"Flashy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being lowered. They are all indications of a great subterranean activity, of a something being pushed up, and therefore naturally the land either gives way and lets it come through, or else is raised up by its violence. And so Mr. Darwin, being desirous not to merely put out a flashy hypothesis, but to get at the truth of the matter, said to himself, "If my notion of this matter is right, then atolls and encircling reefs, inasmuch as they are dependent upon subsidence, ought not to be found ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... mangy proprietor for probably four months. Had he planted himself in the earth and regerminated, he could not have been more freshened. His emaciated carcass fairly blossomed with magnificence; and gaudy ornament sprouted all over him. It peeped through his shirt-front in flashy studs, it twined on his fingers in glittering rings, it trailed around his waist in glowing velvet, and expanded over his thin legs and arms in a forest of broadcloth. 'Tis true, the shiny collar would get over his ears, the coat-sleeves darkened every sparkle on his hands, and the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... French school!' interjected Lesbia. 'Tricky, flashy, chalky, shallow, smelling of ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Bart Hodge on the cheek, sending him reeling. The blow was delivered by a large man, with a heavy black mustache and the manner and appearance of a "gentleman rowdy." His clothes were flashy, and he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... help it," said Clym, in a troubled tone. "Mother, I hate the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... end of the Square is a broad, well paved, flashy looking street, stretching away to the northward, crowded with street cars, vehicles of all kinds, and pedestrians. This is the Bowery. It begins at Chatham Square, and extends as far as the Cooper Institute on Eighth ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... the house. Philippina had a box full of ribbons in Eleanore's cabinet. She set a chair against the door leading into Jordan's room; and when her hands were tired from rummaging around in the ribbons and her eyes weary from looking at all the flashy colours, she pressed her ear to the door to see if she could find out what the old ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... and to enjoy; that if one has no other way of being humble except being imbecile, then it is better to be imbecile, and to enjoy. That is the deep unconscious truth in the character of Toots—that all his externals are flashy and false; all his internals unconscious, obscure, and true. He wears loud clothes, and he is silent inside them. His shirts and waistcoats are covered with bright spots of pink and purple, while his soul is always covered with the sacred shame. He always gets all the outside ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... restaurant that Lorison first saw the girl. A flashy fellow with a predatory eye had followed her in, and had advanced to take the other chair at the little table where she stopped, but Lorison slipped into the seat before him. Their acquaintance began, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... this critic have said of the De Profundis of Maxim Gorky? Are there still darker depths to be explored? Little wonder Mr. Robertson calls Kipling's "the art of a great talent with a cheap culture and a flashy environment." Therefore, to talk of such distinctions as realism and romance is sheer waste of time. It is but a recrudescence of the old classic vs. romantic conflict. Stendhal has written that a classicist is a dead romanticist. It ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And, when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; Beside what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... later; but that was not Dan's affair. Bassett was beyond doubt able to take care of himself in emergencies; Dan's admiration for his patron was strongly intrenched in this belief. The bulkier Thatcher, with the marks of self-indulgence upon him, and with his bright waistcoat and flashy necktie transcending the bounds of good taste, struck him as a weaker character. If Thatcher meditated a break with Bassett, the sturdier qualities, the even, hard strokes that Bassett had a reputation for delivering, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... heart is consumed with envy and hate because he is not captain. The captain, one Issachar, comes in, a superbly handsome young fellow, named Mario, to my thinking the first comedian in Spain, dressed in a flashy suit of leopard hides, and announces the arrival of a stranger. Enters Demas, who says he hates the world and would fain drink its foul blood. He is made politely welcome. No! he will be captain or nothing. Issachar laughs scornfully and says he is in the way of that modest aspiration. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... Ras Fendihook. The man's broad, flashy good-humour had caught her fancy; his vagabond life stimulated her imagination of wider horizons; he promised her release from the conventions and restrictions of her artificial existence; she was ready to embark with him, as his wife, into the Unknown; but it was evident that she had not given ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... thoroughly drying pigment, is too transparent for depth. It was a mistake of Gainsborough when he said that with asphaltum he would make a Tartarus; the depth would be but a little way from the surface; depth is not always intensity of darkness, and never of colour. There is a style of flashy painting which entirely depends on these transparent browns; but it is nevertheless not a good style; it is flimsy, and the depth aimed at is missed. The more simple the palette, the better will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... couldn't get a chop, either. I know only flashy people, of course." He looked up at his host with such a grave and candid expression that Eastman decided there couldn't be anything very crooked about the fellow. His smooth ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... specimens of Military Snobs,—the Sporting Military Snob, Capt. Rag, and the 'lurking' or raffish Military Snob, Ensign Famish. Indeed you are fully sure to meet them lounging on horseback, about five o'clock, under the trees by the Serpentine, examining critically the inmates of the flashy broughams which parade up ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most tasks less repulsive, of lessening the burdens of those tasks that couldn't be anything but repulsive? Was this stupid system, so cruel, so crushing, and producing at the top such absurd results as flashy, insolent autos and silly palaces and overfed, overdressed women, and dogs in jeweled collars, and babies of wealth brought up by low menials—was this system ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of mine in The West End distinctly hit the mark; it wasn't too flashy, it wasn't too solid. I heard fellows speak of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... yourself too much to one class," Tallente observed drily. "As a rule, the less intelligent the voter, the more easily he is caught by flashy legislation." ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have a stage without art, truth to life, or national significance. There is not a superfluous line in the play: all is drama, natural, simple, deep. There is no falsity, no forced situations, no sensational effects, none of the shallow or flashy caricatures of daily life that our heterogeneous public demands. All the reproach that lives for us in the word theatrical is worlds removed from "The Storm." The people who like 'farcical comedy' and social ...
— The Storm • Aleksandr Nicolaevich Ostrovsky
... traces of Peters. As Tom had said, the man was too prominent not to be noticed. He might have disguised himself, though it seemed that the promoter was a proud man, and liked to be seen in flashy clothes, a silk hat, and with a ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... "D'Aubigne," growled the flashy man with an oath, "what do I care about d'Aubigne? Advance, d'Aubigne, and all's well! You needn't ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... labours of past ages? New books (we mean new original works) are like dull, pointless flints; the reader cannot scintillate, strike-fire, or steal from them; they are mere changes of words, often at the sacrifice of sense to sound. A flashy novel would, perhaps, secure the writer more celebrity than Mr. Macculloch's Dictionary will obtain for him, though his reputation for talent and industry want not the false glory, the common-place praise—the dullest outpourings—of a very dull perception. Perhaps the whole ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... over now," said Emile, in his usual voice, "and except the chimneys and some fallen plaster there's really no damage done. But I'm afraid they have caught it pretty badly at the mission, and at San Francisco in those tall, flashy, rattle-trap buildings they're putting up. I've just sent off one ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... in fine, such as he could write only at that moment of his evolution as a man, and such as the Events could publish only at that period of its development as a newspaper. The report was flashy and vulgar and unscrupulous, but it was not brutal, except by accident, and not unkind except through the necessities of the case. But it was helplessly and thoroughly personal, and it was no more philosophized than a monkish chronicle of the ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... standing at the bar, and looking out of bleared eyes at a flashy lithograph tacked upon the wall which pictured a Spanish woman in short skirts and advertised "Espaniola Cigaroos," were two miners: one with curly hair and a pink-and-white complexion; the other, tall, loose-limbed and good-natured looking. They were ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... men whom Mr. Baker greeted in the smoking room, perhaps our hero would not have been quite so ready to continue his acquaintance with the man. For, in the little apartment were three individuals whose faces did not indicate any too much honesty, and whose clothes were on the same "flashy" order as were Mr. Baker's, though none of the trio had as expensive jewelry ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster
... of Liszts could do in piano literature; and yet the Arabs were the saviours of science, and promoted the greatest learning and depth of thought known in Europe in their time. As for Liszt, there is such an astounding wealth of poetry and deep feeling beneath the somewhat "flashy," bombastic trick of speech he inherited, that the true lover of music can no more allow his feelings to be led astray by such externals than one would judge a man's mind by the cut of his coat or the hat ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... of smart and florid passages that had evidently been industriously polished, and had something of the perishable brilliancy of varnish. There is a kind of vulgarity of mind so subtle as to resist every test but ink, and the cheap and flashy element in Mark's nature had formed a deposit, slight, perhaps, but perceptible in more than one page of 'Sweet Bells Jangled.' Mabel felt her heart grow heavier as she read. Why had he chosen to deliberately lower his level like this? Where were the strong and masterly touch, the tenderness and ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... a flashy style, not unlike what is popularly denominated a swell. His coarse features were disfigured with unhealthy blotches, and his outward appearance was hardly such as to recommend him. But to him alone the cold heart of ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... herself, Lady Anningford thought: "I suppose she is some flashy, pretty creature who has caught Hector's fancy, the poor darling. One never has chanced to find an Australian quite, quite a lady. I almost wish he would marry Morella and have ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... was saying. Deans, indeed, denied this stoutly, as an insult at once to his own talents for expounding hidden truths, of which he was a little vain, and to the Laird's capacity of understanding them. He said, "Dumbiedikes was nane of these flashy gentles, wi' lace on their skirts and swords at their tails, that were rather for riding on horseback to hell than gauging barefooted to heaven. He wasna like his father—nae profane company-keeper—nae swearer—nae ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... I have no right to say he has not, but he is a flashy slang style of youth, and I hope the young Wards will ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or that of the ladies of his family, may be on such a level that the public of the town, over the operatic arrangement of which he presides, may very well be compelled to hear endless repetitions of flashy operas that have long passed out of every respectable repertory; and in other countries the Government official within whose jurisdiction the opera falls may, and very often does, enforce the engagement of some musically ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... he wrote it in two languages, and it once had its vogue, is now little other than a Dance of Will-o'-wisps to us. A Book tawdry, incoherent, indistinct, at once flashy and opaque, full of idle excrescences and exuberances;—as is the poor man himself. He was "Chaplain to the Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry;" gyrating about as ecclesiastical Moon to that famed Solar Luminary, what could you ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... flashy bloke, Flanikin, 'e comes up, and says 'e, 'Jack Smith in?' says he—meanin' you, governor. 'Ain't no concern of yourn,' says I—not 'olding with them animals as comes to see yer. 'Yes it is,' says 'e, a blowin' with the run he'd 'ad. 'Tell 'im the moment 'e comes in that 'e's ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... He wore a flaring diamond ring around a glaring red necktie; and a loud checked suit that matched his voice perfectly. In fact, his whole make-up harmonised remarkably with the unearthly noise that issued from his throat. He was standing before a flashy-fronted building, on which was painted in large yellow letters, intended to be gold, the legend "Dime Museum." In the front entrance were several cheap wax figures of a theatrical nature, and some still cheaper ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... saw that the voice and hand belonged to the same person—a short, stout man, with sallow complexion and glistening black eyes. His dress was a curious compound of broad, glazed hat and blue shift of a sailor and the flashy check vest ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... a shame to have any of those girls associate with him!" burst out Fred indignantly. "He's not in their class at all—he's altogether too loud and flashy." ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... that this is the ordinary fate of truly original works, those that are destined to live the longest, especially if they burn no incense to the idols of prevailing worship, and be characterized by a style which, to say the least, is extraordinary. Flashy, brilliant, witty, yet superficial pictures of external life which everybody has seen and knows, are the soonest to find admirers; but a revelation of what is not seen, this is the work of seers and prophets whose ordinary destiny has been anything other than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... after that eventful Christmas in Egypt, Jack was sitting before the fire in Queen Mab's parlour, when Raymond was announced, and shown into the room. He was dressed, as usual, in good though rather flashy clothes; but in spite of this, he looked cheap and common, and his general appearance gave one the impression of dirt wrapped up in silver paper. The moment he saw Jack a spiteful look came into his face, and he took ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... was in love with a conjurer, a common, flashy fellow, who gave his mediocre exhibitions of legerdemain at such places as Le Jardin Exterieur, and had recently come to lodge at her mother's. She aspired to marry him, but did not dare to expect it. Her homage was very palpable, and monsieur Eugene Legrand, who had no matrimonial intentions, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... leads to an unnaturally early sexual life. Late hours, children's parties, sensational novels, 'flashy' papers, love stories, the drama, the ball-room, talk of beaux, love, and marriage,—that atmosphere of riper years which is so often and so injudiciously thrown around childhood,—all hasten the event which transforms the girl into ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... I ask your pardon," said the General, putting out his hand. "God knows who the failures of this life are; some of them go about very flashy semblances of success. In these parts we judge by the external signs, that are not always safest; for my son Sandy, who looks so thriving and so douce when he comes home, is after all a scamp whose hands are ever in his simple ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... has—how many children? Give you three guesses. All by one wife, too, and she is in evidence, and a native daughter. I saw her with my own eyes, black hair, dark skin, slight figure, voluble, smiling, large-knuckled hands and a flashy eye, oh! a long way from being uninteresting to John yet, or a merely "good woman." Well, how many children did they have, right there by the road?—eleven. Eight boys and three girls—and four dead, too. Fine boys and girls, one I ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... as they crossed the very old bridge of stone. Down by the water's edge stood their machine. Beside it on the grass were picnicking three people—a very good-looking girl, a very common-looking stout young man in flashy outing clothes, and a thin man of forty, well-dressed ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... time gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Tom Paine was considered for the time as a Tom Fool to him; Paley an old woman; Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of thought. "Throw aside your books of chemistry," said Wordsworth to a young man, a student in the Temple, "and read ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... invaluable Attwood has told me about it. This Mr. Chester has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general direction, it will be a flashy success, a ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... and submit. But that England should perish swindling and stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar houses and hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry; that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy arrogance of one man, and the narrow fanaticism of another; these events are within the power of human beings, and I did not think that the magnanimity of Englishmen would ever stoop to ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... nasty adornment, and every attempt which he makes to look seemly and pleasing tends subtly to raise his own character. Once or twice I have said that you cannot really love any one wholly unless you can sometimes laugh at him. Now I cannot laugh at the invertebrate haunter of flashy bars and theatre-stalls, because he has not the lovable element in him which invites kindly laughter; but I do smile—not unadmiringly—at our dandy, and forgive him his little eccentricities because I know ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... shots at his author, naturally he demanded a very conspicuous mark to fire at. But the author could not, in so brief a space, be always sure to crowd any very prominent objects on the eye, unless by being audaciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the sentiment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expression. "Come now, my friend," was Lord Chesterfield's morning adjuration to his author;" come now, cut it short—don't prose—don't hum and haw. "The author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers; probably ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... as follows: "Flashy people may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadduceeism can question them. I have not yet ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... colors is all one to me," said the unhappy Mr. Hornblower, proceeding with fatal facility to make a bad matter worse. "They're all too kind of flashy. Now, my mother used to have a dress," he continued, meeting Persis' sympathetic gaze, "that suited me down to the ground. Satin, it was, or maybe 'twas silk or velvet. Anyhow, it looked rich. And it was sort of silvery, and then again, darker'n ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... brought them books and chocolates, watered the garden, mowed the tennis ground, mended the bells, and made himself generally useful. At first this flashy, muddling, free-and-easy household had disgusted him; and his cool assured manner and critical air irritated his relatives; whilst his attitude of superior comment had proved a vexatious restraint. But week by week Douglas came to see that it was ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... of line, so they had quietly walked to the station by ten o'clock, arrived at Darminster at half-past eleven, and have been met by the personage whom Dolores recognized as Uncle Alfred. Constance was a little disappointed not to see something more distinguished, and less flashy in style, but he was so polite and complimentary, and made such touching allusions to his misfortunes and his dear sister, that she soon began to think him exceedingly interesting, and pitied him greatly when he said he could not take them to his lodgings—they were not fit for his niece ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought of you. 'I wonder what has become of him,' I said to myself." He did not remember my name, or perhaps he had never known it, so I had to introduce myself afresh. The contrast between his flashy clothes and my frowsy, wretched-looking appearance, as I saw ourselves in the mirrors on either side of me, made me sorely ill at ease. The brilliancy of the gaslight chafed my nerves. It was as though it had been turned on for the express ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... unanimously decreed that Abel Newt had lost tone. His dress was gradually becoming flashy. Younger sisters, who had heard their elders—who were married now—speak of the fascinating Mr. Newt, perceived that the fascinating Mr. Newt was a little too familiar when he flirted, and that his breath was offensive with spirituous fumes. He was noisy in the gentlemen's dressing-room. The stories ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... be so glad to see an old neighbor," the honest youth said, "for she did not know many folks in the city. 'Till had made some flashy acquaintances, of whom he did not think much, and they kept a few boarders, but nobody had called, and mother was real lonesome. He wished Miss Barlow would come; she would have no difficulty in finding them," and on a bit of paper he marked ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... brazen politicians, overdressed drummers, and flashy sporting men were pouring in to seek the "first aid to the weary," which the nearest available hotel affords to ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... said Mr. Harpworth, "that this crowd came here to-day only to eat Julia Templeton's auction luncheon. What's the matter with this here generation? You don't want things that are well made and durable, but only things that are cheap and flashy. Put 'er aside, Jake. We'll sell 'er yet to some historical museum devoted to the habits and customs of the ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... could not be a proper person for his cousin to know. He was sorry that Aunt Betsy's good nature had been stronger than her judgment, and that she had brought such a girl to Kingthorpe as a permanent resident. He had imagined her a flashy damsel, underbred, with a vulgar style of beauty, a superficial cleverness, and all those baser arts by which the needy sometimes ingratiate themselves into the favour of the rich. Nothing could be ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... was about. Bright eyes were watching him, and he meant to give them a treat. The girls like smooth work. Any roughneck could sail into a guy and knock the daylights out of him, but how few could be clever and flashy and scientific? Few, few, indeed, thought Mr. Butler as he slid in and ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... as remote from France as from Mars, figures that recalled the ancient days of one's youth, before the war; days in New York, for instance, where men in straw hats and white crash were common. These things we saw with amazement in Genoa! And then our eyes caught the flashy bands on their arms—bands that indicated that these men are in the industrial reserves, not drafted because they are doing industrial war work. But for all of these industrial reservists there was an overplus of men in Genoa. It is a ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... dissent from some of these remarks? You've cut your eye-teeth, have you? Possibly you forget that trip in the cars, when you 'cutely passed by the swell in flashy waistcoat and galvanized jewelry, and took a seat by a 'plain blunt man' in snuff-color; and after he had left the cars at the first station, and the conductor came to you and demanded, 'Your ticket, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and oh! such pretty curling hair! She is a mite of a woman, with a little thin face, not one of your noisy, flashy hoydens, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... oftentimes too late with some of you young, termagant, flashy sinners—you have all the guilt of the intention, and none of the pleasure of the practice—'tis true you are so eager in pursuit of the temptation, that you save the devil the trouble of leading you into it. Nor is it out ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... feature of the time as the Broadway swell. He, too, wore a silk hat, and it generally had a three-inch mourning band. His hair was worn in long, well-oiled locks in front, combed up with a peculiar twist. He wore a broad collar turned over, and a sailor tie, a flashy vest with a large amount of seal and chain, and wide trousers turned up. His coat he carried on his arm when the weather permitted, and he always had a cigar in the lower corner of his mouth. He walked with a swagger ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... thus his work never grew stale, and he was ready instantly with a hundred illustrative lights on any point which chanced to crop up either in conversation or in the course of his reading. The cheap and flashy writer is inclined to disdain the men who are thorough in their studies; but, while his work grows thin and poor, the judicious reader's becomes marked by more and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... benevolence, and charity, and pity, of this simple and kindly being? His vices even, if we may say so, are those of a man; there is nothing morbid or mawkish in any of Fielding's heroes; no passionate pleasing extenuation, such as one finds in the pseudo-moral romances of the sentimental character; no flashy excuses like those which Sheridan puts forward (unconsciously, most likely), for those brilliant blackguards who are the chief characters of his comedies. Vice is never to be mistaken for virtue in Fielding's honest downright ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... operations and productions; there is no false conclusion, nor straining inferences, in avering, that the art of dancing could not but be a great gainer by a revival of the taste of the antients for the pantomime branch; which, upon the theatre, converted a transient flashy amusement of the eye, into a rational or sensible entertainment, and made of dancers, who are otherwise, a mere mechanical composition of feet, legs, and arms, without spirit or meaning, artists formed to paint with the most pathetic expression, the most striking situations of human nature: ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... well nigh ended the Drury Lane players transplanted "Cato" to the scholarly environment of Oxford, where, as friend Cibber tells us, "a great deal of that false, flashy wit and forc'd humour," which had been the delight of London, was rated at "its bare intrinsick value." The play was admirably suited to the temper of a university audience, and its success proved so great, its sentiment so uplifted, that Dr. Sandridge, Dean of Carlisle, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the atrocities'! The flashy, bombastic phraseology came back to me with grim insistence that night when I went down at eight o'clock to look after the boilers and pumps and to make, with entirely inadequate means, those brass screws for the dynamo-engine. ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... Rossini and Meyerbeer dominated the operatic world. The native operatic composers, Auber and Boieldieu, Adam and Halevy, combined the slacknesses of both without achieving anything at all comparable to their flashy brilliance. As far as the accent of their music went, they floated cheerfully somewhere between Germany and Italy. And when something recognizably indigenous did put in its appearance in the operas of Thomas and Gounod, it did but the veriest lip-service to ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... hideous white brick castle, with its paltry half-dozen acres, entered by lodges of the utmost pretension, and his coach-houses full of flashy carriages, with the family coat-of-arms(!) upon each, I thought the whole place one of the most contemptible patches of snobbery on this fair earth; and I was glad my father's toil-bleared eyes were hid in the grave, so that they should not have the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... She had changed her morning dress for a purple silk, which was smartly trimmed, but by no means fresh, and she had dressed her hair, and refreshed her complexion by a liberal application of violet powder. She had a look which can only be described as "flashy"—a look that struck Clarissa unpleasantly, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... in the crowd, which parted. At the farther end of the lane thus made, a flashy young gypsy was seen, with a somnolent ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones—or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost of living. The storekeepers ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... anything, was meaner and shabbier than the others and bore over its window the name Reuben Murgatroyd—Watchmaker and Jeweller. There were few signs of jewellery in Reuben Murgatroyd's window—some cheap clocks, some foreign-made watches of the five-shilling and seven-and-six variety, a selection of flashy rings and chains were spread on the shelves, equally cheap and flashy bangles, bracelets, and brooches lay in dust-covered trays on the sloping bench beneath them. At these things Pratt cast no more ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... stone steps leading from the front door were covered with fine carpeting, which also stretched away to the street, to the spot where the guests were to alight from their carriages. On both sides of the carpet stood serried ranks of the Stadtholder's lackeys in their flashy gold-trimmed liveries. They were headed by the count's two stewards, with golden wands in their hands, broad gold bands about their shoulders, and monstrous three-cornered hats upon their heads. It was very fine to look upon, and not merely ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... grave and respectable authority, to prove the existence of these evil influences, that it requires a pen hardier than any we wield, to attack them without a suitable motive. "Flashy people," says the learned and pious Cotton Mather, Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of the Royal Society, "may burlesque these things; but when hundreds of the most sober people, in a country where they have as much ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... may be my ideas are rather crude, but really I cannot imagine I could ever make butter! Do you think I could, Mr. Desmonde?" leaning forward to catch Louis' eye, and plying her flashy fan with renewed energy and great care to show the ring of emeralds and diamonds that ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... for aiding, they are still more useful for correcting each other; for as they have their particular merits severally, so they have their defects, and the most extensive acquaintance with one can produce only an intellect either too flashy or too jejune, or infected with some other fault of confined reading. History, for example, shows things as they are, that is, the morals and interests of men disfigured and perverted by all their imperfections of passion, folly, and ambition; philosophy ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... who, in ragged jackets, greasy leathern breeches and huge jack boots, are urging them on. Two men sit at ease on the coach box. One, a tall young fellow, looks at a distance like a field-officer in a flashy uniform, but is only an English footman in a gaudy livery, who needs the training of a London winter or two, in a fashionable household, to make him a flunky of the first water. The other, an old man, with a severe ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... while? Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a grasshopper after a prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be a year or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of this flashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man would want the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfied with the new conditions; he wouldn't want ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... spreading before LAURA'S eyes a panorama of the inevitable depravity that awaits her. She is torn from every ideal that she so weakly endeavoured to grasp, and is thrown into the mire and slime at the very moment when her emancipation seems to be assured. The woman, with her flashy dress in one arm and her equally exaggerated type of picture hat in the other, is nearly prostrated by the tune and the realization of the future as it is terrifically conveyed to her. The negress, in the happiness of serving LAURA in her questionable career, picks up the melody and hums ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... her commands, and by the name and address she had given me, I soon found out the house; by the porter I sent word of the circumstance [of my having brought] a letter. The moment he heard [my message,] a handsome young negro, with a flashy turban on his head, came out to me; though his colour was dark, his countenance was full of animation. He took the note from my hand, but said nothing, asked no questions, and at the same pace [without a pause] entered the house. ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... in a very flashy style. He wore a black velvet jacket with silver buttons, a scarlet waistcoat, trousers with broad blue stripes, a Cashmere shawl for a girdle with ends loosely floating, and a chimney-pot hat covered with flowers and streamers. This disguise ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... honesty and sterling qualities which the country teaches her children in the hard, but successful, school of experience, to offset the flashy supercilious lessons which the city teaches hers; for the city is a careless nurse and teacher, who thinks more of the cut of a coat than of the habit of mind; who feeds her children on colored candy and popcorn, ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... that you'll take better care, Nor for a little bub come the slang upon your fare; [9] Your jazy pays the garnish, unless the fees you tip, [10] Though you're a flashy coachman, here the gagger holds the whip, With my tow row, etc. Chorus omnes We're scamps, we're pads, we're divers, we're all upon the lay, In Tothill-fields gay sheepwalk, like lambs we sport and play; Rattling up our darbies, ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... with a flashy and condescending mother just round the corner beyond the gardener's cottage, and opposite the west end of the church. They were comparatively new inhabitants of Tilling, having settled here only two or three years ago, and Tilling had not yet quite ceased to regard them as rather suspicious ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... incidents, indeed. I could fill a book of interesting anecdotes. Once when I was among the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, in the summer of 1902, a characteristic woman with a very low dress, with a very long train, the whole a mixture of paint, powder, lace, flashy jewelry and corset stays, with as much exposure of person as she dare, came to me in an affected manner, handed me a roll saying: "I am a temperance lecturer, here is one of my bills." I replied: "If you are such, you had better make a practical ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... You ran away from school. It was romance. You thought you loved this flashy travelling man. And I—I loved adventure, loved the truth. I wanted to destroy the force called "They." There is no "They"—we're all together here, And everyone must live, Christ Perko too, The pulp-mill, the policeman, magistrate, The alderman, the precinct ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... see," she murmured: "they have undoubtedly heard that I am a brazen face and a minx, and awfully extravagant and flashy in style; so simplicity in dress and modesty of demeanor will best suit me now. I must not wear my paste diamonds, for though I've no idea Lady Jane can tell them from the real, she would think them far too expensive for people in our circumstances, and ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... tell him: for one who can look forwarder than the nine days of wonder, can easily despise so flashy and so transient a glare. And were I fond of compliments, it would not, perhaps, be the way to be pleased, in that respect, if I were ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Brungers. And if, again, the Brungers do not dog the footsteps of your fifty-thousand-pound men, your embezzlement-over-a-period-of-ten-years men, your cheque-forging men—if the Brungers are invited to do no dogging after these, there are pickings for them in less flashy crimes. Hiding in cupboard work while the sweated little shop- assistant slips a marked shilling from the till, hiding in basement work while a trembling little figure creeps down and pilfers the stock—these are the pranks that come to ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... unsuitable for her. Of the man's ability and position, as certainly also of his manners, the world at large seemed to speak well. He had been blackballed at two clubs, but apparently without any defined reason. He lived as though he possessed a handsome income, and yet was in no degree fast or flashy. He was supposed to be an intimate friend of Mr. Mills Happerton, one of the partners in the world-famous commercial house of Hunky and Sons, which dealt in millions. Indeed there had been at one time a rumour that he was ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... "but hasn't it been said before?" or, "Precisely! I wonder I didn't do or say the same thing myself." Whenever you hear such criticisms upon any performance, you may be sure that it has been directed by a sound instinct. It is not a sort of criticism any one is apt to make upon flashy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... not trust the amiable weaknesses of human nature, and therefore it will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though benevolence, good intent, and patriotic purpose come along with it. Neither does it satisfy itself with flashy and temporary resistance to illegal authority. Far otherwise. It seeks for duration and permanence. It looks before and after; and, building on the experience of ages which are past, it labors diligently for the benefit of ages to come. This is the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... "make the principal chief of a tribe my friend by a piece of vermilion, a pocket looking-glass, some flashy-looking beads, and a knife. These things made him a puppet in ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... in the county and in most respects was obvious enough. Hawker, the old squire, had been a loose, unsatisfactory sort of person, had been on bad terms with his first wife (who died, as some said, of neglect), and had then married a flashy South American Jewess with a fortune. But he must have worked his way through this fortune also with marvelous rapidity, for he had been compelled to sell the estate to Verner and had gone to live in South America, possibly on his wife's estates. ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... in plot, and like most first books, flashy and overdrawn. And yet there is a deal of power in it, and the thinly veiled characters were speedily pointed out as living personages. Literary London went agog, and Mrs. Austen fanned the flame by inviting "the set" to her drawing-room to hear the great author ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... scratching in a tub of earth to find a bone—just like a real dog; and that was his greatest trick. When he had successfully performed it, his master (the Little Wonder) presented him with a twopenny cigar clothed in a flashy cummerbund, to show how generously he rewarded achievements. Then, as the curtain fell, he retired with many bows—and in the wings gave the Marvel a hot time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... that is, their shutters up, all except one establishment, garishly lighted and of defiantly rakish, appearance, with the words Cafe Chantant written up in jets of gas; and within this Cafe, as we jolt along, I espy a dame du comptoir, a weary waiter, and two or three second-class, flashy-looking customers, drinking, smoking, perhaps arguing, at all events, gesticulating, which, with the low-class Frenchmen, comes to much the same thing in the end, the end probably being their expulsion from the drinking-saloon. Where is the chantant portion of the cafe? I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 5, 1891 • Various |
