... have said, that if you allow your habit of flippant talking to grow on you you'll lose all hold on the solemn realities of life and become a totally useless ... — Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham Read full book for free!
... ourselves to print Mr. Sharp's very flashy, flippant speech. Suffice it to say, that, not content with asserting vehemently on his conscience as a Christian, on his honour as a man, that Simon Jennings was an innocent, maligned, persecuted individual; labouring, perhaps, under mono-mania, but pure and gentle as the babe ... — The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper Read full book for free!
... not how, fell into discussing the characters of forward and flippant women; and I told him it was my fortune to be, in general, a very great favourite with them, though I felt so little gratitude for that honour, that the smallest discernment would show them it was ... — The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay Read full book for free!
... very much in Claire; I can't help believing that she thinks it is smart or funny. And you encourage her. If Claire had been different—no, don't interrupt me— this would never have happened. You may say what you like about her good breeding: she's been too flippant. I felt that last night. Claire doesn't accept her obligations seriously enough. She's kept herself lovely looking, but that isn't ... — Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer Read full book for free!
... you make speeches of that kind you will force me to be flippant, quite against my sense of the fitness of things at this moment. Not that I want to be too tragic, but my state of mind is rather a ... — Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill Read full book for free!
... livelihood." I wish they had taken me into the partnership. It's the sort of thing I'd have liked well; ay, and I could have done it, too! I wonder,' said he aloud—'I wonder if I were an emperor should I marry Letty Clancy? I suspect not. Letty would have been flippant as an empress, and her cousins would have made atrocious princes of the imperial family, though, for the matter of that—Hullo! Here have I been smoking without knowing it! Can any one tell us whether the sins we do inadvertently count as sins, or do we square ... — Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever Read full book for free!
... heard. His excuse for not personally communicating the story which he had allowed to drift to the governor's ears by chance, was that he thought that what he had heard must have come to King's knowledge also: a supine and almost flippant explanation of neglect in a matter which was serious if the allegations were true. He affirmed also that one of the French officers had pointed out to him on a chart the very place where they intended to settle. It was in what is now known as Frederick Henry Bay, in the south ... — Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott Read full book for free!
... was three-and-twenty years old, a student by fits, and a young man given to be moody. He had powers of gaiety far eclipsing Algernon's, but he was not the same easy tripping sinner and flippant soul. He was in that yeasty condition of his years when action and reflection alternately usurp the mind; remorse succeeded dissipation, and indulgences offered the soporific to remorse. The friends of the two imagined that Algernon ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith Read full book for free!
... That flippant remark broke the tension and the driver climbed gingerly out and viewed the bare hub. "It's lucky," he ruminated, "I had you fellows in back there. If you hadn't been there I guess she'd have turned turtle ... — Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour Read full book for free!
... is a pregnant memento of the manner in which the vain words of flippant orators fall, innocuous, to the ground, when they attempt to stigmatize, with contemptuous terms, the truly noble. "Squatter" is now, in the west, only another name for "Pioneer," and that word describes all that is admirable in courage, ... — Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel Read full book for free!
... ears for Luis any more. He prattled away on the stone stairs of the Tinaja, flippant after a piercing shock of fear. To him, unstrung by the silence and the Black Cross and the presence of the sinking pool, the stone had crashed like a clap of sorcery, and he had started and stared to see—not a spirit, but a man, dismounted from his horse, with a rifle. At that his heart ... — Red Men and White • Owen Wister Read full book for free!
... making-up lovers—that I actually cherish the bill collector as the only real, genuine acquaintance whom I have in Boston. Certainly there's no slightest trace of pretence about him!... Excuse me for being so flippant," she added soberly, "but you see I haven't got any sympathy left even ... — Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott Read full book for free!
... young man talking in a flippant way about sowing his wild oats, I don't laugh. I feel more like crying, because I know he is going to make his gray-haired mother reap in tears; he is going to make his wife reap in shame; he is going to make his old father and his innocent children reap with him. Only ten or ... — Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody Read full book for free!
... able to do at any time, and to do at once. For want of coolness of mind, and that readiness which generally goes with it, many a man cannot do himself justice; and in a deliberative assembly he may be entirely beaten by some flippant person who has all his money (so to speak) in his pocket, while the other must send to the bank for his. How many people can think next day, or even a few minutes after, of the precise thing they ought ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various Read full book for free!
... opponent, the last atom of his patience exhausted by the speaker's flippant criticism. "You cur, you deserve a good thrashing, and I'm going to ... — The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White Read full book for free!
... but varied by nobles and knights of the court, by foreigners from many lands, by soldiers and men-at-arms from the Tower, by countrymen and sailors. Their amusement was sometimes turned into anger by the flippant remarks of the apprentices; these varlets, perceiving easily enough by the manner of their attire that they were from the country, were not slow, if their master happened for the moment to be absent, in indulging in remarks that set Geoffrey and ... — By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty Read full book for free!
... for gentleness of the man's tone, the simple dignity of his words, went straight to Chloe Elliston's heart. She felt suddenly ashamed of her air of flippant defiance, felt mean, and small, and self-conscious. She forgot for the moment that this big, quiet man who stood before her was rough, even boorish in his manner, and that he was the ... — The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx Read full book for free!
... complacency that would defy a pickaxe to penetrate. According to him a Mayo is beyond criticism, and his sister's reputation her own to deal with. The girl herself seemed, frankly, not to understand the seriousness of her position, and was very flippant and not a little rude. I wash my hands of the whole affair, and will certainly not countenance to-night's entertainment by appearing at it. I have already warned the manager that if the noise is kept up beyond a reasonable hour I shall leave the ... — The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull Read full book for free!
... this humour that she came back from Cacouna the evening before the wedding. Bella had been more flippant than usual, until even Mrs. Bellairs had completely lost patience with her, and the incorrigible girl had only been stopped by the fear of her guardian's displeasure from insisting on driving Lucia home, while Doctor ... — A Canadian Heroine, Volume 1 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill Read full book for free!
... interrupted Benedick with saying: 'I wonder that you will still be talking, signior Benedick: nobody marks you.' Benedick was just such another rattle-brain as Beatrice, yet he was not pleased at this free salutation; he thought it did not become a well-bred lady to be so flippant with her tongue; and he remembered, when he was last at Messina, that Beatrice used to select him to make her merry jests upon. And as there is no one who so little likes to be made a jest of as those ... — Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb Read full book for free!
... and the suit-case, removed his straw hat, and grinned, with a fair imitation of cheerfulness. He had never learned how to handle Aunt Mirabelle, and small wonder; for if he listened in silence, he was called sulky; if he disputed her, he was called flippant; if he agreed with her, she accused him of fraud; and if he obeyed his natural instincts, and treated her with tolerant good-humour, she usually went on a conversation strike, and never weakened until after the twelfth apology. Whatever he did was wrong, so that purely on ... — Rope • Holworthy Hall Read full book for free!
... "Don't get flippant, young lady," said Jessie, severely, "or I shall be obliged to give you a ducking," the river being very convenient just there, as the girls had to walk alongside its shores for some distance before turning ... — Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield Read full book for free!
... burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled instances of the necessity for power in ... — Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson Read full book for free!
... defy the writers of the silver-fork school to write out of the style flippant. Read but one volume of —, and you will be saturated with it; but if you wish to go to the fountain-head, do as have done most of the late fashionable novel-writers, repair to their instructors—the lady's-maid, for flippancy in ... — Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) Read full book for free!
... the appointed day—glib and curt, smiling and flippant, tight of face and supple of figure. Her name was Mademoiselle Virginie, and her family had inhumanly deserted her. She was set to work the moment she was inside the doors of the Grifoni establishment. ... — After Dark • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... love with Adrien Leroy. It simply added a zest to her otherwise monotonous round of amusements to imagine that she was; and it pleased her vanity to correspond in cypher, through the medium of the Morning Post, though every member of her set might have read the flippant messages if put in an open letter. There was a spice of intrigue, too, in the way in which she planned meetings at their mutual friends' houses, or beneath the trees of Brierly Park, ... — Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice Read full book for free!
... at all!" came the flippant retort. "It's merely that you haven't really taken a good look at me lately—until just this minute. So, of course, I'd look a bit ... — Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan Read full book for free!
... was easily accomplished. While the Cardinal awaited him near Roa, the King avoided him by proceeding directly to Tordesillas to visit his mother. This ungracious and unmerited snub was applauded by Martyr, who dismissed the incident with almost flippant mention; nor did he afterwards touch upon the aged Cardinal's death which occurred simultaneously with the reception of the unfeeling message sent by Charles to the greatest, the most faithful and the most disinterested ... — De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt Read full book for free!
... hall—a woman in black hair and a white garment, suggestive of repose, strolling at midnight by the banks of the prattling East River, foot of Grand Street, and set a house afire at the end of the third act. That is the BOUCICAULT style, and as the flippant EDWARDS goes on to observe, it draws like a factory chimney in the ... — Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various Read full book for free!
... day, as they walked together up the Old Trail to Sammy's Lookout, the girl tried to show him some of the things that had been revealed to her in the past months. But the young fellow could not follow where she led, and answered her always with some flippant remark, or with the superficial philosophy ... — The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright Read full book for free!
... my child, to have you listen to the flippant sacrilege of this young man, or be subjected to his influence in ... — The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell Read full book for free!
... ashamed to appear flippant, for Mr. AINLEY played with exquisite feeling and a fine sincerity. And I have to thank Mr. VACHELL for giving us some excellent studies of character—not character developed before our eyes by circumstance (except perhaps a little at the last), but admirably ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various Read full book for free!
... her sharply. "I should think, my dear young lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing life is to any one in this condition. Instead of that I fear at times that you are—shall I say—flippant?" He turned about and looked at the children. "How do you do?" ... — The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer Read full book for free!
... boat is an inebriated United States official, who flings his spectacles overboard, and sings a flippant and absurd song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with his ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do. After which he crumbles, in an incomprehensible manner, into the bottom of the boat, ... — The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne Read full book for free!
... was very much offended. Sarcasm from the young to the old pained him: flippant behaviour towards himself hurt him. Courteous in his simple way to all persons whom he met, he expected a like politeness from them. Hetty perfectly well knew what offence she was giving; could mark the displeasure reddening on her partner's honest face, with a sidelong glance of her eye; nevertheless ... — The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray Read full book for free!
... myself by positively stating my opinion in a most subdued voice, and then either turning the subject, or turning upon my heel. But as for women, it is astonishing how well I got on. The nervous rapidity of my first rattle soon subsided into a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed an original and a wit. But the most remarkable incident was, that the baroness and myself became the greatest friends. I was her constant attendant, and rehearsed to her ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various Read full book for free!
... politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really ... — The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods Read full book for free!
... Guynemer, had high rank in the Legion of Honor, and enjoyed world-wide fame. In his 'prentice days when, in workshops or in the presence of well-known builders, he would make confident statements, inveigh against errors, or demand modifications, people thought him flippant and saucy. Once somebody called him a raw lad. The answer came with crushing rapidity: "When you blunder, raw lads like myself pay for ... — Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux Read full book for free!
... in her arms, the girl now turned and surveyed the house beyond the gate, her heart far heavier with homesickness than seemed consistent with her outward, flippant bearing. ... — The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond Read full book for free!
... nod—an act—which she considered as too flippant for the solemnity of devotion—but she gently bowed her head, and closed her eyes in assent—upon which was heard a somewhat cheerful groan, replete with true unction, inside the parlor, followed by a voice that said, "ah, ... — Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton Read full book for free!
... covertly watched the play. He soon perceived that Harry was paying little or no attention to the game—although it was poker—his attention being almost entirely fixed on Nellie, who was flirting outrageously with her admirers. Every time her flippant laugh reached him a pained look crossed his sensitive face, but she pretended to be as unconscious of it as she appeared to ... — A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith Read full book for free!
... although whimpering, had far more grit than I anticipated; he was inquisitive and flippant-faced, and looked at the noose flaunting before him, and the people gathered below, and the haggard face of Atzerott, as if entirely conscious and ... — The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend Read full book for free!
... Coit Tyler of Cornell said: "My observation has been that under the joint system the tone of college life has grown more earnest, more courteous and refined, less flippant and cynical. The women are usually among the very best scholars, and lead instead of drag, and their lapses from good health are rather, yes, decidedly, less numerous than those alleged by the men. There is a sort of young man who thinks it not quite the thing, you know, to be in ... — History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various Read full book for free!
... sometimes attached to this flippant expression, 'Muscular Christianity,' which is utterly immoral and intolerable. There are those who say, and there have been of late those who have written books to shew, that provided a young man is sufficiently brave, frank, and gallant, he is more or less absolved ... — David • Charles Kingsley Read full book for free!
... and perplexed at Clifford's absolutely frank confidence. There was nothing flippant about it either. It was the simple expression of a nature that had nothing to conceal. There was not even a hint of gossip about it, nor of ill nature. In a land where there were no newspapers, telegraphs, telephones, railroads, or neighbours, it seemed like the expression ... — The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon Read full book for free!
... had one good point—at least, it turned out to be such in this case. She was a coward naturally, and her bad life made her dread nothing so much as death. Her former flippant indifference to his remonstrances now changed into abject fear. He saw her weak side, learned his power, and from that time forward kept her within bounds by a judicious ... — Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe Read full book for free!
... Silly, silly child!" he went on, shaking his forefinger at her. "I tell you women have done their greatest work in the world when their brains have been covered with a pretty hat. . . . There she goes, he growled," as she left the room. "Thinks I'm a flippant old windbag, I know. And I'm not. Why don't you fall in love with her, Maraton? It would be the making of you. Even a prophet needs relaxation. She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," ... — A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim Read full book for free!
...flippant, and say that there were probably several dotted about the globe, if we only knew them; but I dared not, under those eyes—absolutely dared not. Instead, I remarked inanely that I was sorry to hear his ... — The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson Read full book for free!
... indeed as all right that he should be Count Otto Vogelstein; this appeared even rather a flippant mode of disposing of the fact. By way of rejoinder he asked her if she desired of him the ... — Pandora • Henry James Read full book for free!
... said, trying to be flippant. "You are not to say anything until I have had my supper. Look how the things ... — The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart Read full book for free!
... with such sweet ingenuousness that I was only charmed. The simple sincerity of the confession seemed to me much better than the flippant jest and pert talk with which I had heard such subjects treated while making my observations upon what my city-acquaintances had assured me was good society. Is it not Sterling who exclaims that a luxurious and ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various Read full book for free!
... appeared to be staring into space. In reality they were watching the doughy countenance before him. "What do you propose to do?" Lablache asked, ignoring the other's flippant tone. ... — The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum Read full book for free!
... passengers to be careful as they alight, which is couched in these terms: "Cinema actors risk their lives for pay! Don't do it for nothing!" a New York journalist remarks that "an American advertisement on that subject would be serious; the British are more flippant in their ... — More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher Read full book for free!
... little limited point only, and that point, observe, the one from which it is impossible to detach the exponent as the patroness of a whole universe of inferior souls. This is what everybody would mean in objecting to these notes (supposing them to be published), that they are too smart and too flippant. ... — The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... worked out her contrasts very strikingly, and tells her story in a cleverly flippant way, which keeps the reader on the qui vive for the cynical but bright sayings she has ... — A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland Read full book for free!
... perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great majority of the entertaining ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various Read full book for free!
... from the stain that the outrages of that day have left upon his memory. It may be said, however, that the details of the coup d'etat were left to his subordinates, and that probably both success and infamy are due in large part to the flippant Morny. ... — France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer Read full book for free!
... my under-graduate days was rarely my habit—I drank till I was considerably excited. Hanmer saw it, and got the match resumed at once to save me, as he afterwards said, "from making a fool of myself." I insisted, in spite of his advice "to cool myself," upon going in first. My flippant acquaintance of the dinner-table stood point, and I knew, if I could but see the ball, and not see more than one, that I could occasionally "hit square" to some purpose. I had the luck to catch the first ball just on the rise, and it caught my friend point ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various Read full book for free!
... and Sweden, in 1830 and 1831. It is one of the hop-step-and-a-jump tours that your fashionable folks make for making acquaintances and then making books. The gallant author does not stay long enough in a place to be dull; for he is lively and flippant in every page, and throws a dash of the service into every chapter. He feels that Dr. Granville has left him nothing to say which may not be found in his two great big books; yet the Cholera and the Polish war have supplied him ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various Read full book for free!
... Medora. Once more the interviewer sought his views on political questions. Roosevelt made a few non-committal statements, refusing to prophesy. "My political life," he remarked, "has not altogether killed my desire to tell the truth." And with that happily flippant declaration he was ... — Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn Read full book for free!
... spiritual expansiveness. On the other hand, he may have been the incarnation of paganism in the sense that Christ was the incarnation of Christianity. As Christ expressed how great a man can be humble and humane, Caesar may have expressed how great a man can be frigid and flippant. According to most legends Antichrist was to come soon after Christ. One has only to suppose that Antichrist came shortly before Christ; and Antichrist might ... — George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... that Anna was in earnest. Anna had a wretched habit of being in earnest when she said flippant things. ... — Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery Read full book for free!
... clothing him whose will is strong. Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice! On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun. Salute him with free heart and choral voice, 'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan, The bold, significant, ... — The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus Read full book for free!
... me in your last letter of being flippant in what seems to you tragic circumstances. I am sorry that I make that impression on you. I am not a bit flippant. I can only advise you to come over here, and live a little in this atmosphere, and see ... — On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich Read full book for free!
... saw poor Boldrick's death put her in a conflicting light to me. Now I thought I saw in her unusual gentleness, again an unusual irony, an almost flippant and cruel worldliness; and though at the time she was most touched by the accident, I think her feeling of horror at it made her appear to speak in a way which showed her unpleasantly to Mr. Devlin and his daughter. It may ... — The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker Read full book for free!
... old days. The sons of Islam were reverent, yet happy and at home on the threshold of Allah's house, and Stephen began to understand, as Nevill and Josette already understood, something of the vast influence of the Mohammedan religion. Only Madame de Vaux remained flippant. In the car, she had laughed at the women muffled in their haicks, saying that as the men of Tlemcen were so tyrannical about hiding female faces, it was strange they did not veil the hens and cows. In the shadowy mosque, with its five naves, ... — The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson Read full book for free!
... words in considering the flippant form here used in a discussion of an unspeakably bloody and world-historic conflict. But this expression in very pregnant form makes Russia appear in the light in which the London powers-that-be desire ... — New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various Read full book for free!
... wonder how it feels to have a peculiar something in your face. Bertram, too, says she has it. He's trying to 'catch it,' he says. I wonder now—if he does catch it, does she lose it?" Flippant as were the words, the voice that uttered them ... — Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter Read full book for free!
... too angry to be flippant. "The fact is you care for nothing but yourself and your horrid old business. I always told you ... — The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler Read full book for free!
... the study of it; nay, they will spend years in learning to translate some of their own good poetry into the hypothetical language—to do so with fluency being reckoned a distinguishing mark of a scholar and a gentleman. Heaven forbid that I should be flippant, but it appeared to me to be a wanton waste of good human energy that men should spend years and years in the perfection of so barren an exercise, when their own civilisation presented problems by the hundred which cried aloud for solution and would have paid the solver ... — Erewhon • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... remained; yet no one ventured to suggest a completion of the number, till Barrere, after previously insinuating how adequate he and his colleagues were to the task of "saving the country," proposed, in his flippant way, and merely as a matter of form, that certain persons whom he recommended, should fill up the ... — A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady Read full book for free!
... the external one had come over her, so gradually that Lucy had not observed it till now, when the place brought back so vividly the recollection of the gay, flippant Stella of old. She had certainly grown more thoughtful, more quiet, even more serious; and Lucy observed that her former levity had quite departed, and that a flippant remark never now fell from her lips. Her old wilfulness of manner continued to ... — Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar Read full book for free!
... an inauspicious landing. With September begin the north-east winds, and we had an average experience that afternoon. Was it not a farce—a great deal more than a farce: a saucy, flippant imposition on the tender mercies of Providence—for an individual who could not endure a few hours of tossing on the bosom of the ocean without becoming deadly sick, to imagine that he possessed the hardihood to establish a home even in this lovely ... — The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield Read full book for free!
... been written on the administration of justice. But perhaps enough has been given to show that great care is taken to protect the interests of the innocent and to do equal and exact justice to all. In view of flippant remarks sometimes made regarding courts of justice, it is pertinent and proper to go at least so far into detail. The study of Civil Government will have been pursued to little purpose if respect for law be not ... — Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary Read full book for free!
... defendant, Mr. Learned Bore, had not even got the plea of childishness to excuse some of the very reprehensible, if not flippant, statements he had dared to ... — The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton Read full book for free!
... writers, although they have taken so arrogant a tone. As we have said, we do not attempt to analyze the argument or the statement of which we thus speak. We have only to say that it is positive, and not negative,—constructive, and not destructive,—reverent, and not flippant,—courteous to opponents, and never denunciatory. These are characteristics of a work of theology of which those can judge who do not affect to be technical theologians. Had we to give our own views of the matters presented in so interesting a form, we should ... — Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various Read full book for free!
... interests of those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the ... — The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright Read full book for free!
... rounded a corner among the cabins, he came full upon her, and his flippant tongue clove to the roof of his mouth ... — The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe Read full book for free!
... speech, his arm, and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free gift of anything ... — The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant Read full book for free!
... other ordinary, common, everyday man! Why should not my blood boil when I think of it? Then, too, when I recall how often my addresses are ignored in the local press, ought not I to be aroused to fierce ire? When a hotel clerk fails to recognize my national importance and gives me a flippant answer when I ask for information should I not deem it time that the Secretary of State interfere and write a State paper ... — Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James Read full book for free!
... is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, rather ... — Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Read full book for free!
... less pleased with each other than they were at the commencement of their interview. Lissac felt that in some fashion or other, he had wounded Rosas even in adopting the flippant tone of the lounger, without any malice, and the Spaniard with his somewhat morose nature, retired within himself, almost gloomy, and reproached Guy for the first time for smiling or jesting on ... — His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie Read full book for free!
... not exist, is sketched in the spirit of the French satirists, who turned Oriental extravagance into delightful mockery. Awed into reverence ere the close by the sombre grandeur of his own conception of the halls of Eblis, Beckford cast off the flippant mood in which he had set out and ... — The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead Read full book for free!
... from her arms and revealing, to the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she ... — The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott Read full book for free!
... science. It must contain an element of truth. All religions, however, assert that their God is for us not altogether cognisable, that God is a great mystery. The higher their rank, the more do they acknowledge this. It is by the flippant invasion of this mystery that the popular religiosity offends. It talks of God as if he were a man in the next street. It does not distinguish between merely imaginative fetches into the truth, and presumably ... — Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore Read full book for free!
... Island, and called it "Boredom." Gorki at Coney Island is like Dante at a country fair. Thomas Carlyle was invited out to a social dinner-party once upon a time, and when he came home he wrote savagely in his diary of the flippant, light-hearted conversation among the men and women about the festive board, saying, "to me through those thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat glaring." What a charming guest he must have been on that ... — Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps Read full book for free!
... more flippant by his solemnity. "Surely I can laugh. For what else was my father Irish? Dad used to say that a sense of humor was like a shillaly—an iligent thing to have around handy, especially when ... — Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber Read full book for free!
... steadily: "Yes, or if I were. But as it is Mrs. Cole, the case is entirely altered. Mrs. Cole is scarcely more than a girl herself, and—I say this to you, Nan, simply because I must—she has never been, to my idea, a lady-like young woman. She has always been flippant and frivolous and boisterous; anything but a good companion for a number of impulsive, ... — The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann Read full book for free!
... egotistical; nor to be criticized for being so. It is not pleasant to reveal to high and low, young and old, what has gone on within me from my early years. It is not pleasant to be giving to every shallow or flippant disputant the advantage over me of knowing my most private thoughts, I might even say the intercourse between myself and my Maker. But I do not like to be called to my face a liar and a knave; nor should I be doing my duty ... — Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman Read full book for free!
... pointed crown, his blue overcoat the narrow collar and padded shoulders of a long vanished fashion. These offer opportunities enough for bad jokes; but no one makes them. It is as if there were an invisible something emanating from the stately figure that prevents the rise of flippant thoughts. ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various Read full book for free!
... studious and quiet, people say He is grouchy, he is old before his time; If he's frivolous and flippant, if he treads the primrose way, Then they mark him for a wild ... — Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams Read full book for free!
... ladylike in his bearing. His alert, dark eyes were set too close together, and his face had a narrow, sinister look that made them all feel uncomfortable. He spoke with a decided English accent, in a light, flippant voice which sent a quiver of dislike up and down David's spine, and made Reddy Brooks give his right arm a vigorous twirl as if he would have liked to pitch something at ... — Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower Read full book for free!
... reader who learns from the living voice and visible actions of his fellow-creatures as well as from the dead printed pages is on the way to placidity and strength and true wisdom. Thus much I will say—the flippant devourer of books can neither be wise nor strong nor useful; and it is his tribe who have discredited a pursuit which once was noble and ... — Side Lights • James Runciman Read full book for free!
... folks come to our time of life without marrying, nine times out of ten there has been a mess; and what I said a moment since is just the flippant talk we use to cover it up. By 'our time of life' I don't mean, of course, that we're of an age, you and I, but that we've fixed our fate, formed our habits, made our beds and must lie in 'em as comfortably as we can manage. . . . ... — True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch Read full book for free!
... first touch of her hand on the knob, Charley's flippant voice greeted her with, "Won't you come in, Gabriella?" and swallowing her angry retort, she entered stiffly, with the glass held out straight before her. Charley, on his knees beside the bed, with his arm under his wife's pillow, ... — Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow Read full book for free!
... give Gyp—Sybille Gabrielle Marie Antoinette de Riquetti de Mirabeau, Comtesse de Martel de Janville—little credit for seriousness or morality, associating her with the average brilliant, flippant novelists, who write because they possess the knack of writing in a brilliant style. Her object is to show that man, in a civilized state in society, is vain, coarse, and ridiculous. She paints Parisian society to demonstrate that ... — Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme Read full book for free!
... somewhat shallow mind which thinks it can speak, think, and act without having to render an account needs the somewhat stern tonic of these seven dramas; it may be chastened into some sobriety and learn to be a little less flippant... — Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb Read full book for free!
... creature so strenuous as the anti-aircraft gun come by the flippant name of Archie? Well, once upon a time the Boche A.-A. guns were very young and had all the impetuous inaccuracy incident to youth. British airmen scarcely knew they were fired at until they saw the pretty, white puffs in ... — Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott Read full book for free!
... he had dropped down to it from the height of a New York or Chicago Sunday edition. The judge said, with something less than his habitual honesty, that he did not mind his being a reporter, but he minded his being light and shallow; he minded his being flippant and mocking; he minded his bringing his cigarettes and banjo into the house at his second visit. He did not mind his push; the fellow had his way to make and he had to push; but he did mind his being all push; and his having come out of the country with as little simplicity as if he had ... — Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells Read full book for free!
... reminded Ivy that her admission to the side show—the bright silver dime—was given her by Lafe, and that before he had any hope of himself seeing the circus. So she began to feel sorry for her flippant attitude and said ... — Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne Read full book for free!
... neither assail their adversary with uninterrupted argument nor can they endure prolonged talk from him. If by way of explaining himself he should begin to enlarge, they raise the cry: "To the point! To the point! Answer categorically!" Showing how restless and flippant their minds are who cannot stand a ... — Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton Read full book for free!
... him as he watched him shuffling over the hewn plank floor in his straw sandals. A very different type, this swaggering Celestial, from the furtive-eyed Chinamen of the east. His tightly coiled cue was as smooth and shining as a king-snake, his loose blouse was immaculate, and the flippant voice in which he demanded in each person's ear, "Coffee? Milk?" was like a challenge. Whatever the individual's choice might be, he got it in a torrent ... — 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart Read full book for free!
... to question their sincerity. But now—whether it was the slight hint dropped by Sir Francis Vesey on the previous night as to Mrs. Sorrel's match-making proclivities, or whether it was a scarcely perceptible suggestion of something more flippant and assertive than usual in the air and bearing of Lucy herself that had awakened his suspicions,—he was certainly disposed to doubt, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the candid nature of the girl for ... — The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli Read full book for free!
... her sister. "You should not talk like that, Grizzel; it is flippant, and you know ... — The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton Read full book for free!
... story like His Excellency when he took the trouble, and the account of "my dear, good Wonder's friend with the powder" went the round of Simla, and flippant folk made Wonder unhappy ... — The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... have been looking over the "Volcano Book," which contains the observations and impressions of people from all parts of the world. Some of these are painstaking and valuable as showing the extent and rapidity of the changes which take place in the crater, but there is an immense quantity of flippant rubbish, and would-be wit, in which "Madam Pele," invariably occurs, this goddess, who was undoubtedly one of the grandest of heathen mythical creations, being caricatured in pencil and pen and ink, under ... — The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird Read full book for free!
... for it belongs to a divine Master; it is a reverent life, for that Master in His greatness is to us an abiding Presence. The fact of Him, the thought of Him, has expelled from our lives the secular air and the light and flippant spirit. We ... — Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule Read full book for free!
... armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors of houses and saloons, from ... — The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer Read full book for free!
... eyes appeared to be staring into space. In reality they were watching the doughy countenance before him. "What do you propose to do?" Lablache asked, ignoring the other's flippant tone. ... — The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum Read full book for free!
... little fishes talk like whales." No man surely ever had so little talent for personation as Johnson. Whether he wrote in the character of a disappointed legacy-hunter or an empty town fop, of a crazy virtuoso or a flippant coquette, he wrote in the same pompous and unbending style. His speech, like Sir Piercy Shafton's Euphuistic eloquence, bewrayed him under every disguise. Euphelia and Rhodoclea talk as finely as Imlac the poet, or Seged, Emperor of Ethiopia. The ... — Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson Read full book for free!
... Evadne have in common with these flippant people—scum themselves, forever on the surface, incapable even of seeing beneath, their every idea and motive a falsification of something divine in life or thought? They did not even speak the same language. To their insidious slang she opposed a smooth current ... — The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand Read full book for free!
... Thackeray must have been reminiscent of Hamilton when he devised the part of "Sister Anne" in Bluebeard's Ghost. Like her, Hamilton's Dinarzade is slightly flippant; she would most certainly have observed "Dolly Codlins is the matter" in Anne's place. Like her, she is not unprovided with lovers; she actually, at the beginning, "takes a night off" that she may entertain the Prince of Trebizond; and it is the Prince himself who relates the great, but, ... — A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... Mrs. Daintree, is presented with discreet vigour. There is possibly a moral in the fascinating Marmaduke's desperate half-hour in Dr. Ferox's consulting-room. But Mr. HEWLETT never wrote this flippant tale to point a moral. Rather, as I suggest, he seems to have said, "These are samples of several genres in which I can succeed on my head. Some day I will really finish ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various Read full book for free!
... is very obvious, for music admittedly may be stately, deliberate, hasty, or furious, it may march or dance, it may be grave or flippant. ... — Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell Read full book for free!
... In the flippant boastings of Christian mothers there are many who pretend they have the fire of faith and divine love like the brave Machabean woman; but when the sore hour of real separation comes, the soft, loving ... — Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly Read full book for free!
... to give you a little flippant hint or two. But since you wish to be thought superior to all our sex in the command of yourself; and since indeed you deserve to be thought so; I will spare you. You are, however, at times, more than half inclined to speak out. That you do not, is only owing to a little ... — Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson Read full book for free!
... aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the present) which, in one leading edition, collect his productions,—you may often find him superficial, you may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly often find him flippant, but not less certainly you will never find him obscure, and you will never find him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow-men, ... — Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson Read full book for free!
... Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored, The doctors sit in the glare of electric light Watching the endless stream of naked white Bodies of men for whom their hasty award Means life or death, maybe, or the living death Of mangled limbs, blind eyes or darkened brain: ... — Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various Read full book for free!
... woman; I must not say another word, in honor. It was a most unfortunate affair—a sheer misunderstanding. He loved her all the time; I knew this, but you know her manner! He did not understand her flippant way; her keen, unsparing, and bitter wit; her devoted, passionate, proud, and breaking heart; and so there was a coolness, and they parted; and what happened afterward nearly killed her! So she left ... — Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield Read full book for free!
... was much inclined to congratulate a writer, who, in defiance of prejudice and fashion, made the Archbishop a good man, and scorned all thoughtless applause which a vicious churchman would have brought him." It was with reference to this tragedy, that Lord Byron regretted the flippant and unjust sarcasms against his noble relation, which he had admitted into the early editions of his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," under the mistaken impression that Lord ... — Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole Read full book for free!
... intermitted. Out of these we descry a well-begotten selfhood—in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and ... — Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman Read full book for free!
... to feel an interest in the subject which disinclines me to rest satisfied with the foregoing hasty—not to say flippant explanation of the learned historian, I am anxious to inquire whether or not any reader of the "NOTES AND QUERIES" can throw light on the history, and especially the genealogy, of this worthy and amiable divine? While I have reason to believe that Dr. ... — Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various Read full book for free!
... mind, although he had not seen it since that autumn afternoon when he had bestirred himself to rebuke its owner concerning the inadequacies of the domestic provision. His admonition had been kindly meant and had not deserved the retort, the flippant ridicule of his spiritual yearnings. Though he still winced from the recollection, he was sorry that he had resisted the importunacy of Basil's apology. He realized that Aurelia had persisted to ... — The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree) Read full book for free!
... deterred by the fact that Macaulay thought meanly of the book; for Macaulay, with all his great gifts, did not, as he himself knew full well, excel in purely literary criticism. So when he pronounces, that "what is meant to be easy and sprightly is vulgar and flippant," and "what is meant to be fine is a great deal too fine for me, as the description of the Falls of Niagara," one can venture to differ without too great a pang. The book, though not assuredly one of Dickens' best, contains admirable ... — Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials Read full book for free!
... atmosphere is vocal with the flippant loquacity of half knowledge. We must accept whatever good can be got out of it, and keep it under as we do sorrel and mullein and witchgrass, by enriching the soil, and sowing good seed in plenty; by good teaching and good books, rather than by wasting our time in talking against ... — The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) Read full book for free!
... listened to this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, the young girl was no match ... — Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens Read full book for free!
... more persons in the dissecting-room than usual. I had now become much more cheerful, and enjoyed the frank greetings of my many friends with a relish and an ardour that had hitherto been unknown to me. Many flippant remarks and careless observations were exchanged in relation to the business before us. We had become accustomed to such scenes, and habit had rendered us callous to the reflections and impressions generally produced when gazing upon the cold lineaments of the dead. Dissection was an indispensable ... — Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones Read full book for free!
... is an amusing child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is certainly an ... — Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey Read full book for free!
... turned toward her, hushed and reverent. Before she had finished the verse the Rectangle was subdued and tamed. It lay like some wild beast at her feet, and she sang it into harmlessness. Ah! What were the flippant, perfumed, critical audiences in concert halls compared with this dirty, drunken, impure, besotted mass of humanity that trembled and wept and grew strangely, sadly thoughtful under the touch of this divine ... — In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon Read full book for free!
... made haste to point out in his advertisements, a book of the year, and, reassured by its flippant exterior, the libraries and the public bought it with avidity. The author pasted his swollen collection of newspaper-cuttings into an album, and carefully revised his novel in case a second edition should be called for. There was one review which he had read more ... — The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton Read full book for free!
... antique cut—its whilom black red-rusty from time's dye. But "Aunt Sallie" was a character in Henrico county; and noted withal for the sharpest of tongues and a fierce pair of undimmed eyes, which now shone under the dingy-brown poke bonnet. Toward her sallied the flippant young underling, with ... — Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon Read full book for free!
... subjection his speech, his arm, and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free gift of anything not ... — The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant Read full book for free!
... Clever flippant writers may do a trifling service here and there by ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no permanence in such work, unless—which is seldom the case—it is totally devoid ... — The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge Read full book for free!
... was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, describe the death of her own ... — Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... grandeur, filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot feel her aspect more grandly than by the aid ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various Read full book for free!
... thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make us ... — The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... often releasing prisoners and commuting punishments without the sanction and concurrence of the Judges. Nothing is so dangerous and imprudent as to tamper with justice, and John Russell himself has upon several occasions been rash and flippant in this respect. It is not long ago that a man was tried and found guilty, at the Sessions, of destroying a will with a fraudulent intent. I forget what the punishment was, but a petition for mercy was handed up to the Secretary of State's office—got up ... — The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville Read full book for free!
... from a sick-bed, my dearest Matlida, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! and to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to ... — Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... appear flippant, for Mr. AINLEY played with exquisite feeling and a fine sincerity. And I have to thank Mr. VACHELL for giving us some excellent studies of character—not character developed before our eyes by circumstance (except perhaps a little at ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various Read full book for free!
... tattooing and the art of catching fish with bait, and died in the endeavour to gain immortality for men. Death would have been done away with had Maui successfully accomplished the feat of creeping through the body of a certain gigantic goddess. But that flippant and restless little bird, the fan-tail, was so tickled at the sight of the hero crawling down the monster's throat that it tittered and burst into laughter. So the goblin awoke, and Maui died for man ... — The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves Read full book for free!
... mystified LINCOLN B. SWEZEY not a little; he "allowed it was darned personal," but further than that his light did not penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary member; it was not fashionable, and did not seem to want to be, and SWEZEY thought it flippant. There he asked, "What are the Souls, anyhow?" "Societas omnium animarum," somebody answered, and SWEZEY exclaimed "Say!" "They are a congregation of ladies. Their statutes decree that they are to be bene natae, ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various Read full book for free!
... she, "you have your own way. Your way is to conceal a most tender and pitying heart under a rough or at least an indifferent manner—to hide the deepest feeling under a careless smile, and pretend to be most volatile and flippant when you are most serious. You can perform heroic actions as though they were the merest trifles, and lay down your life for a friend with an idle jest. You make nothing of yourself and all of others. You can suffer, and pretend that ... — A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille Read full book for free!
... to her pain, brought to mind memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill Read full book for free!
... like syndicalism, which rang in other people's ears like the passing bells of our social order, moved her to airy laughter. There were those, oldish men and slightly less oldish women, who called her flippant. Sir James offered her his hand, his heart, his title, and a share of his L2,500 a year. Miss Molly accepted all four, resigned her secretaryship and went home to her father's house in Dunadea to prepare ... — Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham Read full book for free!
... cut it off. For him at least it was better that the blood should flow in Paris than that the wine should flow any longer in London. And if I say that even now the guillotine might be the best cure for many a London lawyer, I ask you to believe that I am not merely flippant. But you ... — Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... once (which he would often enough do about this time), as if triumphantly, of something or other, in the fire of a debate, in my hearing: "It is mere Pantheism, that!"—"And suppose it were Pot-theism?" cried the other: "If the thing is true!"—Sterling did look hurt at such flippant heterodoxy, for a moment. The soul of his own creed, in those days, was far other than this indifference to Pot or Pan ... — The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle Read full book for free!
... unaware in my blankness of how history repeats itself. There came to me across the years Maud's announcement of their ejection from the Beacon, and dimly, confusedly the same explanation was in the air. This time however I had been on my guard; I had had my suspicion. "He has made it too flippant?" I found breath ... — Embarrassments • Henry James Read full book for free!
... he walked away homewards, Devers watched his hated persecutor, almost divining what was his purpose,—what would be his first question. He saw him halt and the office-door open and Sergeant Haney come forth. Haney, who could be flippant and independent in the presence of his own lieutenants, stood like a statue before that dark, saturnine face. Officer or man, no soldier in that garrison ever took a liberty with Leonard. Devers realized that he had made a fatal error at last. He almost ... — Under Fire • Charles King Read full book for free!
... be treated with disrespect and be made the subjects of rough wit as they go about is only the more acute part of their difficulty. One may suppose that at home they find little appreciation of any high sentiments, but are driven, in self-defence, to be rather flippant, rather "worldly." The greater number of house mistresses, meanwhile, if one may judge from their own complacent conversation, behave in a way most unlikely to contribute to their servants' self-respect. It is hard to believe that any really high sentiment is to be learnt from women who, for all ... — Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt Read full book for free!
... playfulness which makes her images dance before one like offspring of the great round sun, fooling zealously with the universes at her feet, and just beyond her eye, with a loftiness of spirit and of exquisite trivialness seconded by none. Who has not read these flippant renderings, holding always some touch of austerity and gravity of mood, or the still more perfect "letters" to her friends, will, I think, have missed a new kind of poetic diversion, a new loveliness, evasive, alert, pronounced in every interval and serious, modestly so, and at a bound leaping ... — Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley Read full book for free!
... were instructed by Brother Spence; and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Class, a class of youthful heathen, rampageous, fightable, and flippant, who made the good man's life a misery to him, and were at war with all authority. Peterson, Jacker Mack, Dolf Belman, Fred Cann, Phil Doon, and Dick Haddon, and a few kindred spirits composed this class; and it was sheer lust of life, the wildness of bush-bred boys, that ... — The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson Read full book for free!
... here. Gulian told me that there are some three thousand slaves owned in the city and its environs. But our negroes go to church and pray; they do not dance, and I know Chloe would be shocked with Miranda's flippant ways. She was ... — An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln Read full book for free!
... a skill and power, yet without a note before him. Afterward she had met him face to face, and had tried to tell him how moved she was; but in her agitation, and because of a strange shyness that had suddenly come to her, she had ended only in stammering out some flippant banality that had brought to his face merely a ... — Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter Read full book for free!
... rather flippant, it is because I have been trained as an extemporaneous speaker and not as a writer. For fifteen years I traveled over the country lecturing on the Mooseheart School. My task was to interest men in the abstract problems of child education. A speaker must entertain his hearers ... — The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis Read full book for free!
... once imagine these fellows have been bribed to give their over-zealous approval, or that they are close friends and banquet-comrades of the author whom they arduously uphold, . . whereas, on the contrary, if they indulge in bitter invective, flippant gibing, or clumsy satire, like my amiable Zabsastes here..." and he made an airy gesture toward the silent yet evidently chafing Critic, .."(and, mark you!-HE is not bribed, but merely paid fair wages to fulfil his chosen and professed calling)—why, ... — Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli Read full book for free!
... in other countries, from 1811 down to the present time. I have expressed my opinions at various times in Congress, and some of the predictions which I have made have not been altogether falsified by subsequent events. I must therefore be permitted, Gentlemen, without yielding to any flippant newspaper paragraph, or to the hasty ebullitions of debate in a public assembly, to say, that I believe the plan for an exchequer, as presented to Congress at its last session, is the best measure, the only measure for the adoption of Congress and the trial of the people. I am ready ... — The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster Read full book for free!
... And Mead, flippant, hard, and misanthropic in the state of nature, softened wonderfully as he sat in the gloom of the tablecover, in silent possession of ... — New Faces • Myra Kelly Read full book for free!
... touched by the last golden rays of the sun, and with curious cunning adopted a sort of caricature of his old light manner. There was a queer jauntiness in his walk as he made his way over the sand, carrying his hat, and a flippant note in his voice when ... — Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton Read full book for free!
... unexpected visit; war means discord with various personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with some flippant people." All this Philippina rattled off in the High German ... — The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann Read full book for free!
... Mill." Murders and fatal accidents are recorded with the same jocosity. Questions of international importance are handled as if the main purpose of the article was to show the writer's power of humour. Serious speeches and even sermons are reported in a vein of flippant jocularity. The same trait often obtrudes into the review of books of the first importance. The traditional "No case—abuse the plaintiff's attorney" is translated into "Can't understand or appreciate this—let's ... — The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead Read full book for free!
... earn a high place in fiction. It is good and clean and provides a vacation from the cares of the hour. It resembles a Chinese play, because it begins with the hero's boyhood, describes his long, busy life, and ends with his death. Its tone is often religious, never flippant, and one of its best assets is its glowing descriptions of the calm, serene beauties of nature. Its moral is that a magnate never did any real ... — In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White Read full book for free!
... which has been granted to few modern sculptors. The figure and face are most beautiful, and rise above all puny criticism; and as one looks upon that sublime and wailing form, that noble and nameless child of a divine genius, the flippant question dies on the lip, and we seek not to disturb that passionate and beautiful image of woman's grief by idle ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various Read full book for free!
... Crimmeen's black mare put her nose in the air and swung round; Patsey's hands seemed to be at their worst this morning, and what their worst felt like the black mare alone knew. Mr. Taylour, as Deputy Whip, waltzed erratically round the nine couple on a very flippant polo pony; and the four farmers, who had wisely adhered to the road, reached the covert sufficiently in advance of the hunt to frustrate Lily's project of running sheep in a ... — All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross Read full book for free!
... the day is the evil thereof," was Mrs. Ogilvie's flippant remark. "But that attitude is much encouraged by you. You ... — Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade Read full book for free!
... Tapster. How he had scorned the gambler, the spendthrift, the adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found ... — McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various Read full book for free!
... had a dinner-party, at which was a witty, French, flippant sort of man, author of a History of Philosophy, and now writing a Life of Goethe, a task for which he must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for, that ... — Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli Read full book for free!
... sports; have heard the simple chronicles of self joys and sorrows: but whether his livery were filthy sheepskin or gold-laced caftan; whether he lay on carpets at the door of his master, or in filth on the floor of his cabin; whether he gave us cold, stupid stories of his wrongs, or flippant details of his joys; whether he blessed his master or cursed him—we have wondered at the power which a serf system has to degrade and imbrute ... — The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne Read full book for free!
... deal of betting, and all of the men handled the great roll of bills they wagered with a flippant recklessness which could only be accounted for in Gallegher's mind by temporary mental derangement. Some one pulled a box out into the ring and the master of ceremonies mounted it, and pointed out in forcible language that as they were almost all already under bonds to keep the peace, ... — Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) Read full book for free!
... the feeling. If he had given the least sign of embarrassment she might have softened towards him. He showed no embarrassment whatever. He was very much at his ease. He was cheerful. He was even flippant. ... — The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse Read full book for free!
... decision, in the forming whereof logic was in no way implicated. For religion, as the colonel would have told you sedately, was not a thing to be reasoned about. Attempting to do that, you became in Rudolph Musgrave's honest eyes regrettably flippant. ... — The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell Read full book for free!
... followed her reception, Malmesbury says, "I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour. It was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse, vulgar hints about Lady——, who was present. The Prince was evidently disgusted, and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when left to herself, the ... — Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall Read full book for free!
... a perfection never since attained. Now, however, they will declare, the case is different. Young men have become selfish and arrogant. Their respect for age has vanished, their behaviour to ladies is familiar and flippant, their style of conversation is slangy and disreputable, they are wanting in all proper reverence, they are pampered, luxurious, affected, foolish, and disingenuous; unworthy, in short, to be mentioned in the same breath with ... — Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various Read full book for free!
... varnished out of all likeness to the truth by the suave periods of writer or speaker. But there is something tragically stupid about your dogged acceptation of any social construction of a private life, damned out of all possibility of redemption by the flippant deductions of ... — Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida Read full book for free!
... penetrating hazel-gray eyes, the touch of almost bull-dog tenaciousness about the loose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity of the careless Irish-American smile. That smile, she felt, trailed like a flippant and fluttering tail to the kite of his racial solemnity and stubbornness of purpose, enabling it to rise higher even while seeming ... — Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer Read full book for free!
... for children are collected under the title Stories Told to a Child (two series), from which "The Prince's Dream" is taken. It is somewhat old fashioned in method and style, reminding one of the stories of the days of Addison and Steele. Its seriousness is in striking contrast with the more flippant note in much modern writing for children, and it is sure to suggest some questions on the dangers and advantages of great possessions in their effects on labor, liberty, and human happiness in general. However, the moral will ... — Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry Read full book for free!
... Her lips were innocent of the flippant sneer that the other girl's had held and her beauty was ... — The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck Read full book for free!
... convincing, persuasive, zealous, enthusiastic, and inspiring. Avoid that which is timid, familiar, violent, cold, indifferent, unreal, artificial, dull, sing-song, hesitating, feeble, unconvincing, apathetic, monotonous, pompous, formal, arbitrary, flippant, ostentatious, drawling, ... — Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser Read full book for free!
... those who feel that female dignity is compromised by it, I have here omitted a woman's flippant overestimate of the number of women in London society who suffer from nervous disorders at the ... — The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright Read full book for free!
... conscience. He tries to be flippant, as he has seen the officers of the great corporation flippant about such matters, but in spite of himself his heartstrings tighten. Harvey Trueman is acting a lie, and his heart knows it, though his brain has not yet ... — The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams Read full book for free!
... twilight, when he had done work, his grief overcame him, and to see him weep is quite heartbreaking! The Syrian dealer came in and found him all tearful, and being so bold as to jest about it in his flippant way—" ... — Uarda • Georg Ebers Read full book for free!
... him."[47] To Father Bettinelli he writes: "I estimate highly the courage with which you have dared to say that Dante was a madman and his work a monster." But he adds, what shows that Dante had his admirers even in that flippant century: "There are found among us, and in the eighteenth century, people who strive to admire imaginations so stupidly extravagant and barbarous."[48] Elsewhere he says that the Commedia was "an odd poem, but gleaming with natural beauties, a work in which the author rose in parts above the ... — Among My Books • James Russell Lowell Read full book for free!
... interpose in this matter, and hasten the wedding. Kate Willow is a witty mischievous wench in the neighbourhood, who was a beauty, and makes me hope I shall see the perverse widow in her condition. She was so flippant with her answers to all the honest fellows that came near her, and so very vain of her beauty, that she has valued herself upon her charms till they are ceased. She therefore now makes it her business to prevent other young ... — The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others Read full book for free!
... that Barris had not been joking, no matter how flippant his speech. "Go ahead," he urged. "Finish what you were going ... — Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage Read full book for free!
... conscious of a feeling of relief that they were such as could not possibly provoke the visitors' mirth. As he introduced Blackburn he was forcibly impressed by the sudden change in the young man's manner. His flippant gaiety vanished before Miss Cameron's stately candor, and he addressed her with ... — Treasure Valley • Marian Keith Read full book for free!
... I may!' is fitter for his weakness. Very likely, if Peter had been offered fetters or the scaffold then and there, he would have accepted them bravely; but it was a different thing in the raw, cold morning, after an agitating night, and the Master away at the far end of the great hall. A flippant maid's tongue was enough to ... — Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren Read full book for free!
... regarded as the greatest light of the theological world. When we remember his transcendent abilities, his matchless labors, his unrivalled influence, his unblemished morality, his lofty piety, and soaring soul, all flippant criticism is contemptible and mean. He ranks with immortal benefactors, and needs least of all any apologies for his defects. A man who stamped his opinions on his own age and succeeding ages can be regarded only as a very extraordinary genius. A frivolous and pleasure-seeking ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord Read full book for free!
... is the thread of tenuity, A fellow distinguish'd by flippant fatuity, Who nonsense and rhyme can incessantly mingle, A poet—if poetry's ... — Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary Read full book for free!
... mean that, did you?" He was boyishly hurt at her flippant summing up of his beloved blue country. And Kitty, tired with the long, hard ride, and missing that something in Peter that had always been hers, turned on him a pair of blue eyes in which the tears were ... — Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning Read full book for free!
... treated of, you have in the same way not brought together, but disintegrated, and the whole has become merely a piquant piece of effectiveness. Hitherto one might have said that it was at least good-natured; but of late there have supervened flippant expressions, paradoxical sentences, crude definitions, a definite contumacy and disgust, which is now and again succeeded by an outburst of delight over the thing that is peculiarly Danish, or peculiarly beautiful. I cannot help thinking ... — Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes Read full book for free!
... could think of was to keep him from proposing. To that end she answered every sentimental remark with a flippant one. ... — The Visioning • Susan Glaspell Read full book for free!
... funeral than wear weeds which attract attention on account of their flaunting bad taste and flippancy. One may not, one must not, one can not wear the very last cry of exaggerated fashion in crepe, nor may one be boisterous or flippant or sloppy in manner, without giving the impression to all beholders that one's spirit is posturing, tripping, or dancing on the grave ... — Etiquette • Emily Post Read full book for free!
... demonstrations and elsewhere. It came to me that day across the waters of the bay, hammered slowly out by the swinging bells, with a tremendous sense of energy. The English St. Ann seemed lilty and almost flippant in comparison. ... — The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham Read full book for free!
... insolent, flippant, dissolute youth: aping the man of intrigue and levity: over-dressed, over-confident, inordinately vain of his personal appearance: distinguished as to his hair, cane, snuff-box, and singing-voice: and unhappily ... — Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens Read full book for free!
... against good taste, and I once heard his sister Catherine say that "Henry rarely delivered a speech or a sermon which did not contain something that grated on her ear." His most frequent offenses were in the direction of flippant handling of sacred themes and Scripture language. This he inherited from ... — Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler Read full book for free!
... all, and even saw that my own dramatic sense of Mrs. Weguelin's dignity had perversely moved me to be more flippant than I actually felt; and I promised myself that a more chastened tone should forthwith redeem me from the false position I had ... — Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister Read full book for free!
... and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, ... — Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett Read full book for free!
... and finely. The absence of a plot, the naiveness of the telling, the surplus of sentimentality, the olden fashion of the style—all this taken together cooled Soloviev; whereas Liubka received the joyous, sad, touching and flippant details of this quaint immortal novel not only through her ears, but as though with her eyes and with all her ... — Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin Read full book for free!
... The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the way of the committee, shrieking with laughter at their first glimpses of one another's costumes, and making flippant suggestions for all sorts of absurd ... — Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde Read full book for free!
... everything which has not yet received that Hall-mark, sneering at the thoughts of a great thinker not yet accepted as such, and slavishly repeating the small phrases of a thinker who has gained renown, flippant and contemptuous towards opinions which he has not taken the trouble to understand, and never venturing to oppose even the errors of men in authority, such an author may indeed by dint of a certain dexterity in assorting the ... — The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes Read full book for free!
... understanding, paid no attention, and Roscoe went on, reminding Tom of the old, flippant, cheaply cynical Roscoe, who had stolen his employer's time to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office, trying to arouse the stenographer's mirth by ridiculing ... — Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh Read full book for free!
... Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel le d'Estrees, "Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset that brings down the house" (le, saut perilleux). A few hours after using such flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long conference with the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating to them the grounds ... — A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot Read full book for free!
... appears to have belonged to a sort of Christy Minstrel Company over here) cracked jokes all the time with a gentleman amongst the audience in a good-natured but flippant and very unspiritual manner, and even the ladies joined in the undignified punning and "play upon words" that went ... — Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates Read full book for free!
... Hadria was incorrigibly flippant about the banishment of important local subjects. She said that the kitchen-boiler was out of order, and yet she had to take part in these highly-cultivated conversations and smile, as she complained, with that kitchen-boiler gnawing at her vitals. She claimed to be set on ... — The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird Read full book for free!
... port to starboard; stamps men into pulp because it thinks it has lost sixpence, and jams and grills in the doorways of blazing theatres. Out of office, like every one else, they relaxed. Many winked, a few were flippant, but they all agreed that the only drawback to Democracy was Demos—a jealous God of primitive tastes and despotic tendencies. I received a faithful portrait of him from a politician who had worshipped him all his life. It was practically the Epistle of Jeremy—the ... — Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
... a new kind of conversation to Virginia. Of all the young men she knew, not one had ever ventured into anything of the sort. They were either flippant, or sentimental, or both. She was at once flattered and annoyed, flattered, because, as a woman, Stephen had conceded her a mind. Many of the young men she knew had minds, but deemed that these were wasted on women, whose language was generally supposed ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill Read full book for free!
... the feeling of amaze most people have who look for the first time at Botticelli's Judith tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. You say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. For answer, I refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitude, ... — Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett Read full book for free!
... like this flippant tone of address. He was, as has been recorded by SHAHSTEAD (a gentleman of whose patronage he is proud) not a man you may take liberties with. For SCHEHERAZADE, taking mean advantage of a French agglomeration of letters which did not represent ... — Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various Read full book for free!
... public duty, I call the attention of my readers in the metropolis to the situation of this worthy man, this real friend of Liberty, who has been neglected and insulted by that venal band of mercenary and time serving politicians, those flippant summer flies of the metropolis, those fair-weather patriots, which, when compared with the steady, sound, and inflexible patriotism of Mr. Jones, are like the dross of the vilest metal put in competition with the purest gold. In doing this justice to Mr. Jones's character ... — Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt Read full book for free!
... very flippant young man," she said severely. Whereat I grinned, and she regarded me silently with a baleful glare. Suddenly I remembered my mission and became ... — The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman Read full book for free!
... man fastened his eyes on Ashe's in a piercing stare. Ashe met them smilingly. His spirits, always fairly cheerful, had risen high by now. There was something about the little man, in spite of his brusqueness and ill temper, which made him feel flippant. ... — Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse Read full book for free!
... appointed professor of English to the princesses of the royal house. Nuper—in former days—I too have militated; sometimes, as I now think, unjustly; but always, I vow, without personal rancor. Which of us has not idle words to recall, flippant jokes to regret? Have you never committed an imprudence? Have you never had a dispute, and found out that you were wrong? So much the worse for you. Woe be to the man qui croit toujours avoir raison. His anger is not a brief madness, but a permanent mania. His ... — Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray Read full book for free!
... curls; he told a group of men, who were sheep-dipping with him, that the parasites of the sheep, which are formidable in appearance, never troubled him until they reached his head. "Into them curls, I suppose, John?" said a flippant bystander. John was pleased that his most attractive feature should receive ... — Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory Read full book for free!
... but did not dream of such good luck for—Bobbie as to be sent up here. I know she will find happiness up here in these hills. You'll be kind to the little girl, won't you?" she pleaded. "You know you haven't much mercy for sinners, but you will see she is serious about reforming; not flippant like me. She will never yield to ... — Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates Read full book for free!
... returned Boyle good-humoredly. "You see I reckon it don't pay to do anything halfway. And whatever I do, I mean to keep my eyes about me." In spite of her prejudice, Miss Cantire could see that these necessary organs, if rather flippant, were honest. "Yes, I suppose there isn't much on that I don't take in. Why now, Miss Cantire, there's that fancy dust cloak you're wearing—it isn't in our line of goods—nor in anybody's line west of Chicago; it came from Boston or New York, and was made for home consumption! But your hat—and ... — Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte Read full book for free!
... and his appetites. Wealth and pleasures repugnant to law, let him shun; and even lawful acts which may cause pain, or be offensive to mankind. Let him not have nimble hands, restless feet, or voluble eyes; let him not be flippant in his speech, nor intelligent in doing mischief. Let him walk in the path of good men" (Manu, p. 7). "He who neglecteth the duties of this life is unfit for this, much less for any higher world" ("Bhagavat Gita," p. 26). "Charity is the free ... — The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant Read full book for free!
... opinion in a most subdued voice, and then either turning the subject, or turning upon my heel. But as for women, it is astonishing how well I got on. The nervous rapidity of my first rattle soon subsided into a continuous flow of easy nonsense. Impertinent and flippant, I was universally hailed an original and a wit. But the most remarkable incident was, that the baroness and myself became the greatest friends. I was her constant attendant, and rehearsed to her flattered ear all my evening performance. She was the person with ... — The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various Read full book for free!
... after her husband's funeral than wear weeds which attract attention on account of their flaunting bad taste and flippancy. One may not, one must not, one can not wear the very last cry of exaggerated fashion in crepe, nor may one be boisterous or flippant or sloppy in manner, without giving the impression to all beholders that one's spirit is posturing, tripping, or dancing on the grave of ... — Etiquette • Emily Post Read full book for free!
... and brown leather, and in use it is as willing and quiet as any tricycle could be, a most urbane and gentlemanly affair—if you will pardon the adjective. I am glad these things have not come too late for me. Frankly, the bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with its two larger wheels behind and a smaller one in front, has been so indecently suggestive of a perambulator that really, George, I could not bring myself to it. But a Bishop ... — Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells Read full book for free!
... crowd that filled the street, consisting for the most part of the citizens themselves, but varied by nobles and knights of the court, by foreigners from many lands, by soldiers and men-at-arms from the Tower, by countrymen and sailors. Their amusement was sometimes turned into anger by the flippant remarks of the apprentices; these varlets, perceiving easily enough by the manner of their attire that they were from the country, were not slow, if their master happened for the moment to be absent, in indulging in remarks that set Geoffrey and Lionel into a fever to commit ... — By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty Read full book for free!
... a moment that he had considered me to have been somewhat flippant. I had no doubt he had some right to think so, so I very sincerely and seriously told him that such a thing as pulling anybody's leg had never entered my mind. Indeed, very far from it; that my experience ... — The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon Read full book for free!
... look of ingenuousness that might be trusted, and laughed in her heart at her credulity for expecting it of a man in such a case. She saw Renee sitting stonily, too proudly self-respecting to put on a mask of flippant ease. These lovers might be accomplices in deceiving her; they were not happy ones, and that appeared to her to be some assurance that she ... — The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith Read full book for free!
... the "Volcano Book," which contains the observations and impressions of people from all parts of the world. Some of these are painstaking and valuable as showing the extent and rapidity of the changes which take place in the crater, but there is an immense quantity of flippant rubbish, and would-be wit, in which "Madam Pele," invariably occurs, this goddess, who was undoubtedly one of the grandest of heathen mythical creations, being caricatured in pencil and pen and ink, under every ludicrous aspect that can be conceived. Some ... — The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird Read full book for free!
... violent beginning and a reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not aloud, but secretly, to hide ... — Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett Read full book for free!
... satire; did not censure with the fiery fervour of a righteous indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective. 'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of this poem came Holy Willie's Prayer, ... — Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun Read full book for free!
... this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, ... — Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens Read full book for free!
... from which it is impossible to detach the exponent as the patroness of a whole universe of inferior souls. This is what everybody would mean in objecting to these notes (supposing them to be published), that they are too smart and too flippant. ... — Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various Read full book for free!
... should not dare to criticise her, however, and Cousin Gustus was satisfied, so criticism in any case would be intrusive. It is just possible that he occasionally wished that she would dress herself in a more human way—patronise in winter the humble Viyella stripe, for instance, or in summer the flippant sprig. But a large proportion of Mrs. Gustus's faith was founded on simple strong colours in wide expanses, introduced, as it were, one to another by judicious black. Anybody but Mrs. Gustus would have been drowned in her ... — This Is the End • Stella Benson Read full book for free!
... were the incumbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the incumbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. Yet, unoriginal though the dominant clergywoman of fiction may be, it cannot be denied that St. Paul's injunctions in connection with the subjection of wives did not commend themselves ... — Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross Read full book for free!
... alone. They were not the women to tease one another by flippant jests or allusions; and Mrs. Fred, of all others, had a dread of thrusting any vulgar face on this colorless, yet delicious, atmosphere. Love knew his own, and ... — Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas Read full book for free!
... unkindly, but rather as if he feared to drop, even for an instant, his flippant defiance of the trick fate had played him. The jerk sent a small, shining thing sliding down to the floor; where it stood upright and quivered ... — The Gringos • B. M. Bower Read full book for free!
... welcomed their remarks, at least her silence was not scornful, and the most shallow-headed prater that fluttered around her felt that he was received with dignity and not with disdain. Awed by her conduct, not one of them dared to be flippant, and every one of them soon became dull. The ornaments of the Court of Reisenburg, the arbiters of ton and the lords of taste, stared with astonishment at each other when they found, to their mutual surprise, that at one moment, in such a select party, ... — Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield Read full book for free!
... my lord, said Sir Charles, are those women? Are they not generally of a class with those men? Flippant women love empty men, because they cannot reproach them with a superiority of understanding, but keep their folly in countenance. They are afraid of a wise man: but I would by no means have such a one turn fool to ... — The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson Read full book for free!
... in the newspapers, between heart-broken parents and house-breaking philanthropists; always with one issue, of course. There are any number of them that never get into the newspapers. And we have to be flippant about these things as the only alternative to being rather fierce; and I have no desire to end on a note of universal ferocity. I know that many who set such machinery in motion do so from motives ... — Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers of mankind. He is even shallow and flippant upon Socrates. But he was well read in human nature, and superficially acquainted with all the learning of antiquity. In wit and sarcasm, he may be compared with Voltaire, and his end was the same, to demolish and pull down, without ... — The Old Roman World • John Lord Read full book for free!
... purpose was easily accomplished. While the Cardinal awaited him near Roa, the King avoided him by proceeding directly to Tordesillas to visit his mother. This ungracious and unmerited snub was applauded by Martyr, who dismissed the incident with almost flippant mention; nor did he afterwards touch upon the aged Cardinal's death which occurred simultaneously with the reception of the unfeeling message sent by Charles to the greatest, the most faithful and the most disinterested of ... — De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt Read full book for free!
... that we are putting flippant expressions into the mouth of Rainiharo, we may explain that the Malagasy define an ungrateful man as the "son of a thunderbolt," and sometimes as the "offspring of a wild-boar," because—so they say—the young ... — The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... "Take it upstairs again." The perfectly trained servant, marveling privately, obeyed once more. Horace, in silent astonishment, advanced to the sofa to observe her more nearly. "How grave you look!" she exclaimed, with an air of flippant unconcern. "You don't approve of my sitting idle, perhaps? Anything to please you! I haven't got to go up and downstairs. Ring the ... — The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins Read full book for free!
... offices of the Doctor, and the strenuous exertions of the association to get itself into notice, it met with no very great success until I joined it. The truth is, the members indulged in too flippant a tone of discussion. The papers read every Saturday evening were characterized less by depth than buffoonery. They were all whipped syllabub. There was no investigation of first causes, first principles. There was no investigation of ... — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe Read full book for free!
...Flippant Person). Don't speak so loud. If they know you've come in here fresh, you'll ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various Read full book for free!
... public aid to their clergy or churches. It is much easier to figure upon a platform than to establish educational institutions, or to preach the Gospel throughout new countries. Those who have been in Canada twelve months can do the former, and sneer at the latter. The flippant allusions of certain speakers at the late Toronto meeting to the Methodists and to Victoria College ... were as unfounded as ... — The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson Read full book for free!
... child," she returned carelessly, "but she makes a very common mistake. She thinks a pretty face and a flippant tongue and a childish manner are perfectly irresistible, but in her study of mankind she is certainly ... — Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey Read full book for free!
... that he is given credit for a much more pronounced sense of humor than he actually possesses. I doubt that he is always conscious of the element of humor and I suspect that if he realized that his observations were to evoke laughter he would deliberately choose a less satirical or flippant method of expression. ... — The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... glance. Only Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, whose every thought since he had met Suzanne de Tournay seemed keener, more gentle, more innately sympathetic, noted the curious look of intense longing, of deep and hopeless passion, with which the inane and flippant Sir Percy followed the retreating ... — The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy Read full book for free!
... was very flippant about it," Mrs. Marlow complained to her husband that evening, after she had shown him Jimmy's letter and had heard his remarks thereon. "I didn't like her tone at all. She has grown rather coarse lately, since they have got into that new ... — People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt Read full book for free!
... say, 'He at his lady's feet Lays worship that to Heaven alone belongs; Yea, swings the incense that for God is meet In flippant censers of light lover's songs.' Who says it, knows not God, nor love, nor thee; For love is large as is yon heavenly dome: In love's great blue, each passion is full free To fly his favorite flight and build his ... — The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier Read full book for free!
... the President? Not an armed rebel, clothed with belligerent rights; not a political refugee, who had skulked into our lines for rapine and for plunder; but the citizen of a free State, who could visit and send his cards to the Vice-President with a flippant familiarity, which his aristocratic slave-holding associates presume to use,—a man allowed to go about the streets of Washington, breathing treason and blaspheming God, without rebuke. He could command attention from proprietors of houses and saloons, ... — The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer Read full book for free!
... said Cecil, trying to recover himself. Into what a grotesque mistake had he fallen! Was it likely that a clergyman and a gentleman would refer to his engagement in a manner so flippant? But his stiffness remained, and, though he asked who Cissie and Albert might be, he still thought Mr. ... — A Room With A View • E. M. Forster Read full book for free!
... the bride is always easily played. It is her duty to look pretty if she can, and should she fail in that,—as brides usually do,—her failure is attributed to the natural emotions of the occasion. The part of the bridegroom is more difficult. He should be manly, pleasant, composed, never flippant, able to say a few words when called upon, and quietly triumphant. This is almost more than mortal can achieve, and bridegrooms generally manifest some shortcomings at the awful moment. Daniel Thwaite was not successful. He was silent and almost morose. When Lady Fitzwarren congratulated ... — Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope Read full book for free!
... Morrice, ever more flippant than sagacious, called out, "I really believe the gentleman's deaf! he won't so much as say umph, and hay, now; but I'll give him such a hallow in his ears, as shall make him hear me, whether he will or no. Sir! I say!" bawling aloud, ... — Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay) Read full book for free!
... paid no attention, and Roscoe went on, reminding Tom of the old, flippant, cheaply cynical Roscoe, who had stolen his employer's time to smoke cigarettes in the Temple Camp office, trying to arouse the stenographer's mirth ... — Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh Read full book for free!
... personas this grubby painter—it was maddening! She thought of him as "grubby," whatever that meant, because she did not like him, but it was even more maddening for her to think of Olga Tcherny's portrait, which, in spite of her flippant remarks, she had been forced to admit revealed a knowledge of feminine psychology that had excited her ... — Madcap • George Gibbs Read full book for free!
... respect than for any other class of persons engaged in earning a livelihood, but now he remembered that the best physicians he had known had seemed to look upon their life-work as a consecration of themselves to humanity and the most flippant among them, as men, had always a dignity apart from themselves when they became the physician, and he knew, too, that as a class they were jealous of the good name of their profession and sensitive to a degree where anything affected its honor. ... — The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart Read full book for free!
... substitution of the wrong daughter, and Jacob's meek acceptance of two wives in eight days would not only arouse a storm of moral indignation, but would land both these men in a police court and in jail? I say this not in a flippant spirit, but merely to bring out as vividly as possible the difference between the ancient Hebrew and modern Christian ideals of love. Furthermore, what an utter ignorance or disregard of the rights of personal preference, sympathy, and all the higher ingredients ... — Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck Read full book for free!
... him shuffling over the hewn plank floor in his straw sandals. A very different type, this swaggering Celestial, from the furtive-eyed Chinamen of the east. His tightly coiled cue was as smooth and shining as a king-snake, his loose blouse was immaculate, and the flippant voice in which he demanded in each person's ear, "Coffee? Milk?" was like a challenge. Whatever the individual's choice might be, he got it in a torrent in ... — 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart Read full book for free!
... with reluctance for those who had neither ideality, nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profanation amid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secret haunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgusted him. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men and giddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition. And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of being accompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood nor valued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn't even like ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner Read full book for free!
... abstract, piquant, sententious style, too, is a little dry, over-refined and monotonous. It has too much cleverness and not enough imagination. It makes one think, more than it charms, and though really serious, it seems flippant. His method of splitting up a thought, of illuminating a subject by successive facets, has serious inconveniences. We see the details too clearly, to the detriment of the whole. A multitude of sparks gives but ... — Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... when she talked she gave no hint at all of any deep sense of the beauty of her surroundings. When she talked she was just like other town girls he had known, a bit slangy, more than a bit self-possessed, and frivolous to the point of being flippant. That type he knew and could meet fairly on a level. But when she was looking and saying nothing, she seemed altogether different. Which, he wondered, was the ... — The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower Read full book for free!
... adulterer—in a word, all those whose actions bring about their own inevitable punishment! He had always been self-respecting and conscientious—not a prig, mind you, but inclined rather to the serious than to the flippant side of life; and, so inclining, he had found ... — McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various Read full book for free!
... nothing to do with devotion. And the impertinent patronage of worshippers in "fustian" is at least as offensive as the older-fashioned vulgarity of pride in congregations who "come in their own carriages." And I do protest against the flippant inference that good clothes for the body must lower the assumptions of the spirit, or make repentance insincere; which I no more believe than that the worship of a clean Christian is less acceptable than that of a brother who cannot afford ... — Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing Read full book for free!
... irreverent remarks of Bob Ingersoll have fallen harmlessly upon the minds of our people. The flippant sneers and wicked sarcasms of the modern infidel, wise in his own conceit, have alike passed over our heads without damage or disaster. These times that have tried men's souls have only rooted us more firmly in the faith, ... — Remarks • Bill Nye Read full book for free!
... rebuking her for her flippant treatment of a brother's pain, agreed with the sense of her remarks, if not with the wording. It had taken a good deal of quiet obstinacy on the part of the whole family to get Oliver to accept Peter Piper's invitation—Mrs. Crowe, who ... — Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet Read full book for free!
... came back here," says Cousin Lucy, without heeding these flippant and heartless words, "I found an old gentleman who has something to do with the boats, and he sat down, as if it were a part of his business, and told me nearly the whole history of his life. Isn't it nice of them, keeping an Autobiographer? ... — Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells Read full book for free!
... a garb like this? Needs he the tragic fur, the smoke of lamps, The pent-up breath of an unsavoury throng To thaw him into feeling, or the smart And snappish dialogue that flippant wits Call comedy, to prompt him with a smile? The self-complacent actor, when he views (Stealing a sidelong glance at a full house) The slope of faces from the floor to the roof, As if one master-spring ... — The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper Read full book for free!
... inebriated United States official, who flings his spectacles overboard, and sings a flippant and absurd song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with his ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do. After which he crumbles, in an incomprehensible manner, into the bottom of the ... — The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne Read full book for free!
... this, in the case of another dog, it was suggested by one who was flippant that his epitaph might run—"And may our lives have fewer faults than thine." But while it is true that this one had run up quite a heavy bill in cats and committed many other enormities, the line ... — 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry Read full book for free!
... round, retired to a distant part of the apartment, and calling to me, said: 'Harris, I am not well: pray get me a glass of brandy.' At dinner that evening, in the presence of her betrothed, the Princess was 'flippant, rattling, affecting wit.' Poor George, I say again! Deportment was his ruling passion, and his bride did not know how to behave. Vulgarity—hard, implacable, German vulgarity—was in everything she did to the very day of her death. The marriage was solemnised on ... — The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm Read full book for free!
... help men to work in the spiritual field. They are not like some yachts, just to carry bunting and paint to be admired. As for church affiliation, what I like to see is a hungry man going where he will be fed and get strength. I trust it does not seem flippant to say that I look on all church organizations in the same way, and that the tradition of a long past suggests to me the inefficiency of a dotage, quite as much as the stimulating aroma of potency which, as in the case of some wines, can only be acquired ... — What the Church Means to Me - A Frank Confession and a Friendly Estimate by an Insider • Wilfred T. Grenfell Read full book for free!
... by the appearance, in the opening of the tent, of a man whose solemn but kindly face checked the flow of flippant conversation. ... — The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... last appeal. What my answer was you will not care to know; but if it was brief, it was at least not flippant; and before writing it, I, in my turn, appealed for help, only my appeal was made upon my ... — Stage Confidences • Clara Morris Read full book for free!
... a sick-bed, my dearest Matlida, to communicate the strange and frightful scenes which have just passed. Alas! how little we ought to jest with futurity! I closed my letter to you in high spirits, with some flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! and to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend ... — Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... I know I am right. You make my life appear shallow and trivial. What have I done in the last two years but attend carefully, from habit, to the details of business, and then amuse myself? And when I wrote I merely sought to amuse you. What were my flippant letters worth to one who was ... — A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe Read full book for free!
... externals and never dreams of looking for "inward light"; and the proof of this is that he seems never consciously to endeavour to express a mood, but strenuously seeks to depict images called up by the words he sets. With no intention of being flippant, but in all earnestness, I declare it is my belief that if Purcell had ever set the "Agnus Dei" (and I don't remember that he did) he would have drawn a frisky lamb and tried to paint its snow-white fleece; and this not because he lacked reverence, but because of his ... — Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman Read full book for free!
... around with an egotistical complacency that would defy a pickaxe to penetrate. According to him a Mayo is beyond criticism, and his sister's reputation her own to deal with. The girl herself seemed, frankly, not to understand the seriousness of her position, and was very flippant and not a little rude. I wash my hands of the whole affair, and will certainly not countenance to-night's entertainment by appearing at it. I have already warned the manager that if the noise is kept up ... — The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull Read full book for free!
... acquainted with it beforehand. We are all ready for "O rare Ben Jonson!" as we stand over the place where he was planted standing upright, as if he had been dropped into a post-hole. We remember too well the foolish and flippant mockery of Gay's "Life is a Jest." If I were dean of the cathedral, I should be tempted to alter the J to a G. Then we could read it without contempt; for life is a gest, an achievement,—or always ought to be. Westminster Abbey ... — Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes Read full book for free!
... Like the sudden flippant clatter of castanets in the pause of some solemn funeral music was the impression given by the first glimpse along the winding woodland way of a great flimsy white building, with its many pillars, its piazzas, its ... — The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree) Read full book for free!
... away!" called a voice that was almost flippant. "I never did belong to that great sect whose doctrine is that each one should select—at least, I'm not going to belong to it any longer. Go ... — The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster Read full book for free!
... a Victoria or a yacht, or in a sky-high position, would not be worthy to come within her shadow. If I were the head teacher, and Red Shirt I, Clown would be sure to fawn on me and jeer at Red Shirt. They say Yedo kids are flippant. Indeed, if a fellow like Clown was to travel the country and repeatedly declare "I am a Yedo kid," no wonder the country folk would decide that the flippant are Yedo kids and Yedo kids are flippant. While I was meditating like this, I heard ... — Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri Read full book for free!
... impressed,' she says, but, 'being bound to speak the truth, she does not think it possible that any trick could have been used.' To hear her say so was like hearing Mr. Chorley say so; all her prejudices were against it strongly. Mr. Spicer's book on the subject is flippant and a little vulgar, but the honesty and accuracy of it have been attested to me by Americans oftener than once. By the way, he speaks in it of your interesting 'Recollections,' and quotes you upon the possibility of making a ghost ... — The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning Read full book for free!
... had a certain gift of humour, which displayed itself in flippant witticisms generally at the expense of others. He undoubtedly possessed the art of provoking laughter, but there was always malice behind his frivolity. In appearance he was elegant without being engaging, and one felt the spitefulness of the dark eyes beneath the abundant hair, and ... — War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson Read full book for free!
... Sir Arthur, "St. Chrysostom's will not be a pleasant Sunday morning and evening resort for rich people any longer. That is, perhaps, a somewhat flippant way of putting it, but of course you know ... — The Missionary • George Griffith Read full book for free!
... beings he loves and reveres the sportsman. One is made to feel that the true sportsman, whether he shoots or hunts or fishes, is an August being, as he ought to be in Great Britain, and Leech has done him full justice with his pencil. He is no subject for flippant satire; so there he sits his horse, or stalks through his turnip-field, or handles his rod like a god! Handsome, well-appointed from top to toe, aristocratic to the finger-tips—a most impressive figure, the despair of foreigners, ... — Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier Read full book for free!
... powdered wig of the period, a man of middle age, with clever, well-cut features, and a large, humorous, and rather sensual mouth. His book, with all its faults of scandalous plain speech, is one that few naval surgeons of that day could have written. The style, though flippant, is remarkable for a cynical but always good-natured humour, and on the rare occasions when he thought it professionally incumbent on him to be serious, as in his discussion of the best dietary for long voyages, and the physical effects of privations, his remarks ... — Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards Read full book for free!
... slowly through the high, aromatic grasses, discussing earnestly every angle of policy to be assumed in regard to M'tela. At its close all the white men were called together and given instructions. Even the youngest and most flippant knew natives well enough to realize the value of the structure Kingozi had built, ... — The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al Read full book for free!
... be flippant, and say that there were probably several dotted about the globe, if we only knew them; but I dared not, under those eyes—absolutely dared not. Instead, I remarked inanely that I was sorry to hear his father ... — The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson Read full book for free!
... foreman for Annie Malasek to come to my office right now?" I asked. Sara is flippant when things are going along all right, but she knows when to buckle down and do what she's asked. She gave me no personal ... — Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton Read full book for free!
... the most extraordinary I ever saw, but there is more of the mountebank than of greatness in all this. It may do well enough for Sefton, who is as ignorant as he is sharp and shrewd, and captivated with his congenial offhandism, but it requires something more than Brougham's flippant ipse dixit to convince me that the office of Chancellor is such a sinecure and bagatelle. He had a levee the other night, which was brilliantly attended—the Archbishops, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, a host of people. Sefton goes and sits in his private room and sees his receptions of ... — The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville Read full book for free!
... the Jew to-day converts into drafts on art-merchandise. Who would imagine that this great work has been cemented with the sweat and toil of genius for two thousand years," he exclaims in the exasperation of his soul at these flippant time-servers who dominated in the concert-hall and on the stage. Naturally the legion of their followers did not become his friends. They controlled the press, and it is due to this, that his most important writings are known even to-day only by ... — Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl Read full book for free!
... filling the mind with exalted contemplations, and the imagination with inspiring and ennobling apparitions. Surroundings that contribute a quality of awfulness embrace in such scenes the soul of the traveller, and hold him in their tremendous thrall. Mean or flippant ideas may not enter here; but the man puts off the smaller part of him, as the Asiatic puts off his sandals on entering the porches of his god. Of such is the Eternal Sphinx, as Eothen Kinglake beheld her. We cannot feel her aspect more grandly than ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various Read full book for free!
... perceive I have written a flippant and rather cold-hearted letter! let it go, however. I have said nothing, either, of the brilliant sex; but the fact is, I am at this moment in a far more serious, and entirely new, scrape than any of the last twelve months,—and that is saying a good ... — Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore Read full book for free!
... not be mortified when they see their children, perhaps, deficient at nine or ten years old in the showy talents for general conversation; they must bear to see their pupils appear slow; they must bear the contrast of flippant gayety and sober simplicity; they must pursue exactly an opposite course to that which has been recommended for the education of wits; they must never praise their pupils for hazarding observations; they must cautiously point out any mistakes that are made from a precipitate survey ... — Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth Read full book for free!
... revolutionary army, and none so well as he could tip the barb with biting sarcasm and satire. Heine's personality was full of seemingly inconsistent traits. He was both fanciful and rational, serious and flippant, tender and cynical, reverent and impious; and he could be at once a patriot and an alien. He was, to use his own phrase, an "unfrocked romanticist"—at once a brilliant representative of the poetry of self-expression and personal caprice, ... — The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various Read full book for free!
... seventeen or eighteen years of age, with sharp, knowing-looking features, a forward, impudent carriage, and a pert, flippant voice, standing upon one of the trunks, and surveying all our proceedings in the most impertinent manner. The creature was dressed in a ragged, dirty purple stuff gown, cut very low in the neck, with an old red cotton ... — Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie Read full book for free!
... scholarship. He himself has told us of his love of port and bananas, his joy in early morning celebrations in the chapel of Pusey House, his tea-parties, his delight in debates at the Union, of which he became President, and of his many friendships with undergraduates of a witty and flippant turn of mind. Like many effeminate natures, he was glad of opportunities to prove himself a good fellow. In spite of no heel-taps when the port went round, he won the Hertford in 1907, the Ireland and Craven in 1908, and in 1910 took ... — Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie Read full book for free!
... fatal creeds, For youth on folly bent, A steady tick for worthy deeds, And moments wisely spent; No warning note of emphasis, No whisper of advice, To ruined rake or flippant miss, For coquetry ... — The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various Read full book for free!
... genial, and he made a suave, impressive offer of his personal services, in response to which Mrs. Taylor regarded him with smiling incredulity—a smile which Selma considered impertinent. How dared she treat his courtly advances with flippant distrust! ... — Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant Read full book for free!
... conference transferred themselves from Mantes to St. Denis. On Friday, July 23, in the morning, Henry wrote to Gabriel le d'Estrees, "Sunday will be the day when I shall make the summerset that brings down the house" (le, saut perilleux). A few hours after using such flippant language to his favorite, he was having a long conference with the prelates and doctors, putting to them the gravest questions about the religion he was just embracing, asking them for more satisfactory explanations on certain points, and repeating ... — A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot Read full book for free!
... They will find the air cool, shady walks, good food, and reasonable prices. Their rooms will not be charged for, but they will do well to give the same as they would have paid at an hotel. I saw in one room one of those flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici match-boxes on which there was a gaudily- coloured nymph in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette. Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised that such a ... — Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... honor, my lord, that does not often befall men of my humble condition," said the master of the house, in the flippant utterance of a vulgar cockney; "but I thought it would be more agreeable to your lordship, to receive the a—a—here, than in the place where your lordship, just at this moment, resides. Will your lordship please to rest yourself, after ... — The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper Read full book for free!
... had been an error of judgment in placing him beside Mrs. Stribling. His taste was too fastidious to respond to her palpable allurements. She would have had a better chance with Vetch, for the flippant pleasantry with which Benham responded to the beaming enchantress was clothed in the very tone and look he had used with Patty Vetch in the drawing-room. Yes, it was futile to stray too far from one's type. Rose Stribling had failed to interest Benham, mused ... — One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow Read full book for free!
... always, moderate and reasonable; but above all the wonderful element was the quick wit and ready skill with which he turned to his own service every query which was designed to embarrass him; and this he did not in the vulgar way of flippant retort or disingenuous twistings of words or facts, but with the same straightforward and tranquil simplicity of language with which he delivered evidence for the friendly examiners. Burke likened the proceeding to an examination of a master by a ... — Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr. Read full book for free!
... so bad as that. Believe me, I should rejoice for you if you had children. Leonore would have made a wonderful mother. Even I might be respectable if a woman such as she loved me as she loves you. But," he grew flippant again, "to marry one of those nose-in-the-air, soulless, school-teacher prudes—Never! And in any event, my dear, I am not so sure I want to marry your heiress. I am very well as I am!" He shrugged his shoulders. A moment later, though, he put a ... — The Title Market • Emily Post Read full book for free!
... affable and pious soul who gives alms,—a strange thing in this family who cheat everybody. Anissme often sends home beautiful letters and presents. One day, he comes unexpectedly; he has an unquiet, and, at the same time, flippant air. His parents have decided to get him married, and, although he is a drunkard, ugly and vulgar, they have found him a pretty wife. The girl is Lipa, daughter of a poor widow, a laborer like her mother. ... — Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky Read full book for free!
... take things with brutal logic, ought not to be allowed the fairy tale in its more limited form of the supernatural; whereas, if presented to older children, this material can be criticized, catalogued and (alas!) rejected as worthless, or retained with flippant toleration. ... — The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock Read full book for free!
... of "Jack and the Beanstalk" is from Jacobs' English Fairy Tales above cited. Jacobs states that this telling came from Australia. It is the best version known to the editor—in fact, the only possible change to be desired is in the flippant ending, "The ogre fell down and broke his crown." This is too serious a ... — Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes Read full book for free!
... house was a meeting-place where politicians cemented personal ties and plotted party moves. Milly in her brief appearances, had been of use to Lady Ireton, but Mildred proved socially invaluable. There were serious persons who suspected Mrs. Stewart of approaching politics in a flippant spirit; but on certain days she had revealed a grave and ardent belief in the dogmas of the party and a piety of attitude towards the person of its great apostle, which had convinced them that she was not really cynical ... — The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods Read full book for free!
... and I think a slander on us! We all like these things, but we all like higher things too, and we need to encourage the higher part of us because it so soon dies away. You know better than I do how much of your own talk may be silly chatter—or worse—flippant or wrong talk, which you would stop if an older person were by. I have heard High Schools strongly objected to because they made the girls so full of gossip, about what this or that teacher said, or what some girl did, till their ... — Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby Read full book for free!
... high-fed and haughty dame, The boy was dandled, in his dawn of fame; Listening, she smiled, and blest the flippant tongue On which the fate of unborn tithe-pigs hung. Ah! who shall paint the grandam's grim dismay, When loose Reform enticed her boy away; When shockt she heard him ape the rabble's tone, And in Old ... — The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al Read full book for free!
... He spoke with a flippant self-confidence that annoyed his cousin. But she knew very well that she was poorly off in the gifts that were required to scourge him. And there already was the light form of Nelly, on the footbridge over the river. Farrell looked up and saw ... — Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward Read full book for free!
... life in lodgings. But they are not absent there. Friends come in, and we will suppose that you and they are waited upon at your meal. What does the servant hear? Much talk about other and absent persons? Unkind or flippant criticisms? Idle, frivolous words? Very likely not, thank God; for we do want to remember our Lord. But let us take heed. Nothing is more conspicuously inconsistent in the Christian than needless, unloving discussion of the characters ... — To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule Read full book for free!
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