near As possibly that he can come. Then next a Dutchman takes his room. The Wits glib tongue begins to chatter, Though't utters more of noise than matter, Yet 'cause they seem to mind his words, His lungs more battle still affords At last says he to Don, I trow You understand me? Sennor no Says th' other. Here the Wit doth pause A little while, then opes his ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... swallow up my poem in thy glib clumsiness, Zabastes!" he said lightly—"And thus wilt them hold up the most tasteless portions of the whole for the judgment of the public! 'Tis the manner of thy craft,—yet see!"—and with a dexterous movement of his arm he threw the fruit-peel ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... himself important. If he had one abiding trait, it was his desire of astonishing people, and in some way, best known to himself, managed to cause the circulation of the most extraordinary stories wherein he, himself, was the chief actor. He was glib, voluble, dexterous, ubiquitous, a teller of funny stories, a cracker ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... all now. My taxi-man must have been paid and dismissed by that thin-faced young man, yet how cleverly the woman had evaded my question, and how glib her explanation of her servant going into the town ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... business in the West, until he was welcomed as a promising client. He hung around and when she came in one day her father was forced to introduce them. The remainder is the same world-old story——a good looking, glib-tongued man, plying every art known to an ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... half-educated, characteristic and peril of our time. They, indeed, purchase and purchase largely. Heaven forbid that I should not recognize the few among them whose bent of brain and of conscience justifies their fervour; to such—the ten in ten thousand—be all aid and brotherly solace! But the glib many, the perky mispronouncers of titles and of authors' names, the twanging murderers of rhythm, the maulers of the uncut edge at sixpence extra, the ready-reckoners of bibliopolic discount—am I to see in these a witness of my hope for ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... like a trumpet, broke off suddenly. The angry fire died out of his blue eyes, and he bowed his head humbly. "I ask yer pardon, Minister!" he said, quietly, after a pause. "I humbly ask yer pardon. I had forgotten the Lord, ye see, for all I was talkin' about Him so glib. I was takin' my view, and forgettin' that the Lord had His. He takes things by and large, and nat'rally He takes 'em larger than mortal man kin do. Amen! so be it!" He took off his battered hat, and ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... wasn't so glib as Lon. He looked nervous. He'd come expecting a little glass blowing and here was something strange. He didn't seem to be able to tell her all about himself. He ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... could be heard but the groping shuffle of cautious feet, broken by the hollow echo of the guide's voice reciting his sing-song jargon of what he supposed to be English. He held a lantern that revealed a long alleyway of crumbling, mud-colored stone. Nina tried to make out something of his glib discourse, but soon ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force of expression, such as would knock an opponent down, if it hit him, only it must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... must bow. Far in the desert met their various races, All gathering from their hiding-places. Discuss'd was many a notion. At last, it was resolved, on motion, To pacify the conquering banner, By sending homage in, and tribute. With both the homage and its manner They charged the monkey, as a glib brute; And, lest the chap should too much chatter, In black on white they wrote the matter. Nought but the tribute served to fash, As that must needs be paid in cash. A prince, who chanced a mine to own, At last, obliged them ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... I bear your reply to this gentle captain? For by my faith, Madame, you require a more careful go-between than this, one more discreet and less glib of tongue." ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... Whartons out from the city, and Lorelei's first glimpse of Fennellcourt was such that she forgot her vague dislike of Hayman himself. Bert, who had met her and Bob for luncheon, had turned out to be, instead of a polished man of the world, a glib youth with an artificial laugh and a pair of sober, heavy-lidded eyes. Lorelei's shyness at meeting him had quickly disappeared when she found that he knew more theatrical people than she and that he was quite unable to talk interestingly about anything except choruses ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... either side of the empty fireplace when we arrived, he smoking his evening pipe of Oronooko, and she working at her embroidery. The moment that I opened the door the man whom I had brought stepped briskly in, and bowing to the old people began to make glib excuses for the lateness of his visit, and to explain the manner in which we had picked him up. I could not help smiling at the utter amazement expressed upon my mother's face as she gazed at him, for the loss of his jack-boots exposed a pair of interminable spindle-shanks ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... impartial intelligence than before; it owed less to her weakness for seeing the best in people. As for Edwin, he was saying to himself: "I wish to the devil I could talk to her without spluttering! Why can't I be natural? Why can't I be glib? Some chaps could." And Edwin could be, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... excitement; my father expects her to accept the invitations which he is obliged to decline; so she gives up her own tastes and inclinations as usual, and goes into hot rooms among crowds of fine people, hearing the same glib compliments, and the same polite inquiries, night after night, until, patient as she is, she heartily wishes that her fashionable friends all lived in some opposite quarter of the globe, the farther ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... daughter, whom he never married, Hakon had a son Harald Slettmali (smooth-talker, or glib of speech), and two daughters, Ingibiorg and Margret. Ingibiorg afterwards married Olaf Bitling, king of the Sudreys; and Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking, was of her line, and, as we shall see, in 1200 ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... always a glib speaker, but he delivered this short address very glibly; having been at some pains to compose it ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... lodging-houses—then, at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger's very small, the chemist's very smart, the pastry-cook's very dowdy, and the green-grocer's very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a glib, disputatious voice behind me. ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... piece of Greek Testament to translate, for mercy's sake do not be too glib. Dinna translate a thing until you are sure it is there. They have an unholy habit of leaving out a couple of verses some place in the middle, and you're just the one to tumble head-first into the ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... many estates," he continued, "shrink into next to nothing—so many widows who thought they were well off, suddenly waking up and finding themselves at the mercy of the world—the little they have often being taken away from them by the first glib sharper who comes long—that I sometimes think every man should give his family a show-down once a year. It would surely save a lot of worries and ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... in the new churchyard, the people who died there died rather thoughtlessly and mechanically, and as if nobody cared very much. Of course, when one thinks a little further, one knows that this cannot be true, and that the men and the women who gathered by these glib, trim, capable-looking modern tombstones were as full of love and tenderness and reverence before their dead as the others were—but the lines on the stones give no sign. One never stops to read an epitaph on one of them; one knows it would not be interesting, or really whisper to ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... But it will be easily believed that the best and highest of their own idols had better means and skill of measurement: I can never forget the pregnant expression of one of the ablest of that school and party—Lord Cockburn—who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly: "I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in my humble opinion, Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful thing ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... they'd take the snottynosed twins and their babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy asked her the time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know because they were told ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... consequent horror of ennuyering his world—in short, to perceive the joke of life is rarely given to our people, whilst it forms the mainspring of the Parisian's savoir plaire. The finesse of the Frenchman, acquired in long loafing and clever cafe cackle—the glib go and easy assurance of the petit creve, combined with the chic of great habit—the brilliant blague of the ateliers—the aptitude of their argot—the fling of the Figaro, and the knack of short paragraphs, which allows him to print of a picture ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... that is never silent talks much folly; a glib tongue, unless it be bridled, will often talk a man ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... thought; and he added some prudence on his own account. "That child—she's no more—I must do something for her. Not a bad 'un, I'll swear, not fundamentally bad. I don't doubt her as I doubt the male: he's too glib by half... She's distractingly pretty—what nectarine colour! The mouth of a child—that droop at the corners—and as soft as a child's too." He shook his head. "No more kissing or I ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... think lecturing a very simple occupation, requiring only a glib tongue, and a good pair of lungs. Several years ago, I received a letter from a young man in which he wrote: "I heard you lecture last week. I would like to become a lecturer myself. I have no experience and very little education, but I have a very ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... Headingly had dropped behind, for the glib comments of the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists jarred upon their sense of solemnity. They stood in silence watching the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... amount of pretty speeches and cooing verses. 'Tis a poor man that hath not faith in himself. In wooing, as in fighting, 'tis the brave heart and the honest soul that gain the clay; and the quick, strong arm serves the world better than the glib tongue. But let us get to this business that brought us together this morning. Thou ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sack, and turning the pages of a weekly publication that dealt in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's glib and unctuous phrasing. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... with his glib Irish tongue, and his pretty, coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of experience and of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and finally her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys of County Monaghan from which he came, of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... me begun to titter and snicker at anybody's havin' the power, and I sez, eyein' 'em sternly, "Do you know what you're laughin' at, young men? You talk about it real glib, but have you any idee of the greatness and overwhelmin' might of the Force you're speakin' of? That Power wuz at Pentecost in cloven tongues of flame, and strange voices and words that no man could utter. Saul laughed at the Power ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best "barracker" of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for Bill. ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... allowed myself to heed the glib tongue of a hotel-runner before I left the rice-steamer, and he had commandeered my bag and taken it to the Oriente Hotel, of which I knew nothing except that it was in the walled city and across the river from the cable office. To recapture the bag and my ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... the harp by Scrooge's niece by marriage, is described after all, as may be remembered by the readers of the Carol, to to have been intrinsically "a mere nothing; you might learn to whistle it in two minutes." Say that in twenty minutes, or, at the outside, in half-an-hour, any ordinarily glib talker might have rattled through these comic recollections of Mr. Magsman, yet, when rattled through by Dickens, the laughter awakened seems now in the retrospect to have been altogether out of proportion. In itself the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... which he has not yet recovered sufficiently to address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all eyes sped to the Bishop, who stood certainly in a drooping attitude at the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted, beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated, not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a pair of ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... with a woman in a temper. With the letting in of the fresh air, fresh energy in the prosecution manifested itself. The witnesses were being subjected to inquisitorial torture; their answers were still glib, but the faces were studies of the passions held in the leash of self-control. Not twenty minutes had ticked their beat of time when once more the jury, to a man, showed signs of shivering. Half a dozen gravely took out their pocket-handkerchiefs, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... already too late: I am sure it will be, if I am to stay for an answer to this; but I hope you will have thought on it before you receive this. I am so much recovered as to have been abroad. I cannot say my arm is glib yet; but, if I waited for the total departure of' the rheumatism, I might stay at home till the national debt is paid. My fair writing is a proof of my lameness: I labour as if I were engraving; and drop no words, as I do ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... first Robert Turold reverted to the Norman spelling when he settled in Suffolk. Turrald is the corrupted form, doubtless due to early Saxon difficulties with Norman names. The Saxons were never very glib at Norman-French, and there was no standardized spelling of family names ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... brow deepened, and Yates was quick to see that he had lost ground again, if, indeed, he had ever gained any, which he began to doubt. She evidently did not relish his glib talk about the university. He was just about to say something deferentially about that institution, for he was not a man who would speak disrespectfully of the equator if he thought he might curry favor ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... of ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed like the fluctuations of a dream—as if the action begun by that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... Pole, glib of tongue, the heir to a thousand minor graces, reckless in outpouring the wine of Life, had truly gone the downward way with all the abandon of his showy, insincere race. Hawke well knew the final level of misery awaiting the wandering, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... made light of his own affliction, he was in reality extremely sensitive concerning it, and naturally he was not inclined to open conversation with this stranger whose own tongue was so glib. He, therefore, contented himself with turning his great blue eyes, fringed with such wonderful lashes, full upon her, and smiling beatifically. So cherubic was his expression, indeed, that at that instant Madam, chancing to turn her gaze that way, touched Miss Maitland's arm and directed ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... What they advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... got my story pretty glib by this time; I had reeled it off with increasing particulars to the Westchester Park station-master, and the head man at the stables, and General Filbert, and I was so letter-perfect that I had ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... will find out things he seldom fails. Perhaps nobody but a green-turbaned Hadji could so speedily have screwed information out of secretive Arabs, paid to be silent. And he had to fit deductions into spaces of the puzzle left empty by fibs and glib self-excusings. What he did learn was this: a dragoman had come, in a small boat, from a steam dahabeah to the Enchantress Isis while we were away at Kasr Ibrim. He presented credentials written ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "don't be afraid of me. I'm not such a devil as I look. We mean no harm at all. Signor Prefetto, I'm your very humble servant. Gently, lieutenant! You're strangling me! We're here as witnesses! Now then, Padre, speak up! Your tongue's glib enough!" ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... Powers, he no doubt held strong opinions. Some years later he did not conceal his conviction that Prince Bismarck would be worsted in his conflict with Rome on the Education Laws, and the event proved his forecast to be perfectly correct. This is an example of the dangers which beset a too glib and superficial treatment of political events which were conducted in secret, and with every ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... be specially nice and kind to Hilda after his evening's pleasure, but he felt it impossible now to keep the glib, sarcastic ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to describe his ready utterance; his glib use of the most sacred expressions; his familiar handling of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and getting as much for it as Providence and their owners shall please. To these things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite adaptability to all circumstances. ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... me into the duties of my office wiped away my last lingering sense of double, or, at least, doubtful, dealing. He told me nothing that was not calculated to mislead me. And he was so glib and so frank and so sympathetic that, had I not known the whole machine from the inside, I should ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... then, rational because attacked along irrational grounds; the Church is also reasonable because she has not been swayed by the attraction of heresy nor listened to the glib fallacies of those who always want to make her something ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... nothing. It is curious. The whole world and all its marvelous distractions seem to have resolved themselves into the curt sentence, "It rains." And somehow the great financier's faculty for the glib manipulation of platitudes which has earned him a reputation as a powerful economist seems for the moment to have abandoned him. His eyes remind one of a boy standing on tiptoe and staring over a fence at ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... length we tread the shore of France—of sunny Provence—the last unvisited realm we have to roam through before returning home. It is with a feeling of more than common relief that we see around us the lively faces and hear the glib tongues of the French. It is like an earnest that the "roughing" we have undergone among Bohemian boors and Italian savages is well nigh finished, and that, henceforth, we shall find civilized sympathy and politeness, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... There are various glib sayings to the effect that the work of great men is not appreciated until after they are dead. This may be so and it may not. It depends upon the man and the age. Meissonier enjoyed full half a century of the highest and most complete success that was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... her that I was as mad as a dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards away from my window. I keep asking myself: why ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... luxury, provided to ease the conscience of lazy or incompetent mothers, who had "too much to do" to be with their children. Isabelle knew all the arguments in their favor. She remembered Bessie Falkner's glib defence of the governess method, when she had wanted to stretch Rob's income another notch for this convenience,—"If a mother is always with her children, she can't give her best self either to them or to her husband!" Isabelle had lived enough ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the ketch's native rig, and to the glib Tripolitanese of the Sicilian pilot, no suspicion was excited in the Philadelphia's watch by the answer to their hail that she had lost her anchors in a gale and would like to run a line to the war-ship and to ride by it through the night. So completely were the Tripolitans deceived ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover. It was no longer fear. What was it? Was it the face of him, too strong and vital for a woman's, too handsome for a man's? Was it his dark, fiery eye which was always reversing what his glib tongue said? Some hidden magnetism? Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how resolutely she cast it forth. Even now she could not honestly say whether she was here to ask questions ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... glib tongue, fellow!" said Amyas, who was thoroughly out of humor; "and a sneaking down visage too, when I come to look at you. I doubt but you are a ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... body was on the qui vive to see the "white fighter." Every body was crazy to feel the "white skin" she had healed. Then, with a sudden, childish freak of caprice, they ran off from me as if afraid, and at once rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as if I did, and peered into my eyes for answers, with impish devilry ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... with good intentions" is no longer a glib phrase to me; it is a conviction born of seeing some of the suffering of this country. The doctor has just been ashore to see a woman with a five-days old baby. No attempt whatever had been made to get her ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... world's people has made thee glib of tongue," said he, eyeing me, and smiling as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by the glib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for the cause, or against it—caught its quick rebuke, at the hands of some glib funmaker. Once an enthusiastic admirer of the hero of Charleston indited a glowing ode, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... this year I debated twelve days, at Burksville, with Presiding Elder Frogge. He was the great champion of Methodism in Southern Kentucky. He had had a great many debates, and, while he was very ready and glib in his line of debating, I soon discovered that his scholarship and reading were both very limited, exceedingly so; and I intentionally widened the range of controversy more than was my wont, to see what he would do—and he was completely lost. ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... was, Frank thought he could see Atwater shrug his shoulders and look to him for the required explanation. For Abram was a fellow of few words, and Frank was glib of speech. ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... of Bursley, this enlightened and beautiful town which I am now visiting for the first time,' he began in a hard, metallic voice, employing again with the glib accuracy of a machine the exact phrases which he had been using all day, 'look at me—look well at me. How old do you think I am? How old do I seem? Twenty, my dear, do you say?' and he turned with practised insolence to a pot-girl in a red shawl who could not have ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to return. O'er fair free hills and valleys I can converse and carry on ad lib.; On active tennis-courts (between the rallies) I can be confident, and none more glib; But not in drawing-rooms my bright star dallies— I'm not that sort ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... in a recital glib on his lips, regained the dominance of manner which the attitude of his subordinates had momentarily imperiled. Increased composure brought with it a certain hauteur, and he paused again—perhaps to gratify the actor's instinct in him rather than observe the effect of his words. But the break ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles. The countryman finds the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Cubist sculptors wild as Goats, Theosophists and Swamis, too, Musicians mad as Hatters be— (E'en puzzled Hatters, two or three!) Tame anarchists, a dreary crew, Squib Socialists too damp to sosh, Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds, Glib females in Artistic Duds With Captive Husbands cowed ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... by no means,' he began, listening vaguely to the glib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. 'Your father, my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on the road to recovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of course—two heads, we know, are so much better than one when there's the least—the least difficulty. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... toward mutual understanding. They clear up the deadlocks that come from the hard and fast use of terms, they establish mutual charity as an intellectual necessity. The common way of speech and thought which the old system of logic has simply systematized, is too glib and too presumptuous of certainty. We must needs use language, but we must use it always with the thought in our minds of its unreal exactness, its actual habitual deflection from fact. All propositions are ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... that glib-tongu'd Aiken, My very heart and soul are quakin', To think how we stood sweatin', shakin', An' pish'd wi' dread, While he, wi' hingin' lips and snakin', [sneering] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... (repeat) 104; talk at random, talk nonsense &c. 497; be hoarse with talking. Adj. loquacious, talkative, garrulous, linguacious|, multiloquous[obs3]; largiloquent|; chattering &c. v.; chatty &c. (sociable) 892; declamatory &c. 582; open-mouthed. fluent, voluble, glib, flippant; long tongued, long winded &c. (diffuse) 573. Adv. trippingly on the tongue; glibly &c. adj.; off the reel. Phr. the tongue running fast, the tongue running loose, the tongue running on wheels; all talk and no cider; "foul whisperings are abroad" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... longhand to his manager's dictation, and was strengthened in the conviction that Penton had stolen that parcel of silver. Usually the manager composed hesitatingly, especially when addressing head office, but now he was glib, and seemed familiar with his subject. He even appeared to be in suppressed good ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Mr. Tulliver's interests and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Wakem's office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,—always looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and fat hands; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... over dere. By chance, have you got any 'bacco? Make me more glib if I can chew and spit; then I 'members more and better de things ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... a touch of impatience. He felt the gulf that separated their two oddly diverse lives—the one the youth eager to dip into experience, the other a fugitive from a many-sided past that still shadowed and menaced him. He listened with only half an ear as the Chicagoan expounded some glib and ancient principle about the fairy tale being even ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... care whether its daughters' husbands had or had not any fathers or mothers. The world as it was now didn't care whether its sons-in-law were Christian or Jewish;—whether they had the fair skin and bold eyes and uncertain words of an English gentleman, or the swarthy colour and false grimace and glib tongue of some inferior Latin race. But he cared for these things;—and it was dreadful to him to think that his daughter should not care for them. "I suppose I had better die and leave them to look after themselves," he said, as ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... one would suppose, the easiest thing in the world for the glib-tongued Hiram to reply to such an interrogatory; but there was something awful in that gaze—not severe, nor stern, nor condemnatory, but awful in its earnest, truthful, not to be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the house had retired to rest, with what a sinister delight did he chuckle over the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge of which he had dragged from many an unwilling sinner! To oust him, when installed, was a plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only too glib in the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the last scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... reason for suspecting him. He is too glib with his Princeton. Himmel! Did you ever hear a man talk so fast and so much and use such words? I can speak as good English as any man my age, but there were words, dozens of them, that I had never ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... Lane to take this latter remark for anything but the glib boldness of an erotic child. But he was not making any assurances to himself that he was right. Bessy Bell was fifteen years old, according to time. But she had the physical development of eighteen, and a mental range beyond his ken. The lawlessness unleashed by the war ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... a mystery. Peter was neither particularly glib nor witty. Instinctively he knew the values of the full moon, the stars, and he had the look of a young man who has drunk at the fountain of life on more than one occasion, finding the waters ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... to talk too glib about the judgments of Providence. The bad boys don't always git drownded when they go fishin' Sundays—they often git home with long strings of trout, and lick the good boys on their way home from Sunday-school. Such ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... are not to be his wife, can you love me, will you be my wife?" These were the words which were in his heart, but with all his sighs he could not draw them to his lips. He would have given anything, everything for power to ask this simple question, but glib as was his tongue in pulpits and on platforms, now he could not find a word wherewith to express the plain wish ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... Shield" there was usually at least one Rabbi. One of the sons of Anselm Moses must be a Rabbi. The parents of little Mayer Anselm set him apart for the synagogue—he was so clever at reciting prayers and so glib with responses. Then he had an eczema for management, and took charge of all the games when the children played Hebrew I-Spy through the hallways and dark corners of the big, rambling and mysterious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... motley company of the riff-raff and raggabash of the island,—young and elderly, silent and glib—rough as a pigskin, and smooth as their sleeves at the elbow; with just one feature common to the whole pack of pick-thanks, and that was ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... properties, has been herein adequately set forth. Long has it been the custom to attribute to Commodore Vanderbilt and successive generations of Vanderbilts an almost supernatural "constructive genius," and to explain by that glib phrase their success in getting hold of their colossal wealth. This explanation is clumsy fiction that at once falls to pieces under historical scrutiny. The moment a genuine investigation is begun into the facts, the glamour of superior ability ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers |
