"Flippantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Pelasgian. What, then, was the parent tongue of the latter unless it was the language "spoken at one time by all the nations of Europe—before their separation?" In the absence of all proofs, it is unreasonable that the Rik-Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and every Nirukti should be treated as flippantly as they now are. It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... flippantly, perhaps, "Tell the captain I'm going to dine in the ward-room." I meant no disrespect, for I felt none. Perhaps the fellow who took back my answer worded it maliciously. I had totally forgotten, as soon as I had uttered my ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... saleswoman may talk flippantly about it, but, at heart, isn't she seriously right? She has pulled herself up to a certain level. Except in response to a grande passion she will not again drop below it. She will bring up her children at a point as close to her present level as she can. That ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... the man, so easily scared at the very shadow of trickery, who is so flippantly pronounced to be ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... world every woman were a widow. When he realised that these were not the masked mutes at a very grisly funeral, but merely ladies literally obeying a convention of wearing veils in public, he would probably have a reaction of laughter. He would be disposed to say flippantly that it must be, a dull life, not only for the women but the men; and that a man might well want five wives if he had to marry them before he could even look at them. But he will be wise not to be satisfied with such flippancy, for the complete veiling of the Moslem women of Jerusalem, though ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... gained a good deal of popularity of a certain sort; it therefore belongs somewhere in the literature of the day. Perhaps it would have been for the good of some of our readers, if we had done this sooner. But, indeed, to treat with entirely condign justice a book which deals very freely and flippantly with the literary and even the personal character of one who, though an eminent and to some extent a public man, was still only yesterday a private gentleman among us, a neighbor and a friend, is a matter of some delicacy. By the extraordinary alacrity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... sleep is sound it's little we care how or when he gets it," announced Jack, flippantly. "And when you give the word, Tom, we'll all be ready to ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... "Don't speak so flippantly of it! How can you? And don't think for one instant. that I doubted your word. I didn't. But it didn't seem possible that such a thing—Mr. Brice!" she broke off earnestly. "You mustn't —you can't—think that Milo knew anything ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... time you should not," he went on, flippantly, "just let me know, Miss Richards, and I will see what I can do for you, for I have considerable influence with ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... be neither," said Amy flippantly. In those days, they always put two nots together when they meant to speak strongly. They did not see, as we do now, that the ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... flippantly, "but my outing was an inning—and I've delved like a riverful of beavers, and I'll be at work at nine ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... that would go on the rocks for some man," Nina had said once, rather flippantly, "and never know she was shipwrecked. No man in the world could do ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to the menial functions, and two mulatto children remained to relieve them of light labor. She was a dignified, matronly young lady, and, as one of the sisters informed me, plighted to a Major in the Confederate service. The others chattered flippantly for an hour, and said that the old place was dreadfully lonesome of late. Miss Bell was sure she should die if another winter, similar to the last, occurred. She loved company, and had always found it so lively in Loudon before; whereas she had positively ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... no joke to jest with an able woman," he returned. "Seriously, I have considerable sympathy with your view, and no wish to treat it flippantly. But if I am to treat it seriously, I must admit frankly that I think you forget that, after all, Nature has something to say ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Amongst that family into whose society he had fallen, many things were laughed at, over which some folks looked grave. Faith and honour were laughed at; pure lives were disbelieved; selfishness was proclaimed as common practice; sacred duties were sneeringly spoken of, and vice flippantly condoned. These were no Pharisees: they professed no hypocrisy of virtue, they flung no stones at discovered sinners:—they smiled, shrugged their shoulders, and passed on. The members of this family did not pretend ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... arrangement of the 'Old English Gentleman,'—an old English air, by the bye—Cooke was subpoenaed as a witness. On his cross-examination by Sir James Scarlet, afterwards Lord Abinger, for the opposite side, that learned counsel rather flippantly questioned him thus: 'Now, sir, you say that the two melodies are the same, but different; now what do you mean by that, sir?' To this Tom promptly answered, 'I said that the notes in the two copies were alike, but with a different accent, the one being in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... Tom flippantly; "any place that can give Bert three such meals a day as he gets at the training table is sure to make a hit ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... To listen to Charteris on the subject, one might have thought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise. This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everything flippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more. The actual casus belli had been trivial. At least the mere spectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after this fashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-room ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... company of ladies at dinner, I dissemble my true nature, as doublet and hose ought to show itself courageous to petticoat. If then, you taunt me, for want of a better escape, I shall turn it to a jest. I shall engage the table flippantly: Hear how preposterously the fellow talks!—he jests to satisfy a grudge. In appearance I am whole as the ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... "Not very," answered Madelene flippantly. "I was wondering how long it would take that Skinner girl to earn enough money to pay ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... sorrowfully the judge regarded the prince who thus flippantly defied the law of which he was the guardian, but his face was firm and his voice authoritative ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Cain was first shut up in the prison of the Law he felt no pang at the fratricide he had committed. He thought he could pass it off as an incident with a shrug of the shoulder. "Am I my brother's keeper?" he answered God flippantly. But when he heard the ominous words, "What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground," Cain began to feel his imprisonment. Did he know how to get out of prison? ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... that I have been so silent, when I had announced a war between the House of Commons and the City—nay, when hostilities were actually commenced; but many a campaign languishes that has set out very flippantly. My letters depend on events, and I am like the man in the weather-house who only comes forth on a storm. The wards in the City have complimented the prisoners,[1] and some towns; but the train has not spread much. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... admitted Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make you human—and you've never been really human all through, you know—was not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France—he had gone into the war before his country—and to the nervous malady, the disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more esteem, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... solitude?" hazarded Sara flippantly. She was still nervous and talking rather at random, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... dangerous than a cold in the head," he answered flippantly. "My dear child, we all have fever. You'll have it, too, if you go out at sunset without your ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... of women in every community whom society flippantly denominates "old maids." The world needs yet to be told what uncrowned queens many of these women are, what undecorated heroines, what blessings to humanity, what builders of homes, what servants of others and of Christ. In thousands of cases they remain unmarried for ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... an answer and spoke flippantly from nervousness. "Because it's rather soon to become a grass widow, and I want you to be seen ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... she doesn't," replied this elegant young gentleman, flippantly. Extremes meet. The naked savage has a fairly low estimate of the value of his womankind, but it is many degrees higher than that of this product of ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... Mr. Bellamy thus flippantly dismissed this case: "Of this it may be remarked that had it happened two centuries ago it would have been symptomatic; to-day it is a curiosity." It will be observed that in order to minify the dangers ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... book on farm pedagogy I shall certainly make large use of the horse in illustrating the fundamental principles, for he is a noble animal and altogether worthy of the fullest recognition. We often use the expression "horse-sense" somewhat flippantly, but I have often seen a driver who would have been a more useful member of society if he had had as much sense as the horses he was driving. If I were making a catalogue of the "lower animals" I'd certainly include the man who abuses a horse. Why, the ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... contradict, and displace with another guess just as probable, in three months' time. There are men just as learned and just as honest who have examined their guesses, and find them poor inventions indeed. And we have a right to deny point blank the assertions so flippantly made by men like M. Renan. 'It is universally acknowledged that this book was never written by Daniel or Isaiah or Jeremiah,' 'It is certain this chapter is an addition of such and such a date,' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... all-round examination of Ideas that we acquire valuable knowledge, and may learn how very few there are current which are more than very superficially understood—as I have shown in what I have said of the Will, the Imagination, Forethought, and many other faculties which are flippantly used to explain a thousand problems by people who can hardly ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... for the injustice she had done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: she was less than she had thought—he was more. Bernal had proved these things to her all unconsciously. Now her heart was ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... time,' Sir George answered flippantly, as he emptied his glass. 'You know Selwyn's last upon that? It came by bones, and it is going ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... and dine,' I said flippantly, upon leaving him, little dreaming how soon and in what manner we were ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... words, you're afraid he'll toy with my young affections?" she answered flippantly. "Very well—let him try! Goodness knows he's labeled loudly enough. Every time he comes within a mile somebody says that about him. Everything about him says it for itself, for the matter of that. It isn't any secret. Let him toy! It amuses him ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... said Dupre, flippantly. "It went directly through the heart, and Lemoine, here, insists that when that happens a man should fall dead instantly. I did ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... the police," replied James flippantly, "and the Admiralty are as a father and mother to me; but I want to keep this absolutely quiet for a few days—anyhow, till after Friday. I couldn't turn Fritz over to a policeman without attracting a certain ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood through it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips were continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising his ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... for elderly men to refer either flippantly or with gentle humor to their days of courtship, forgetting (or ignoring) the tremulous eagerness, the grave questioning and the tender solemnity of purpose with which they weighed the joys and responsibilities ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... at once accusing me of avoiding him, and keeping out of his way on purpose when he tried to speak with me alone, ever since he came back from Scotland; and I retorted flippantly: "Oh, have you only ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... Spoken flippantly enough, there was yet steady determination in the words of Stuart. He meant everything he said, and most generously gave up his prospects, at least of companionship, for the sake of those companions. More than that, he probably gave up all chances of making good his escape from Germany, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... but we have only to refer to what is daily occurring in Ireland, to show the utter impossibility of the gentry making any efforts to improve their own estates, or the condition of the tenantry, under existing circumstances. Men here talk flippantly of the evils of absenteeism, while they are the very first to object to measures which would render it possible for landlords to reside at home. A coercion act is opposed, while Sir Francis Hopkins, a resident and admirable landlord, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... attempt to draw a comparison between the two men. The one was a colossal human genius, and the other, extraordinary in the art of his profession, was entirely without the faculty of understanding or appreciating the distinguished man he flippantly raged at ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... a spiral-shaped fossil as large as the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench, and had been sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth. Contrasted with the inconceivable antiquity of this modest fossil, those other things were flippantly modern—jejune—mere matters of day-before-yesterday. The sense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away under the influence of this truly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... see anybody now, for he's busy talking with one of our producers. You'll have to call again," she said flippantly. But even as she spoke she glanced at the card, started and turned red. "Oh, pardon me!" she added hastily and fled back ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... you're repeating yourself," she threw back flippantly over her shoulder, as she went to bid Mrs. Shelley good-night. "I'm telling Marion ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... comes from failing to follow the trend of the discussion; another which is the result of talking at random merely to make bulk. The first is tolerable; the last is contemptible. The moment one begins to talk for effect, or to hedge flippantly, he is talking insincerely. And when a good converser runs against this sort of talker, his heart calls out, with Carlyle, for an empty room, his tobacco, and his pipe. It is maintained by some one that there are ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... Walpole flippantly, 'the female nature was an omitted part in your education, Lockwood, and you take small interest in those nice distinctive traits which, to a man of the world, are exactly what the stars are to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... I fear, rather flippantly on this topic; but that is only because I dare not trust myself to be serious. I realize as much as any one that the life is a shameful life, and all that sort of thing; but I boil with indignation at the hundred shamefulnesses which these charity-mongers ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... famed for their prowess in the realm of love. These boastings have always shocked me, for I reverence love as the noblest of the passions, and it is impossible for me to conceive how one who has truly fallen victim to its benign influence can ever thereafter speak flippantly ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... terms of artists like you, in the service of beauty and the faith in freedom. Prussia, at least cannot help me; Lord Palmerston, I believe, called it a country of damned professors. Lord Palmerston, I fear, used the word "damned" more or less flippantly. I use it reverently. ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... you now," she remarked flippantly, as Ada Snow, prayer-book in hand, came into view at the crossing against a dust-cloud in the background, on her way to a friend's house from service at the little mission chapel on the hill. Ada's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... ask me pointblank,' said Lady Kelsey, smiling with relief because he took so flippantly the news she had lately poured into his ear. 'But it's excessively rude of you ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... continued to work with energy and conscientiousness. But her efforts were forestalled by an event, or rather a condition of the national temper, of which too little notice has been taken by literary historians. The attacks on the stage for its indecency and blasphemy had been flippantly met by the theatrical agents, but they had sunk deeply into the conscience of the people. There followed with alarming abruptness a general public repulsion against the playhouses, and to this, early in 1699, a roughly worded ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... twenty-four hours later. But, in the meantime, there was an early-evening lull which enclosed a delightful cricket match. A team of junior Kensingtonians, that included Doe and myself, was going across Kensingtowe High Road to play the First Eleven of the Preparatory School, an academy flippantly known as the "Nursery," its boys being "Suckers." Edgar Doe had been a certain choice. Brought up in the midst of a great cricketing family, the Grays of Surrey tradition, in his beautiful Falmouth home which boasted cricket pitches of its own, he was as polished a bat ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... something dreadful to him—to shock his propriety—to scandalize the five senses out of him! (To Catherine perversely.) I don't care whether he finds out about the chocolate cream soldier or not. I half hope he may. (She again turns flippantly away and strolls up the path to the ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... have nought to do with what might get me into trouble," said Amy, flippantly. "Bessy may swallow the Bible ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... tender heart he must have!" said Mrs. Jasher flippantly. "My brother was very little to me, poor man, so he cannot be anything to the Professor. However, I shall adopt your advice, and, after all, black suits me very well. There"—she swept her hands across the tea-table—"that ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... years; so magnificent in his court, which he made the most brilliant of modern times; so lauded by the great geniuses who surrounded his throne, all of whom looked up to him as a central sun of power and glory,—is not to be flippantly judged, or ruthlessly hurled from that proud pinnacle on which he was seated, amid the acclamations of two generations. His successes dazzled the world; his misfortunes excited its pity, except among those who were sufferers by his needless wars or his cruel persecutions. His virtues and his defects ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... incorrigible!" laughed Miss Crawford, fairly carried away by the irresistible current of the wild girl's humor. "How can you talk so flippantly of things so deplorable?" ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... not only importune your Home Secretary to pardon him, but I should recommend him for a pension," he said flippantly. ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... higgledy-piggledy over itself of course," said Lewis, flippantly, as he came up and sat down on the end of the sofa, being out of humour with himself and everybody in consequence of having utterly failed to gain the attention of Nita Horetzki, although he had made unusually earnest ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... much," I said flippantly—I had a creepy, crawly presentiment that a scene of some kind was threatening—"and I'm awfully tired of Thrush Hill and country life, Jack. I suppose it is horribly ungrateful of me to say so, but it is ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... right of the whites to unite against this tremendous menace, we are challenged with the smallness of our vote. This has long been flippantly charged to be evidence and has now been solemnly and officially declared to be proof of political turpitude and baseness on our part. Let us see. Virginia—a State now under fierce assault for ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... pleasure except indeed when he tries to be droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. A wise ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was performed in Brussels, where Mr. James Binnie, who longed to see Rosey wedded, and his sister, whom we flippantly ventured to call the Campaigner, had been staying that summer. After the marriage they went off to Scotland, and the Colonel and his son and daughter-in-law came to London—not to the old bachelor quarters in Fitzroy Square, but to a sumptuous mansion in the Tyburnian district—and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... very flippantly, and did not seem in the least concerned that her virtue had had so narrow ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... papers to Marston was then not so insistent; even Mayo's rising anger did not prompt him to do that. The wreck of a man's life and hopes dismissed flippantly as petty details! ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... question, by one of ourselves, and of answer by Miss Jeremy. These replies were usually in a querulous tone, and were often apparently unwilling. Also occasionally there was a bit of vernacular, as in the next reply. Herbert, who was still flippantly ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... forget it. The habit of material trust is too strong for us. Kings, queens, presidents, princes, prime ministers, congresses, parliaments, and all other representatives of material strength, may repeat for formal use the conventional clause; but there is always what we flippantly know as a "joker" in the lip-recitation. "Kingdom, power, and glory," we can hear ourselves saying in a heart-aside, "lie in money, guns, commerce, and police. God is not sufficiently a force in the affairs of this world for us to give Him more than ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... looking down the corridor toward the desk when she saw something that caused her to change her mind. There was the young lady who had been talking so flippantly to the woman with a grievance, and she was now talking, of all people, ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... dare you speak those words so flippantly!" said Cora severely, looking at her sister in surprise ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... It was flippantly spoken, but Muriel realised that it would be better to obey. She turned about slowly, and began to make her ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... loved him in our small mess of five—Captain Simpson, Lieutenant Boyd, and we two ensigns; and I think he knew it. Had we disliked him, among ourselves we would have dubbed him James, intending thereby disrespect; but to us he was Jimmy, flippantly, perhaps, but with a sure affection under all our impudence. And I think, too, that he knew we spoke of him among ourselves as Jimmy, and did ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the next, and she encountered the sweet courtesies of Sir John Joram. These sweet courtesies were prolonged for above an hour, and were not apparently very sweet to Miss Young. Of the witnesses hitherto examined she was the worst. She had been flippantly confident in her memories of the marriage ceremony when questioned on behalf of the prosecution, but had forgotten everything in reference to her friend's subsequent married life. She had forgotten even her own life, and did not quite know ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... to elbow, round the generous table that offered choicest viands money could procure. In the handsome rooms above they puffed fragrant and real Havanas, while the latest developments of news, strategy and policy were discussed; sometimes ably, sometimes flippantly, but always freshly. Here men who had been riding raids in the mountains of the West; had lain shut up in the water batteries of the Mississippi; or had faced the advance of the many "On-to-Richmonds"—met after long separation. Here the wondering young cadet would look first upon some noted ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... liberal minded enough to see that he might be wrong. And yet may we not profitably pause here long enough to contrast in our thoughts the careful and reverent manner in which the restrictions of our fundamental law were scrutinized a hundred years ago with the tendency often seen in later times to flippantly attempt the adjustment of our Constitution to the purposes of ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... young lady," insisted Quair flippantly; and he pivoted on his heel and sat down beside the model. Once or twice the two others, consulting before the wax group, heard the girl's light, untroubled laughter behind their backs gaily responsive to Quair's wit. Perhaps Quair's inheritance ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... thrown away nor undervalued, may be inferred from an incident related by Boswell. Mr. Perkins had hung up in the counting-house a fine proof of the mezzotinto of Dr. Johnson by Doughty; and when Mrs. Thrale asked him, somewhat flippantly, "Why do you put him up in the counting-house?" Mr. Perkins answered, "Because, Madam, I wish to have one wise man there." "Sir," said Johnson, "I thank you. It is a very handsome compliment, and I ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... stared, wondering what had sent this usually tardy boy so far in advance of the bell. Little girls tittered. Phrony Walker tossed her braid flippantly over her shoulder, casually displaying a new hair ribbon with which she meant to impress the city girl who wore and needed none. Sophronia's hair did not kink and curl as Katharine's did, but it was "a hunderd times as long ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... acquaintance; and to him explained his dilemma. It required some measure of specious ingenuity to explain his errand as he wished; but Mr. Carruth, being used to squirming legatees, understood and came to the point with a candor which made Pelgram wince. After first flippantly suggesting that the plumbing business would at least afford Pelgram the chance to indulge his taste in porcelains, he eased the artist's mind by a phrase as soothing as it ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg perched flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from his lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention. Buckley would have given a year's pay to attain that devil- may-care method. Once the debonair youth said to him: "Buck, you go into a scrap ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... it dark and turbulent. The mouth harmonized with this stormy look, and trembled into half sarcastic smiles, as if each feature reviled the other. Now I was larger, taller, more pronounced in face and person than the pretty fairy who could entertain him so flippantly, while I sat dumb and silent in his presence. No wonder I hated myself, yet many persons had thought me good looking, and I could recollect a thousand compliments on my talents and powers of pleasing, which came to ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... would interdict marriage altogether; but we wish to warn every young man against marrying a young woman who treats lightly or contemptuously matters which should be treated with profound respect; who uses the name of Deity flippantly or rudely; who treats her parents disrespectfully; who never cares to talk of subjects of a spiritual nature; who is giddy, gay, dressy, thoughtless, fickle. Such a young woman will never make a ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... "Ciro's" and a keeper of the vestiaire in scarlet breeches and silk stockings. Afterwards they were to go to the little bon-bon play-house up by the more pretentious bon-bon Casino. He was to watch the antics of a band of actors toying with some mimic fate, flippantly, to the sound of music, when his own destiny swung trembling on the last silken thread of tortured suspense! Yet it was better than moping alone, he told himself. He hated loneliness. And until the last few weeks he had scarcely known the meaning of the word! There had always been that other hand ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... been the fashion among our younger writers to speak slightingly and flippantly of Emerson, referring to him as outworn, and as the apostle of the obvious. This view is more discreditable to the young people than is their criticism damaging to Emerson. It can make little difference ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... and over again, as people do with a tune they have just picked up. But the pious Monnica, who heard him, could not tolerate the singing of such holy words in such a place. She spoke sharply to the offender. Upon this the young scatter-brains answered rather flippantly: ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... infatuated players have put a valuation of five (5) cents per bean, on beans that did not cost more than $1 quart in Helena, and Jake Smith exhibits a marvelous lack of veneration for his kinswoman, by referring to each bean, as he places it before him upon the table, as his "aunt," or, more flippantly, his "auntie." Walter Trumbull has been styled the "Banker," and he says that at the commencement of the game he sold forty of these beans to each of the players, himself included (200 in all), at five (5) cents each, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... cheerful conversation, for Charley flippantly confessed that he didn't hold any family reunions, and that all he knew of his brothers he gained by chance. "They're all great boozers," he said, in summing them up. "Tim is a ward heeler in Buffalo—came to ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Rationalism, empirical or spiritual,(72) in two parallel developments, the philosophical and the literary, neither coldly denied Christianity with the practical doubts of the English deists, nor flippantly denounced it as imposture with the trenchant and undiscriminating logic of the French infidels; but appreciating its beauty with the freshness of a poetical genius, and regarding it as one phase of the religious consciousness, endeavoured, by means of the methods ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... over you shelteringly, madame," I rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt; for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the fluctuations of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about things—but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery, and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything for a man she ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the sin of extravigance: There are many more who will have to answer for the sin of slothfulness. The Bible says: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work." Ah! there is a part of the commandments too often skipped flippantly over. Many a clergyman would be horrified if asked to do any labor on the seventh day; but would be equally horrified if accused of sinning by attending to a foreign business, thereby neglecting to do all his labor during the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... There was a bell in everything for him; Nature gave out her cry, and significance was on all sides of the universe; no dead stuff, no longer any afflicting lumpishness. His brain was vivifying light. And how humane he was! how supremely tolerant! Where she had really thought instead of flippantly tapping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an echo, his firm footing in the region thrilled her; and where she had felt deeper than fancifully, his wise tenderness overwhelmed. Strange to consider: with all his precious gifts, which must make the gift of life thrice dear ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... wanting to borrow money," she said quickly and flippantly. "And you must despise the lot. You are a real 'King,' bigger than any crowned head, because you can do just as you like, and you are not the servant of Governments or peoples. I am sure you must be the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Clemence felt sorry for having misjudged her, as she saw a bright silver piece glitter in her hand the next Sabbath, as she sat beside her during the weekly collection of contribution for the missionary fund. Maria was wrong, and she was sorry she laughed when she spoke flippantly of Mrs. Little's magnificent gift of a penny a Sabbath amounting to fifty-two cents annually. She ought to be more careful to give people the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... from limb, they dismember'd him So entirely, that e'en when they came to his wrists, With those great sugar-nippers they nipped off his "flippers," As the Clerk, very flippantly, termed ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... are unwise, and should be frowned upon. The mistake of these individuals lies in the fact that they fail to see that the chief cause of humanity's triumphs is found in the works performed by those thinkers who in all ages have corresponded to the persons flippantly characterized pessimists at the present time: they who have assailed the existing order of things, who have thrown into the congregation of the people the shells of doubt; who have confronted the priests and potentates of conventionalism with a disturbing "Why"; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions; suspicions that my attitude in this matter was not reverent; and that a person must be reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... they were to again. As the days went on Georgie, whom marriage had taken completely away from the old artistic set, found herself feeling that after all she was a married woman and Judy was still only Miss Parminter.... Judy, scenting this, told her flippantly that a miss was as good as a mother, and Georgie laughed, but warned her to remember the children were in the room.... Judy was inclined to be hurt by the needless reminder, and, as she considered it foolish to ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... narrative after a long interval there occurs the inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were material for another kind of study of this little group of church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times. But circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock Quire in the following ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... enough, lieutenant. I noticed that when you handed over your gun to me so lamblike." He laughed it out flippantly, buoyantly, though it was on his mind to wonder whether the choleric little officer might not kill him ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... protested flippantly; "there's such a thing, you remember, as the pot calling the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... early, and age and gray hairs do not command that tender regard and that careful respect that they did in the times of the fathers. In politics, it is the habit to speak in light and disrespectful terms of those whose experience gives them the right to counsel and command. Young men talk flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder why men who have been buried once will not remain quietly in their graves. Of course, when such a spirit as this prevails, there can be no reverence for authority, no respect for place and position, and no genuine and hearty ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... shot up toward the eleventh story in the elevator she rehearsed her opening scene with Hilmer. She decided to take her cue flippantly. She would banter him at first and gradually veer to more serious topics... But once she stood in his rather austere inner shrine of business, she decided against subterfuges. He had stepped into the main office, the boy who showed her in explained. Would ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie |
