"Flippancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for a moment to listen. His face, which at first had worn an expression of smiling flippancy, now changed its aspect. He recognized the music, and felt his heart heat wildly. With a commanding gesture, he motioned Matuschka to withdraw, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... serious tone than they had in his early Birmingham days. They have become considerably more weighty—perhaps some of his unfriendly critics would say more heavy—than they were in bygone times. Without being open to the charge of levity or flippancy, Mr. Chamberlain's speeches used to be remarkable for a certain amount of humour, banter, touch-and-go smartness, as well as terse ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... alliance prescribed for the general improvement of the two races, I should say, Mr. Blithers." He smiled. "It would in no way impair the credit of Graustark, however. It is what you might really describe as a family secret, if you will pardon my flippancy." ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... it was not infectious as respected the occasion of it. He shook his head mournfully, and said, "The flippancy of rude health—the inconsiderate laugh ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... darker,' said Somers airily. 'There are so many fair models among native Englishwomen. Still, blondes are useful property!... Well, well; this is flippancy. But I liked the ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... least in the world," returned Quinton Edge, and Esmay smiled involuntarily at frankness so unblushing. Whereupon and curiously enough, Quinton Edge became suddenly of a great gravity, the flippancy of his accustomed manner falling from him as a cloak drops unnoticed from a man's shoulders. He rose to his feet, strode to a window, and stood there for perhaps a minute looking out upon the moonlit waters of the Lesser river. When he turned again to the girl ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... stomach (kabkaba), and of the sex (zabzaba), will have guarded himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. "Some women," says he, "might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda or the whiskey straight. A 'high-ball' I ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... wholly engrossed in the study of war and military matters, until at last he came to believe that there was no commander in the whole Empire who could stand against him. His father was much disquieted by this overweening conceit, and the flippancy with which he spoke of such a serious thing as war, and solemnly declared that if ever Kua was appointed general, he would bring ruin on the armies of Chao. This was the man who, in spite of earnest protests from his own mother and the veteran statesman ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... in which Mr. Conway writes, the height of faith from which his pen stoops to the mortal page, the unspeakable solemnity of the theme, which our volunteers are rudely striving to trace upon their country's bosom with their blood, and our women are steeping in their tears, ought to drive all flippancy shuddering from the lines in which sarcasm itself should be measured and awful as the deaths which gird ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... Margaret had, as she said, been watching Mary Corbet those last few weeks; and had determined to speak to her plainly. Her instinct had told her that beneath this flippancy and glitter there was something that would respond; and she was anxious to leave nothing undone by which Mary might be awakened to the inner world that was in such danger of extinction in her soul. It cost the old lady a great effort ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... why you lay so much stress on Puritanism," he said. "What has Puritanism resulted in? Its whole struggle has come to an end in doubt and agnosticism and flippancy. Intellectual curiosity has taken the place of spiritual stress; ethical casuistry or theological amusements seem to me to stand instead of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... scandalized: "You don't seem right well," she said as if in excuse for such flippancy. "I do believe you've got a fever. I'm going straight home and mix you ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... explained it retrospectively by saying that she wanted to be left alone. Quite analogous to this is sulkiness that occasionally appears. Then we have, particularly as recovery begins, other childish tricks, such as flippancy in answering questions or the playing of pranks. Such tendencies naturally lead over ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... sterility; and, from what we have seen, we think there are far more unpromising places. Doctors, whose names only are known, but who were probably men of learning, have written on these salutary springs, and modern flippancy has at present forborne them. We have no Quack to patronize them; the "numen aquae" is not violated in print at least by jobbing apothecaries; but there is Gentile di Foligno, and Ugolino di Monte Catino, and Savonarola, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... though silly, is quick, the other, though deliberate, is stupid. Upon a short acquaintance, that heaviness which leaves to others the whole weight of discourse, and whole search of entertainment, is the most fatiguing, but, upon a longer intimacy, even that is less irksome and less offensive, than the flippancy which ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... free and all be saved:" the second all be is a most unnecessary tautology. The poem was perfect and faultless, if you could have let it alone. I wonder how your mischievous flippancy could help maiming that most new and beautiful expression, "sponge Of sins;" I should not have been surprised, as you love verses too full of feet, if you have changed it to "that scrubbing-brush ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... came to myself and implored him to give it all up. I don't think I went on my knees over it. But I am afraid I did cry; and that was the end. He pretended not to notice anything, and then in an instant he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me more than all the rest. I remember that I wanted to shake hands at the end. But Mr. Raffles only shook his head, and for one instant his face was as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... be a comparatively simple process to affix the regulation labels of philosophy; to say that Mr. Carlyle is a Pantheist in religion (or a Pot-theist, to use the alternative whose flippancy gave such offence to Sterling on one occasion[1]), a Transcendentalist or Intuitionist in ethics, an Absolutist in politics, and so forth, with the addition of a crowd of privative or negative epithets at discretion. But classifications of this sort are the worst enemies of true knowledge. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... well, I might have reduced this boy to his proper magnitude, for I never could endure young flippancy; but my spirits were so low that the boy banged the door with a fine sense of having vanquished me. And before there was any temptation to ring Bell A, not to mention Bell B, the sound of a wrathful voice ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... to make love to her; so with that old, old feminine instinct, which made the prehistoric woman take to her heels when the prehistoric man began to run after her, this daughter of the nineteenth century took refuge in an armour of flippancy, which is the best shield yet invented for ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... was the only one who was fined, the others clearing themselves by equivocation, and what, at least, appears to me very much like perjury. And that miserable Grogson evidently was posted to swear straight through. I was amazed at his flippancy and his evident willingness to swear to anything that would screen those ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... noble soul, death, by a reasoning which is above logic, seems to settle all accounts. He remembered the artist's brightness, his quick sympathy, his keen imagination, and his ready adaptability. The flippancy that had often shocked him, the treachery to principles which he held sacred that had wounded him, his kind memory put out of sight, as one wipes the stains from a crystal; and in the mind of the man he had wronged, the remembrance of Arthur Fenton remained fair and gracious, ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... flippancy would overlook the serious fact that permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers of young men and young women is a great social evil. The consequences of that evil ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... exhausted my ammunition! You wish to imitate the sparrow? But the sparrow does not, slyly and meanly mischievous, make a cult of sprightliness is not funny with authority, is not the pedant of flippancy! You percher among low bushes, who never care to fly, you wish to imitate—[Turning to one of the exotic COCKS cackling behind him.] Silence, Cock of Japan! or ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... the fulness of that grace to this Samaritan woman, in her ignorance, in her profligacy, in her flippancy. He offers it to you. His offer awoke an echo in her heart, will it kindle any response in yours? Oh! when He says to you, 'The water that I shall give will be in you a fountain springing into everlasting life,' I pray you to answer as she did—'Sir!—Lord—give me this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... displays of self-sufficiency and flippancy, of ignorance and presumption, found in the productions of the apostles of the new infidelity of Oxford, (of which we shall have a few words to say by-and-by) are the natural and instructive, though most ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... lustful, hateful, as the case might be. He had loved to play with her in the former days, to work upon her passions and watch the changes, to note her features mirror every varying emotion from tenderness to flippancy, from anger to delight, and, at his bidding, to see the pale cheeks glow with love's fire, the eyes grow heavy, the dainty lips invite kisses. Cherry was a perfect little spoiled animal, he reflected, and ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... Clarendon was forced to submit to daily encroachments upon regularity of procedure, which found encouragement from the King. His personal dignity was injured, and his temper was daily chafed, by the insults of those who carried their insubordination and their flippancy to the Council Chamber, where he could ill brook their presence; and they did so under cover of the secret sympathy of the King. Day by day he found his own influence more surely undermined; and it was none the less irksome ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... not flippancy. Your whole point of view is wrong. Do not ask me how I "know"—some conclusions do not need to be analyzed. I wonder if you realize, for instance, what you said about faith? I haven't the charity to call it even childish. Have you ever got below the surface of anything at all? Do you want to know ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... dens in which he had generally been lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called "the endearing elegance of female friendship." Mrs Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with angelic sweetness of temper. When he was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender of nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no contrivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly compassion, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... after a brief glance into his face, laughed pleasantly, if with a trace of flippancy. "You say nice things," she observed, slightly inclining her head. "But now that Celia is coming, it would be as well to have another man. It's such dreadfully ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... sadly. The young girl's sorrow was genuine, in strange contrast to Flavia's voluble flippancy. She laid her hand affectionately on the thick ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... every quarter of the globe, whose couriers upon every road," has slowly swung round, and is at last headed in the right direction. Reporters for the daily press in Massachusetts no longer write in a spirit of flippancy or contempt, and there is not an editor in the State of any account who would permit a member of his staff to report a woman's meeting in any other spirit than that of courtesy. Teachers occupying high positions and presidents of colleges ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... should make light of serious subjects; but there are several ways of looking at any matter, and the atmosphere of intense and morbid gloom which Poe casts over so many of his weird tales is not characteristic of the short story in general. At the same time I am far from advocating flippancy or superficiality, for both are deadly sins in literature. I merely wish to impress upon you the absurdity of the solemn tone which some amateurs seem to think a mark of depth of thought or feeling. An apt, simple phrase is the most forceful ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... to severe eyes, using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara appears, these cities crowded with petty grotesques, malformations, phantoms, playing meaningless antics. Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity—everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely ripe—everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male, female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood, the capacity for good motherhood decreasing ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... matter. She will never have it now. Charlie is all right by this time. Her high and mighty airs have cured him, and her flippancy and her love of admiration. Fancy her walking off to-day with that red-headed fool and quite ignoring Mrs Roxbury and her daughter, when they—Miss Roxbury, at least—wanted to see her to engage her for ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... Fuller, but Miss Evans says: "Mr. Lewes is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... born on November 12, 1879; and there is a special if a secondary sense in which we may use the phrase that he was born a fighter. It may seem in some sad fashion a flippancy to say that he argued from his very cradle. It is certainly, in the same sad fashion, a comfort, to remember one truth about our relations: that we perpetually argued and that we never quarrelled. In a sense it was the psychological truth, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... to honour and grim actuality, he realises with dismay his breach of trust—he, who in their earlier days in London had called out that sprightly little emigre merely for the vulgar flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own across the face—ay, and shot him in the shoulder, all in the secret ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Mrs. Vrain with a shrug, "how disgusting! I mean," she added, colouring as she saw that Lucian was rather shocked by her flippancy, "that sorry as I am for the old man, he wasn't a good husband to me, and corpses a week old ain't ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... ask, with a groan, whether he was unprepared; and the whole congregation would sigh out the response that Mr. Dishart had hit it. When he replied audibly to the minister's uncomfortable questions, a pained look at his flippancy travelled from the pulpit all round the pews; and when he only bowed his head in answer, the minister paused sternly, and the congregation wondered what the man meant. Little wonder that Davie Haggart ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... Lincolnshire, and the great noise which her wit and beauty made in London. For much of this Jeanie was, in some measure, prepared—but Effie's wit! that would never have entered into her imagination, being ignorant how exactly raillery in the higher rank resembles flippancy among their inferiors. ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and much good may do her with it: and what an hero or heroine must he or she be, who can conquer a constitutional fault? Let it be avarice, as in some I dare not name: let it be gravity, as in my best friend: or let it be flippancy, as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... take your fingers out of that plate!' was a grace once said in our hearing, but evidently not in that of the spoilt boy, 'growing and always hungry,' who could not wait to be served. We should prefer to such insensible flippancy the practice of an old divine in New-England, who in asking a blessing upon his meals, was wont to name each separate dish. Sitting down one day to a dinner, which consisted partly of clams, bear-steak, etc., ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... "some minor appointments in Ohio." The Colonel went with him. When Colonel Sherman spoke of the seriousness of the Secession movement, Lincoln replied, "Oh, we'll manage to keep house." The Colonel was so offended by what seemed to him the flippancy of the President that he abandoned his intention to resume the military life and withdrew from Washington ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... The flippancy revolted Keith. It was Larry all over! Last night horrified and humble, this morning, "Don't care" and feather-headed. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The flippancy was only a weapon which she used unconsciously, blindly, in her struggle. The man could not know this. His face hardened, and his ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... Flippancy, flippancy, of course. London would be better (for your friends) as a residence for you, than Wittemberg can be; and for that, and no other account, I could be sorry that you ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... convenience sake Irish Essays, 1882, the political book which closed this period with the political book that opened it, do we find things much better, even long after "the Wilderness" had been mostly left behind. There is indeed less falsetto and less flippancy; perhaps Mr Arnold had silently learnt a lesson, perhaps the opportunities of regular essays in "three-decker" reviews—of a lay sermon to working men, of a speech at the greatest public school in the world—discouraged the playfulness which had seemed permissible in addressing a skittish young ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... may teach, they undoubtedly teach that the greatest care should be taken by those who venture to discuss this subject or investigate such discussion. Let both writer and reader therefore cast aside any flippancy of spirit, also any preconceptions or prejudices, and say like young Samuel of old: "Speak, Lord; thy ...
— The Spirit and the Word - A Treatise on the Holy Spirit in the Light of a Rational - Interpretation of the Word of Truth • Zachary Taylor Sweeney
... of dress and display which is very repulsive in the character of a child. Little girls who are in the constant habit of attending these parties, soon exchange the natural manners and frank simplicity so delightful at their age, for the confidence and flippancy of women long hacked in the ways ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... him, so complete was his overthrow. Disraeli said that he had watched him during Johnny's speech, and doubted whether the hanging of the head, etc., was merely acting; but before he had spoken two sentences he saw he was a beaten fox. Many said that the extreme flippancy and insolence of his manner was more remarkable than ever, from their being evidently assumed with difficulty. I have always thought Palmerston very much overrated as a speaker; his great power arose from his not only knowing his subject ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... did not like this. It savoured of flippancy, and he was about entering upon a discussion to prove that Sadness had no soul, when Joe, with blood-shot eyes and dishevelled clothes, staggered ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... miraculous, one might almost say, unnatural rapidity. Now he is apostrophising Ruin; now he is wallowing in the mire of village scandal; now he is addressing a mountain daisy in words of tenderness and purity; now he is scarifying a garrulous tailor, and ranting with an alien flippancy; now it is Beelzebub he addresses, now the King; now he is waxing eloquent on the virtues of Scotch whisky, anon writing to a young friend in words of wisdom that might well be written on the fly-leaf of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... was very solitary. The flippancy of the lives around her, the inanity of her relatives' pursuits, their heedlessness of those inner qualities which make the real—indeed, the only considerable difference between man and man, could ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... to open the seance with a few moments of earnest, silent meditation—a few moments of dwelling "in the silence," as some have well called it; and these moments should be observed in a religious and devotional state of mind, all frivolity and flippancy being carefully avoided. If some present feel moved to prayer, then by all means let the prayer be made, for there can scarcely be a more fitting occasion for reverent prayer than a properly conducted seance. A few ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... a look on his face that mingled astonishment and injury, sank back in his chair. He never attempted anything that even faintly suggested flippancy, and he was unappreciative of this ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the pace and looked at her closely. The sweater and the sunshine had brought a faint tinge of wild-rose color to the transparency of her skin. The flippancy and boldness so prominent in her eyes the day before had disappeared. She looked more as she had when she was asleep in the moonlight. A wave of kindness and ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... easy declaration with a frown. If it were true he should not show that flippancy; if it were not he ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... mental response, and the wide range of intellectual accomplishments that were much more than superficial, made him a source of incessant and varied stimulation. Even those, and there were some, who thought that his gaiety bordered on flippancy, that his genial self-content often came near to shockingly bad taste, and that his reminiscences of poor Mr. Fitzball and the green-room and all the rest of the Bohemia in which he had once dwelt, were too racy for his company, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... restraining a man from proceeding to ruin unless some steadying agency is allied with them. After much sad brooding, I cannot but conclude that a fervent religious faith is the only thing that will give complete security; and it will be a bitter day for England and the world if ever flippancy and irreligion become general. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... Gloria's mind was an orgy of nervous imaginings. She was back with her mother, weeping, sobbing out upon a comforting breast all of her hideous adventures; she was reading the tall headlines in the newspapers; she was commenting on them with simulated flippancy to Georgia and Ernestine; she was meeting Mr. Gratton for the first time again, treating him to such haughty disdain as put hot blood into his white face; she was standing erect in the morning, confronting Mark King fearlessly, demanding her rights, commanding that he take ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... articles, framing my style upon conveyancing and special pleading, so that it might be solid, well-connected, and logical, and enable me to get back to the Paradise of 3l. 10s. an article, from which, as I strongly suspected, my flippancy had excluded me.' 'Flippancy' was clearly not in his line. Besides the 'Christian Observer,' I find that the 'Law Magazine' took a few articles from him, but there is no trace of other writings until 1855. In that year was published the first number ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... best understood. She knew that in those tripping melodies and crashing chords were Cyril's joy at the presence of Marie, his wrath at the flippancy of Bertram, his ecstasy at that for which the rug and curtains stood—the little woman sewing in the radiant circle of a shaded lamp. Billy knew that all this and more were finding voice at Cyril's finger tips. The others, too, understood in a way; but they, unlike Billy, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... I am a saucy creature. I know, if I do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and cogent ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... when this change had become decided, is given in the journal of John Dunton, a cockney bookseller, who visited Boston and other towns of Massachusetts with a cargo of pious publications, suited to the Puritan market. Making due allowance for the flippancy of the writer, which may have given a livelier tone to his descriptions than truth precisely warrants, and also for his character, which led him chiefly among the gayer inhabitants, there still seems to have been many who loved the winecup and ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... flood-gates of your loyal wrath, and let your vengeance fall upon his devoted head. Then it was that the overflowings of your 'native malignancy' hurled the tears of loyalty down your pallid cheeks. Then it was that your natural flippancy gave rapid birth to the most gross, unqualified and unjustifiable abuse I ever heard heaped, not only upon a member of Parliament, but even upon the commonest member of society. 'Am I,' said you, 'the son of a U. E. Loyalist, who fought and bled for his country, to sit within ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... flattering herself that her present wit and drollery would prevail with Ormond, as she had found it prevail with most people against an absent friend. But Ormond thought upon this occasion she showed more flippancy than wit, and more ill-nature than humour. He was shocked at the want of feeling and reverence for age with which she, a young girl, just entering into the world, spoke of a person of Lady Annaly's years and high character. In the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Her flippancy irked him worse than her appalling ideas, but she grew more desirable as she grew more infuriating, for the love-game has some resemblances to the fascinating-sickening game of golf. She did not often argue abstrusely, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... might have been privately a little shocked by such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said, "Yes'm," and withdrew. Then Mrs. Duncan resumed her questioning with manifest eagerness, but with as much of seriousness as Duncan himself had shown. There was no touch of flippancy, or even of lightness in either her words or her tone. For Mrs. Will Hallam was a woman of deep and tender feeling, a woman to whom ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... a beef sandwich," Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy. "You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!" she exclaimed. "And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... tip, fellows. Always be dead serious with 'Uncle Sim.' That's Mr. Simkins, Greek instructor. If you can look as if you'd lost all your friends and bitten your tongue you'll make a big hit with him. He doesn't know a joke even when it's labelled and can't stand any flippancy. I made a pun in class once; I've forgotten what it was, but it was a bright and scintillant little effort; and Uncle Sim told me I'd end on the gallows. He's never forgotten that and still views me with ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that he loved ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... wished to lose herself, had been entering with a feverish intensity into the spirit of their lively chatter; but now, instead of responding with some prompt, defensive flippancy, she colored high and was silent. A clock above them struck five. "Oh, I must get on," she cried; "I'm down here, you know, to ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... acute distress the mother of a little son. For all unexpectedly, suddenly, her house built of cards of carelessness, flippancy, thoughtlessness, had fallen round her. She struggled among ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... mine is so elementary. He secretly imagines that he's one of the most complex of men. But in a good many things he's as simple as a child. And I love him for it, although I believe I do like to bedevil him a little. He is dignified, and hates flippancy. So when I greet him with "Morning, old boy!" I can see that nameless little shadow sweep over his face. Then I say, "Oh, I beg its little pardon!" He generally grins, in the end, and I think I'm slowly shaking that monitorial air out of him, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... wasn't any pipe-dream!" said Morgan, so earnestly that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. "It was a woman's voice, but it wasn't the voice of any ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,—food, cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... am, for my own part, dissatisfied with the preface I sent—I fear it savours of flippancy. If you see no objection I should prefer substituting the inclosed. It is rather more lengthy, but it expresses something I have ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... would call love, but a weapon-like kinship. There was a tiny touch of irony in his manner towards her, contrasting sharply with Winifred's heavy, unleavened solicitude and care. The child flickered back to him with an answering little smile of irony and recklessness: an odd flippancy which made Winifred only the more sombre ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... criminal, through his counsel, chooses, with their usual flippancy, to say that the Commons have been cautious in stating this part of the charge, knowing that they were on tender ground, and therefore did not venture to say entitled, but possessed of only. A notable discovery indeed! We ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... from all. It is a fact, and a strange one, that among his contemporaries Hermiston's son was thought to be a chip of the old block. "You're a friend of Archie Weir's?" said one to Frank Innes; and Innes replied, with his usual flippancy and more than his usual insight: "I know Weir. but I never met Archie." No one had met Archie, a malady most incident to only sons. He flew his private signal, and none heeded it; it seemed he was abroad in a world from which the very hope ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... serge suit and a black hat, without flippancy; she is a powerfully built lady and generally more or less flushed, and she is aunt, apparently, to a great number of objectionable-looking people. I go in terror of her. Yet the worm will turn at ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... of an intoxicating melody, I, feeling pretty sure of my game, whispered half playfully in her ear: 'Countess, what would you say, if I should propose to you?' 'Propose and you will see,' she answered gravely, while those big black eyes of hers flashed at until I felt half ashamed of my flippancy. Of course I did not venture to put the question then and there, although I was sorely tempted. Now that shows that she has spirit, to say the least. What ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... her; she met my gaze with a steady regard. I had expected scorn, but found grief and hurt. Accused by the sight, I wrapped myself in a cold flippancy. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... sublimely satirical expression constantly heard from the mouths of those who, having read words set down by the men they name, have no more capacity for reading the hearts of the men themselves, through those words, than a blind man has for discerning the colour of flowers. As a consequence of this flippancy of reading, numberless writers, whose works have long been consigned to a well-merited oblivion, have of late years been disinterred and held up for public admiration, chiefly upon the ground that they are ancient and unknown. The ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... was also humane, in the sense of humanitarian. He sketched an ideal, or rather perhaps a fanciful social system, with something of the ingenuity of Mr. H. G. Wells, but essentially with much more than the flippancy attributed to Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not fair to charge the Utopian notions upon his morality; but their subjects and suggestions mark what (for want of a better word) we can only call his modernism. Thus the immortality of animals is the sort of transcendentalism which savours of evolution; and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents especially ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... at once, in the manner of balloons when part of their weight is released by touching down, with a sort of flippancy, and in another moment Bert was over a street crowded with peasants and soldiers, that opened into a busy market-square. The wave of ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... they had journeyed together Lady Sidmouth had been greatly pleased with the attention and character of Harry Furness. He was always cheerful and courteous, without any of that light tone of flippancy which distinguished the young Cavaliers of the period, and her little daughter was charmed with her companion. Harry received the hearty thanks of Sir Henry Sidmouth for the care with which he had conducted his wife through the dangers of the journey, and then, having ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the zigzag impulses of the chance surroundings. He who has never learned obedience can never become his own master, and whoever is not his own master through all his life lacks the mental soundness and mental balance which a harmonious life demands. Flippancy and carelessness, haphazard interests and recklessness must result, mediocrity wins the day, cheap aims pervade the social life, hasty judgments, superficial emotions, trivial problems, sensational excitements, and vulgar pleasures appeal ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... the third, action; and such is the idea of the Irish mimbers in the House of Commons. Now there are three important requisites in the diction of a fashionable novel. The first, my dear fellow, is—flippancy; the second, flippancy; and flippancy is also the third. With the dull it will pass for wit, with some it will pass for scorn, and even the witty will not be enabled to point out the difference, without running the risk of being considered invidious. It will cover every ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... was unhappy. The talk went on like a rattle of small artillery, always slightly sententious, with a sententiousness that was only emphasised by the continual crackling of a witticism, the continual spatter of verbal jest, designed to give a tone of flippancy to a stream of conversation that was all critical and general, a canal of conversation ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... with great openness—of his talents, character, and political views. I told him that Stanley had not raised himself this session, that he had given much offence by the general levity of his conduct, and especially to the Tories by the occasional flippancy or severity of his attacks upon them, that as it was clear that any Conservative Government must depend upon the great body of the Tory party for support, it was improvident in him to make himself obnoxious to them, and that he would do well to exert his influence over Stanley for ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... all seriousness, and in no spirit of flippancy: "Should women think?" They gain in power perhaps, but do they not lose in happiness by thinking? If women must always labor under unjust economic conditions, receiving less pay for the same work than men, if women must always ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... shuffling, but to strike roots in the mind, the Hesperides of good things. We shall then set a price on the 'unusual combination.' A witty woman is a treasure; a witty Beauty is a power. Has she actual beauty, actual wit?—not simply a tidal material beauty that passes current any pretty flippancy or staggering pretentiousness? Grant. the combination, she will appear a veritable queen of her period, fit for homage; at least meriting a disposition to believe the best of her, in the teeth of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... any other in its stead, the Correspondence naturally avails nothing. Seckendorf has his orders from Vienna: Grumkow has his pension,—his cream-bowl duly set,—for helping Beckendorf. Though angels pleaded, not in a tone of tragic flippancy, but with the voice of breaking hearts, it would be to no purpose. The Imperial Majesties have ordered, Marry him to Brunswick, "bind him the better to our House in time coming;" nay the Royal mind at Potsdam ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Greek under James Wilson, at that period one of the tutors, and some time later an associate judge of the Supreme Court. This great statesman and lawyer of after-days was a most delightful teacher. He took a fancy to my Jack, and, as we were inseparable, put up with my flippancy and deficient scholarship. Jack's diary says otherwise, and that he saw in me that which, well used, might make of me a man of distinction. At all events, he liked well to walk with us on a Saturday, or to go in my boat, which was for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... some now forgotten novels, first made acquaintance with the poet in London early in 1808, when we have two letters from Byron, in answer to some compliment on his early volume, in which, though addressing his correspondent merely as 'Sir,' his flippancy and habit of boasting of excessive ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... almost unintelligible, however, to Lucy, from her ignorance of the persons and things talked about. The tone of conversation, however, was as uncongenial as were the subjects. Edwin had a cynical air, partly real, partly affected; and the girls' remarks were characterized by the same sort of flippancy which had often ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... asked the class for a definition of faith. Some one quoted Heb. xi. 1, and the lecturer's answer was, "You could not have given a worse definition." My old friend, a "broad" but most reverent Churchman, referred to this as an instance of painful flippancy. It may have been so. But I am prepared to think that the lecturer may not have meant it so at all. He may only have expressed rather crudely his view, the right view, to my mind, that we have here not a definition of faith at all but a description of ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... distrust the situation. They point to the fact that technical education is producing an army of dingy artisans, who turn out the cheap and nasty by the million, an education which chokes idealism and increases the growing flippancy in matters of faith and morals; they sneer, and well they may, at the manufactured art, the carpenter's Gothic architecture, the sickly literature, the decaying interest in scholarship; they find fewer and fewer candidates for exploration ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Rastignac flung some money to the waiter, put the bill in his pocket, and we went out. I was quite stupified by the flippancy and ease with which he had sold my venerable aunt, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... received from the vigour and liveliness of their conversation. These were the men whom he had despised as slow, yet what a contrast between their way of talking and the inanities of Fitzurse or the shallow flippancy of Bruce. As he sat there and listened, his very face became softer in its lines from the expression of a real and intelligent interest, and they all thought that he was a better fellow, on closer acquaintance, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... This is dreadful." As she ran her eye over the article she saw that it was quite in harmony with the general tone and policy of the paper which catered to the jaded throngs of the Tenderloin. Truth had been cunningly distorted; flippancy, sensationalism, and a salacious double meaning ran ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... prejudices hold firm. I was afraid of it when I came." His mask of flippancy slipped for a moment; deep feeling made his voice uncertain. "I am not that hardy and masterful man, Aurora, who could break them down and clutch you above their ruin. But you will find me very faithful to a hope—which, in fact, to relinquish now would be beyond ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... itself in his luminous, manly, and polished language. The style of Montesquieu, on the other hand, indicates in every page a lively and ingenious, but an unsound mind. Every trick of expression, from the mysterious conciseness of an oracle to the flippancy of a Parisian coxcomb, is employed to disguise the fallacy of some positions, and the triteness of others. Absurdities are brightened into epigrams; truisms are darkened into enigmas. It is with difficulty that the strongest eye can sustain ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he so loves to paint in his works, and with whom he has been so often identified by the good-natured world; but nothing can be more different; for were I to point out the prominent defect of Lord Byron, I should say it was flippancy, and a total want of that natural self-possession and dignity which ought to characterize a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... any such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man's praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of mine, eh! I'll show you it's some business of mine. I am going to tell her all I know about you. I have been a rotter and worse than a rotter." The old flippancy had gone and the harsh voice was vibrant with purpose. "My path has been littered with the wrecks of human lives," he said bitterly, "and they are mostly women. I broke the heart of the best woman in the world, and I am going to see ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. It must be an offer, though the wording seemed to indicate ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... your manners, child? What would Garston say if he heard your flippancy?' But by the way he stroked his beard and looked at me, I saw he was not displeased. No one would have taken him for my uncle who had seen us together, for he was a young-looking man, and I was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sang-froid equaling that of a camp harpy, a few of whom Pierce had seen; then, too, she was, or had been, married to a no-account foreigner to whom she referred with a calloused and most unwifely flippancy; moreover, she bore herself with a freedom, a boldness, quite irreconcilable to the modesty of so- called "good women." Those facts were enough to classify her definitely, and yet despite them she was anything but common, and it would have taken rare courage indeed ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... virtuous, upright citizens of the commonwealth is aroused into vigilance for the dear-bought liberties of themselves and fathers, and that spirit of intolerance and persecution which has driven this people time and time again from their peaceful homes, manifests itself in the flippancy of rhetoric for female insult and desecration, it is time that I forbear to hold my peace, lest the thundering anathemas of nations, born and unborn, should rest upon my head, when the marrow of my bones shall be ill prepared to sustain ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... impetuous woman with rich coloring; deliciously feminine in her quieter moments, incredibly daring in others; keen-brained, cultured, and utterly unconventional; generous, sympathetic and a splendid musician. Norman worshiped her. She was older than he and without the occasional strain of flippancy which so ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Mr. Stanhope could hardly preserve his gravity, but Sir William gave Melange a look that seemed a deathblow to his flippancy, for he moved off directly to the care ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... he could have expected when he expressed that desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer except for personal reasons—except for the traces ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... of battle, is "a tower of strength;" it is the title of legitimacy. The ambition to please the people, to captivate jurors, spectators, and loungers about the court room, may mislead a young man into pertness, flippancy, and impudence, things which often pass current for eloquence and ability with the masses; but the ambition to please the Bar can never mislead him. Their good graces are only to be gained by real learning, by the strictest integrity ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... dignity, wisdom, and intelligence, and look upon the fathers of two and three hundred years ago as mere pigmies, just emerging from an era of barbarism and ignorance, not at all to be compared with the proud wiseacres of our day. Never was there a greater mistake. The shallowness and flippancy of the leaders and politicians of this last quarter of the nineteenth century show them but little more than school-boys compared with the sturdy, sober-minded, deep-principled, dignified, and grand-spirited men who discovered ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... striving to be severe, failed in logic, owing to the misuse of prepositions; and have smarted under conjectures as to the authorship of "Jane Eyre," which, intended to be acute, were merely flippant. But flippancy takes a graver name when directed against an author by an anonymous writer. We call it then ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... skirt with a history, touching and teaching, is no theme for flippancy; so, by your leave, I will unwind my story tenderly, and with reverential regard for its smooth turns ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... all very well to joke," protested Uncle Chris, pained by this flippancy, "but let me tell you that I shall not require magic assistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's I am meeting men all the time who have only to say one little word to make me a millionaire? They are fat, gray ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... I don't think you're quite alive to what it is that is growing up about you. Flippancy is out of place. I abominate flippancy." ("Well, dash it, it's my house!" Sabre thought.) "This Garden Home is not a speculation. It's not a fad. It's not a joke. What is it? You're thinking it's a damned nuisance. You're right. It is ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... of other climes in the dexterity of her deft fingers; some memory of an exile from France in her name: Lorraine. Her friend was a mondaine. She had the social gift, a subtle understanding of things worldly, the glissey mortel n'appuyez jamais attitude toward life. By a touch of flippancy, an adroit turn of mind, she kept the knowing mastery over people which has mystified and delighted in all great hostesses ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... have remembered the words—the trees for medicine and healing, even the fish,—why I never thought there could be anything like that in the Bible! You chose it purposely, of course?" The young man did not reply for an instant. A hint of flippancy in the speech of his companion seemed to create a barrier ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and who, not content with declaring the "Book of the Duchess," as a whole as well as in its details, a servile imitation of Machault, pronounces it at the same time one of Chaucer's feeblest productions; or at the equally eminent English scholar who, with a flippancy which for once ceases to be amusing, opines that Chaucer ought to "have felt ashamed of himself for this most lame and impotent conclusion" of a poem "full of beauties," and ought to have been "caned for it!" Not only was this "lame and impotent conclusion" imitated ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... his efforts to speak to Ephie alone, and the expression with which he had watched her. And Ephie?—what of her? Now that Johanna thought of it, a change had also come over Ephie's mode of treating Maurice; the gay insouciance of the early days had given place to the pert flippancy which, only the night before, had so pained her sister. What had brought about this change? Was it pique? Was Ephie chafing, in secret, at his prolonged absences, and was she, girl-like, anxious to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... and he proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor flippant ridicule, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney |
