"Flippancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pains,' he says, 'with my articles, framing my style upon conveyancing and special pleading, so that it might be solid, well-connected, and logical, and enable me to get back to the Paradise of 3l. 10s. an article, from which, as I strongly suspected, my flippancy had excluded me.' 'Flippancy' was clearly not in his line. Besides the 'Christian Observer,' I find that the 'Law Magazine' took a few articles from him, but there is no trace of other writings until 1855. In that year was published the first number of 'Cambridge Essays,' which, in alliance ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... This deplorable flippancy would overlook the serious fact that permanent or even prolonged celibacy on the part of large numbers of young men and young women is a great social evil. The consequences of that evil we shall observe ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... and grim actuality, he realises with dismay his breach of trust—he, who in their earlier days in London had called out that sprightly little emigre merely for the vulgar flippancy (aimed in compliment, too, at the grave aide-de-camp), "that the fate of the late Count weighed somewhat lightly upon Madame de Savenaye;" he, who had struck that too literary countryman of his own across the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... waited for her tried his soul. The Governor was the one man who had ever roused in him a deep affection, and the dread of finding that under his flippancy, his half-earnest, half-boyish make-believe devotion to the folk of the underworld, he was really an irredeemable rogue, tortured him. These were disloyal thoughts; he hated himself for his doubts. It was ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... restraining a man from proceeding to ruin unless some steadying agency is allied with them. After much sad brooding, I cannot but conclude that a fervent religious faith is the only thing that will give complete security; and it will be a bitter day for England and the world if ever flippancy and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... chaps have come so early," he said, with a sort of schoolboy flippancy, "for we can all start for France together. Yes, I'm in the force right enough," and he flicked a blue card towards them lightly as a ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... you from these three fatal F's—fathers, friends and females!" Having said which, he drank thirstily and thereafter sat frowning down at his broken boots beneath the brim of his woebegone hat, apparently lost in bitter thought. And beholding him thus, his flippancy forgotten, his air of dashing ferocity laid aside, I saw he was pale and thin and haggard and much younger than I had thought. Suddenly, chancing to meet my eye, his pale cheeks flushed painfully, then, squaring ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... prowess of your arm this night; I never saw a tilt by candle-light!" Gaily she spoke, and seemed all unconcerned; And yet a curious watcher might have learned From a slight quaver in her laughter free To doubt the frankness of her flippancy. Gawayne, bewildered, looked the other way, And wondered what she meant; for in that day The ready wit of man was under muzzle, And woman's heart was still an unsolved puzzle; And Gawayne, though in valor next to none, Wished that her heart ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... It is no mere flippancy to say that the War did much for Rupert Brooke. The boy who had written many hot, morbid, immature verses and a handful of perfect poetry, stands now by one swift translation in the golden cloudland of English ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... philosophical, that is, being interpreted, with idiotic tranquillity, I see that, in point of fact, he has never entered into the question at all; that he has failed to realize the terrible moment of the questions (however they may be decided) of which he speaks with such amazing flippancy. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... much speaking. jaw; gabble; jabber, chatter; prate, prattle, cackle, clack; twaddle, twattle, rattle; caquet[obs3], caquetterie[Fr]; blabber, bavardage[obs3], bibble-babble[obs3], gibble-gabble[obs3]; small talk &c. (converse) 588. fluency, flippancy, volubility, flowing, tongue; flow of words;.flux de bouche[Fr], flux de mots[Fr]; copia verborum[Lat], cacoethes loquendi[Lat]; furor loquendi[Lat]; verbosity &c. (diffuseness) 573; gift of the gab &c. (eloquence) 582. talker; chatterer, chatterbox; babbler &c. v.; rattle; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... intrigue. He is in great repute for his smile that is transcendent in its beauty, but one can never tell what note it rings, whether true or false; its condiment may be of malice, hate, reserve, flippancy, deception. And one looks on and fears to take part in his mirth, for the reason one knows not what lies beneath ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... showing traces of recent tears. Susie was absent, having no heart for food or company, and preferring to sit beside her mother for the brief time which remained to her. Even Meeteetse Ed shared in the general depression, and therefore it was in no spirit of flippancy that he observed as he replaced his ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... genius of the Scottish people with the sign manual of dogmatism, otherwise called the perfervidum Scotorum, it has also assisted to secure for Scottish preachers a world-wide reputation for eloquence and power. Flippancy and sciolism may pass muster at the bar, or even in the Senate House; but to be effective, the pulpit must possess in a high degree the qualities of earnestness and an ability to "prove all things." Few men have been more strongly fortified with these essentials to success than Dr. William ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of their Martinico fleet. You will ask why we should not attack that too? They tell one, that if we began hostilities in Europe, Spain would join the French. Some believe that the latter are not ready: certain it is, Mirepoix gave them no notice nor suspicion of our flippancy; and he is rather under a cloud—indeed this has much undeceived me in one point: I took him for the ostensible mister; but little thought that they had not some secret agent of better head, some priest, some Scotch or Irish Papist-or perhaps some English Protestant, to give them better ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... said, wounded at what appeared to be his flippancy. He did not mind the entreaty, but the tone with its delicate note of pathos was like a reproach. He could not explain; he could not tell her that he had penetrated her mood and understood. He said ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... display, and of glory,—quiets the murmur about to rise against interference with human rights or usurpation of the national will. Political interests of the gravest character are treated with flippancy: one writer calls the formation of a new government Talleyrand's table of whist; and another casually observes that "tous les gouvernements nouveaux ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... see why you lay so much stress on Puritanism," he said. "What has Puritanism resulted in? Its whole struggle has come to an end in doubt and agnosticism and flippancy. Intellectual curiosity has taken the place of spiritual stress; ethical casuistry or theological amusements seem to me to stand instead ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... had stopped for a moment to listen. His face, which at first had worn an expression of smiling flippancy, now changed its aspect. He recognized the music, and felt his heart heat wildly. With a commanding gesture, he motioned Matuschka to withdraw, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... bite of a mosquito!) Frederick Myers ejaculated, "How august, how limitless a thing was Tennyson's own spirit's upward flight!" The Duke of Argyll, again, during the space of forty years, had found him "always reverent, hating all levity or flippancy," and was struck by his possessing "the noblest humility I have ever known." Lord Macaulay, who "had stood absolutely aloof," once having been permitted to glance at the proof-sheets of Guenevere, was "absolutely subdued" to "unfeigned and reverent ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... with suspicion on the whole outfit, and evidently did not like the tone of the American. He seemed to be treating the customs department in a light and airy manner, and the officer was too much impressed by the dignity of his position not to resent flippancy. Besides, there were rumors of Fenian invasion in the air, and the officer resolved that no Fenian should get into the ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... in Christianity. There was much earnestness in some of its champions; nor was there any absence of warm attachment to the morality and religious influence of the Scriptures. Thus it differed widely from the flippancy and frivolity of the Deists of France. We cannot, however, consider Lord Herbert's serious reflections on the publication of his chief work as a fair specimen of the tone of his coadjutors. They were mostly inferior ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... appears some wretched pun or jest or scurrility. Our present remedy lies in a book of selections, in which we can enjoy the poetry without being unpleasantly reminded of the author's besetting sins of flippancy and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... like, in excuse of my own flippancy, to assume the same detachment, and to regard this ballet-theme as having practically no relation whatever to Biblical history, but being just one of many themes out of Oriental lore, mostly secular, that lend themselves to the drama ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... am a saucy creature. I know, if I do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and cogent of ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Where are your manners, child? What would Garston say if he heard your flippancy?' But by the way he stroked his beard and looked at me, I saw he was not displeased. No one would have taken him for my uncle who had seen us together, for he was a young-looking man, and I was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a laugh, but it was not infectious as respected the occasion of it. He shook his head mournfully, and said, "The flippancy of rude health—the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... been offered in reply to Mr. Goodwin, and his notions of "Mosaic Cosmogony." He writes with the flippancy of a youth in his teens, who having just mastered the elements of natural science, is impatient to acquaint the world with his achievement. His powers of dogmatism are unbounded; but he betrays ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... homeliness, an old-fashioned peace in the land. The swaggering conqueror, the arrogant Berliner type of all that is unpleasant, modern and insolent now overruns Germany. The ingenuousness, the naive quality that made dear the art of the Fatherland, has disappeared. In its place is smartness, flippancy, cynicism, unbelief, and the critical faculty developed to the pathological point. I thought of Schubert, and sighed in the presence of all this wit and savage humor. Bayreuth is full of doctrinaires. They eagerly ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... said, "Yes'm," and withdrew. Then Mrs. Duncan resumed her questioning with manifest eagerness, but with as much of seriousness as Duncan himself had shown. There was no touch of flippancy, or even of lightness in either her words or her tone. For Mrs. Will Hallam was a woman of deep and tender feeling, a woman to whom all holy things ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... often written and often spoken; nor can it ever be praised more than it deserves. However "within its magic circle none dare walk"[84] but those who have naturally quick and refined perceptions, assisted by careful cultivation. Narrow indeed is the boundary which divides unfeminine flippancy from the graceful nonsense which good authority and our own feelings pronounce to be "exquisite."[85] The unsuccessful attempt at its imitation always reminds me of Pilpay's fable of the Donkey and the Lapdog:—The poor ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Iphigenia, was mainly assisted by the proper adoption of this natural action of Agamemnon. Mr Fuseli, whose criticism is always acute, and generally just and true, has well discussed the subject, and properly commented upon the flippancy of Falconet. After showing the many ways in which the painter might have expressed the parent's grief, and that none of them would be decere, pro dignitate, digne, he adds—'But Timanthes had too true ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... during this conversation were many and varied. What he was pleased to term his inner moral consciousness told him he ought to be shocked at its flippancy; the rest of his mental make-up was distinctly refreshed. Besides, a certain tension in the social atmosphere suggested that Miss Matilda was about to go forth to battle, so he ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... it? This is dreadful." As she ran her eye over the article she saw that it was quite in harmony with the general tone and policy of the paper which catered to the jaded throngs of the Tenderloin. Truth had been cunningly distorted; flippancy, sensationalism, and a salacious double meaning ran ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... a shiver through Mrs. Branscome with a remembrance of the desecration of a gift which she had cherished as a holy thing. She clung to flippancy as her defence. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... that at the time of the insurrection in Hungary our ears were battered by the press and by novelists about the famous citadel of Komorn; and la Peyrade knew that by assuming a tone of indifference or flippancy he was more likely to succeed ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience wearing a mask of flippancy." ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... speak more eloquently than any words that could be used to amplify them in portraying the hideousness of a system of government that, if permitted to continue, must inevitably crush out the home in large part by the flippancy with which marriage and divorce are regarded, by the refusal of permitting the land to be held in private ownership, and by refusing the parent the right at death to pass on to his wife or to his children the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... wish to hit Pennington. But there was no reason why he should. Pennington's particular kind of flippancy was merely a result of his having been, in those far days before he was a remittance man, an Oxford graduate. So was his soft and charmingly inflected voice. But, quite reasonlessly, it was all Francis could do to respond with the politeness which is due to your almost irreplaceable ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... evidently cost its author great pains; it is filled with detail, and with considerable gossip concerning the hero, which is piquant, and, if true, important. The style is meant to be lively, and in some passages is pleasant enough; but it is marked with a flippancy, which, after a few pages, becomes very disagreeable. It abounds with the slang usually confined to sporting papers. According to the author, a civil man is "as civil as an orange," a well-dressed man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... had not been Railsford's only support at present, he would have resented this professional flippancy ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... surroundings. He who has never learned obedience can never become his own master, and whoever is not his own master through all his life lacks the mental soundness and mental balance which a harmonious life demands. Flippancy and carelessness, haphazard interests and recklessness must result, mediocrity wins the day, cheap aims pervade the social life, hasty judgments, superficial emotions, trivial problems, sensational excitements, and vulgar pleasures ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... I might have reduced this boy to his proper magnitude, for I never could endure young flippancy; but my spirits were so low that the boy banged the door with a fine sense of having vanquished me. And before there was any temptation to ring Bell A, not to mention Bell B, the sound of a wrathful voice began coming. Nearer and nearer it came, till the Major strode into the "ladies' ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... over and over again. He had never seen anything exactly like it. There was a genial flippancy about it that was new to him, and he wondered what sort of a man the New Yorker was. Mr. Brant wrote to a stranger with the familiarity of an old friend, yet the letter warmed Buel's heart. He smiled at the idea the American ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... Disraeli said that he had watched him during Johnny's speech, and doubted whether the hanging of the head, etc., was merely acting; but before he had spoken two sentences he saw he was a beaten fox. Many said that the extreme flippancy and insolence of his manner was more remarkable than ever, from their being evidently assumed with difficulty. I have always thought Palmerston very much overrated as a speaker; his great power arose from his not only ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... or to give a judgment upon the Encyclopaedia. Luckily he had Warrington to laugh at him and to keep down his impertinence by a constant and wholesome ridicule, or he might have become conceited beyond all sufferance; for Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his young aide-de-camp, and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen's light and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder coadjutor brought ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sanctuary—you see I have remembered the words—the trees for medicine and healing, even the fish,—why I never thought there could be anything like that in the Bible! You chose it purposely, of course?" The young man did not reply for an instant. A hint of flippancy in the speech of his companion seemed to create a ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... are always timely," the young fellow answered, the excitement under which he laboured and the occasion imparting a spice of flippancy to his tone. "I come to warn you that your life is in danger. Do not go alone, M. de Crillon, or pass this way at night! And whatever you do, walk for the future in the middle of ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... inquiring nor sympathetic; and her manner all the evening had a nervous dryness that took away the pleasure of their tete-a-tete. Any old friend of Letty's, indeed, could hardly have failed to ask what had become of that small tinkling charm of manner, that girlish flippancy and repartee, that had counted for so much in George's first impressions of her? They were no sooner engaged than it had begun to wane. Was it like the bird or the flower, that adorns itself only for the wooing time, ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in her testimony and was excused. She had borne her grilling exceedingly well, and, in spite of her flippancy, there was a ring of sincerity about the ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I dare not question her. The wisdom that has made her understand how serious the effect of my plans may be must also make her fear their possible flippancy. ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... whether he was unprepared; and the whole congregation would sigh out the response that Mr. Dishart had hit it. When he replied audibly to the minister's uncomfortable questions, a pained look at his flippancy travelled from the pulpit all round the pews; and when he only bowed his head in answer, the minister paused sternly, and the congregation wondered what the man meant. Little wonder that Davie Haggart took to drinking when his turn came ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... this scene from the similar scene in Job is its irreverence. Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, and few would deny that at times this flippancy is painful to them. The only excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. I believe that here Mephistopheles represents ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... his batteries! He complained to the Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to me in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and the flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by a gentleman whose pseudo- scholarly attainments should at lest have taught him the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire variety of the genus Sus. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... words set down by the men they name, have no more capacity for reading the hearts of the men themselves, through those words, than a blind man has for discerning the colour of flowers. As a consequence of this flippancy of reading, numberless writers, whose works have long been consigned to a well-merited oblivion, have of late years been disinterred and held up for public admiration, chiefly upon the ground that they are ancient and unknown. The man who reads for the ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... of such a person," said the Emperor. The demon rejoined, "Hsue means to desire Emptiness, because in Emptiness one can fly just as one wishes; Hao, 'Devastation,' changes people's joy to sadness. "The Emperor, irritated by this flippancy, was about to call his guard, when suddenly a great devil appeared, wearing a tattered head-covering and a blue robe, a horn clasp on his belt, and official boots on his feet. He went up to the sprite, tore out one of his eyes, crushed it up, and ate it. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... is stupid. Upon a short acquaintance, that heaviness which leaves to others the whole weight of discourse, and whole search of entertainment, is the most fatiguing, but, upon a longer intimacy, even that is less irksome and less offensive, than the flippancy which hears ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... too, at the Yard," he continued. He was too disturbed in mind for flippancy. "It was this cattle-maiming business that sent poor old Scott's number up," he added, referring to Detective Inspector Scott's failure to solve the mystery. "Now the general's making a terrible row. Threatens me ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... sacred in his eyes. A keel once drifted against the bow of a man-of-war, and the first lieutenant of the vessel inquired, "Do you know the consequences of damaging one of her Majesty's ships?" The keelman was unprepared with an answer to this problem, but with characteristic flippancy he inquired, "Div ye knaw the conseekue of a keel losin' her tide?" The keelman's ignorance of all objects not to be seen on the river is really strange. Two worthies wanted to go on board a brig called the "Swan." The vessel ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... namely, of the tongue (laklaka), of the stomach (kabkaba), and of the sex (zabzaba), will have guarded himself against all evil. But Khalid reads not in the Hadith of the Prophet. And that he became audacious, edacious, and loquacious, is evident from such wit and flippancy as he here likes to display. "Some women," says he, "might be likened to whiskey, others to seltzer water; and many are those who, like myself, care neither for the soda or the whiskey straight. A 'high-ball' I ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Grant. A little woodland flower, just ready for plucking." A sentimental tone, but there was in his expression a ribald flippancy that sent a shudder through me. "She has quite overcome you, Grant. Well, why not me as well? I am certainly more of a man than you. We must admit that Perona had a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... not like this. It savoured of flippancy, and he was about entering upon a discussion to prove that Sadness had no soul, when Joe, with blood-shot eyes and dishevelled clothes, staggered in and ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... and let your vengeance fall upon his devoted head. Then it was that the overflowings of your 'native malignancy' hurled the tears of loyalty down your pallid cheeks. Then it was that your natural flippancy gave rapid birth to the most gross, unqualified and unjustifiable abuse I ever heard heaped, not only upon a member of Parliament, but even upon the commonest member of society. 'Am I,' said you, 'the son of a U. E. Loyalist, who fought ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... might have been privately a little shocked by such aged flippancy, but she was at the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... date as that of the preceding letter, February 21, the following appeared in the "Congressional Globe," and its very curtness and flippancy is indicative of the indifference of the public in general to this great invention, and the proceedings which are summarized cast discredit on the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... quick glance at the boy, a glance with reproof in it for such a flippancy. Vaguely he had heard that this young man had done things not expected from a Foote; had, for instance, gone in for athletics at the university. It was reported he had actually allowed himself to be carried once on the shoulders ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... indeed whether Adam ever made use of a written language at all; since we find no mention made of any in the sacred history."—Bicknell's Gram., Part ii, p. 5. A certain late writer on English grammar, with admirable flippancy, cuts this matter short, as follows,—satisfying himself with pronouncing all speech to be natural, and all writing artificial: "Of how many primary kinds is language? It is of two kinds; natural or spoken, and artificial ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... his flippancy, appalling in the circumstances, sufficiently revealed the man he was. The man she had known and married had never existed. For she had married Walter Majendie believing him to be good. The belief had been so rooted in her that nothing but his own words ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... to the charms of a perfect face, a low and modulated voice and a mind that never mistook flippancy and triviality for wit, he met her everywhere on common ground, and she wondered why she had not seen the attractions of this grave, quiet young man long before! Surely such a conquest—and she was not certain yet that it was achieved—was ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... first of the French writers of comedy to treat love seriously,[107] but, though he freed the theme from the malice or flippancy with which it had been treated by his predecessors, he was nevertheless a stranger to that intense and passionate love that we have come to associate with the romantic drama. Some have gone so far as to say that it is not amour at all that he portrays, but only ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... predictions of the failure of modern democracy on some obiter dictum of Thucydides or Plato and assessing the fate of the British Commonwealth in terms borrowed from some judgement of Sallust or Tacitus on its wholly different Roman prototype. It is flippancy or pedantry like this which gives rise to the onslaughts of a Cobden or Herbert Spencer or an H. G. Wells and to the practical man's suspicion of a classical education. One might as well go to last year's market reports for guidance in a business deal of to-day as have recourse to Plato, or, for ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... content anywhere, murdering your fellow-men," said Mrs. Russell. "You won't mind my incurable flippancy, will you? I can't ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... of mine, eh! I'll show you it's some business of mine. I am going to tell her all I know about you. I have been a rotter and worse than a rotter." The old flippancy had gone and the harsh voice was vibrant with purpose. "My path has been littered with the wrecks of human lives," he said bitterly, "and they are mostly women. I broke the heart of the best woman in the world, and I am going to see ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... on November 12, 1879; and there is a special if a secondary sense in which we may use the phrase that he was born a fighter. It may seem in some sad fashion a flippancy to say that he argued from his very cradle. It is certainly, in the same sad fashion, a comfort, to remember one truth about our relations: that we perpetually argued and that we never quarrelled. In a sense it was the psychological truth, I fancy, that we never quarrelled ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... culprits, as well as a determined assertor of its own political maxims. The common idea regarding its chief conductor represented him as a man of extraordinary sharpness, alternating between epigrammatic flippancy and democratic rigour. Gentle and refined feeling would certainly never have been attributed to him. It will now be found that he was at all times of his life a man of genial spirit towards the entire circle ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... began to read what he had written. He finished the paragraph which owed its insertion to Clowes, and raced hurriedly on to the next. To his surprise the flippancy passed unnoticed, at any rate, verbally. As a rule the headmaster preferred that quotations from back numbers of Punch should be kept out of the prefects' English Essays. And he generally said as much. But today he seemed strangely preoccupied. A split infinitive in ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... fearful, lustful, hateful, as the case might be. He had loved to play with her in the former days, to work upon her passions and watch the changes, to note her features mirror every varying emotion from tenderness to flippancy, from anger to delight, and, at his bidding, to see the pale cheeks glow with love's fire, the eyes grow heavy, the dainty lips invite kisses. Cherry was a perfect little spoiled animal, he reflected, and ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... any matter, and the atmosphere of intense and morbid gloom which Poe casts over so many of his weird tales is not characteristic of the short story in general. At the same time I am far from advocating flippancy or superficiality, for both are deadly sins in literature. I merely wish to impress upon you the absurdity of the solemn tone which some amateurs seem to think a mark of depth of thought or feeling. An apt, simple ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... a police officer; it's not my business," I answered gruffly. I thought this flippancy ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... and a few leading Conservatives," said Lord Denton with flippancy. "The workingman who has the courage to refuse to work, and the Liberal members who have the grit to demand salaries for upsetting the Constitution, led by a few eminent Ministers who delight to remove their neighbour's landmark, and relieve his pocket, are the splendid fellows of the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... he calls it, and fellow-dignity; for we never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the stout-heartedness of being familiar ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I was thinking in my heavy way that ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... to his ideas of fitness, should have come to them cap in hand; and as a natural consequence, the story, no doubt exaggerated when it reached him, loses nothing under his transforming and malicious pen. Stripped of its decorative flippancy, however, there remains but little that can really be regarded as "humiliating." Scott himself suggests, what is most unquestionably the case, that the blind man was the novelist's half-brother, afterwards ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... to know a man inside out, in seven weeks," she said, with wilful flippancy. "Especially if, from the first, he shows so plainly ... Maurice, don't be angry. You have always been kind to me; you're not going to fail me now that I really need help? I have no one else, as you very ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... ignorant of this mild flippancy, actually undertook to run a vulgar five for an overthrow: and by like methods succeeded in amassing a score of ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... standard of a life spent cut off from the practical ways of the world. He repeated to himself Beatrice Cary's assurance—"All men do not carry their heart on their sleeve." He told himself that behind the jarring flippancy there still could lurk a hidden depth and greatness. Nevertheless the received impression was stronger than all argument. The climber, apparently unhurt, had sustained ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... waste paper has risen forty per cent, and I can't afford to buy it—all Bonaparte's Letters, Arthur Young's Treatise on Corn, and one or two more light-armed infantry, which I thought better suited the flippancy of London discussion than the dignity of Keswick thinking. Mary says you will be in a passion about them when you come to miss them; but you must study philosophy. Read Albertus Magnus de Chartis Amissis five times over after ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... scold you for your flippancy this morning, but you have only to sing to take the words out of my mouth, ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... were put into plain words. "Ye must ken," said a godly old Scotchman, "that the Almighty may often have to do in His offeeshial capacity what He would scorn to do as a private individual!" I quote this not with flippancy but with stern indignation. That is baldly what such ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... It was as though she spoke of something very sacred. Then very musically Lady Drogheda laughed, and to the eye she was all flippancy. "La, William, I can't bury myself in the country until the end of time," she said, "and make interminable custards," she added, "and superintend the poultry," she said, "and for recreation play short whist ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... nearly his contemporaries. Thackeray is sophisticated; fortune's buffets have left him still a tender interest in life, but pity rather than hopefulness gives color to his mood. Dickens's sentiment seldom rings perfectly true; too often it is sharped to flippancy, or flatted to mawkishness. The tone of Irving, in sentiment or in humor, is the clear and even utterance of a healthy nature. It was a period of sickly sentimentalism in which he began to write; men drew tears frequently and mechanically then, ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... dared any such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man's praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had been chosen with many doubts, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... his flippancy aside. "I mean, are you too much hurt to ride? I'm not going to leave you here like a wounded coyote. Can you follow me ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... I don't think you're quite alive to what it is that is growing up about you. Flippancy is out of place. I abominate flippancy." ("Well, dash it, it's my house!" Sabre thought.) "This Garden Home is not a speculation. It's not a fad. It's not a joke. What is it? You're thinking it's a damned nuisance. You're right. It ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... these nicknames," Miss Scudamore said. "There is a flippancy about them of which I do ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... "Oh, all right!" Owen's flippancy disturbed Barry, and he spoke shortly, whereupon Owen smiled meaningly, and Barry went out ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... that the praise of even this common man, proud of his own vanity, should be undeserved by him. He was troubled, too, at the flippancy with which Euphra spoke; yet not the less did he feel that ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... unworthy than he could have expected when he expressed that desire, having been written in very early youth, when the mind was scarcely free in any measure from trammels and Popes, and, what is worse, when flippancy of language was too apt to accompany immaturity of opinion. The miscellaneous verses are, still more than the chief poem, 'childish things' in a strict literal sense, and the whole volume is of little interest even to its writer ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... indeed to be comrades,' said I sternly, 'you must learn to speak with more reverence and less flippancy of my father, who would assuredly never have harboured you had he heard the tale which you have ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Europe, and he could not have heard with patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of the law of nations, and one of the richest repositories of all law, should be taught a new code by the ignorant flippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of La Fayette, with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the wild, profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the impious sophistry of Condorcet, in his insolent addresses to the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rough for you," he said. How was he to suspect the heights from which she had looked down on his softness and flippancy? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... them, and bore them still less resemblance, but who could not fail to admire their excellence, were wont to liken both the great Huguenot warrior and the chancellor to that Cato whose grave demeanor and imposing dignity were a perpetual censure upon the flippancy and lax morality of his countrymen. Although not above the ordinary height of men, his appearance was dignified and commanding. In speech he was slow and deliberate. His prudence, never carried to the extreme ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... sandwich," Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar reproached him for flippancy. "You mustn't make jokes about bread in Andalucia!" she exclaimed. "And it's called a sin ever to throw away a crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it up ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... socialism, without any effort being made to define clearly for what end it is useful or useless. It is meaningless to claim that socialism is good, if we do not know for what it is good, and the whole flippancy of the discussion too often becomes apparent when we stop and inquire what purposes the speaker wants to see fulfilled. We find a wobbling between two very different possible human purposes, with the convenient scheme of ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... you threw him off. No, don't be angry: I am only talking in that careless slang we all use when we mean nothing, just as people employ counters instead of money at cards; but I like him: he has that easy flippancy in talk that asks for no effort to follow, and he says his little nothings nicely, and he is not too eager as to great ones, or too energetic, which you all are here. I ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... she met my gaze with a steady regard. I had expected scorn, but found grief and hurt. Accused by the sight, I wrapped myself in a cold flippancy. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... six-hundred-ton rocket to get a full-sized man to the moon," he said with sudden flippancy, "but a guy my size could do the same job of stranglin' in a fifty-ton job. Counting how much easier it'd be to get back, with atmosphere deceleration, I could make a trip, land, take observations, pick up mineral specimens, and get back—all in a sixty-ton rocket. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... indeed young," he said, quietly, "and with some of life's lessons still to learn. One is that frankness is not necessarily flippancy, nor honesty harshness. Beyond doubt much of what you said regarding ordinary social conversation is true, yet the man is no more to be blamed than the woman. Both seek to be entertaining, and are to be praised for the effort rather than censured. A stranger ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... who have brains, manual labor may not be the only chance of salvation," he returned with a somewhat haughty flippancy. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... have luncheon together," returned Miss Martha, indignant at her friend's flippancy. "Do you suppose I cared whether I ever ate ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... and mien lent to his words an influence which no amount of gall or satire could have imparted; and, in the brief silence that ensued, Salome's heart was suddenly smitten with a humiliating consciousness of her childish flippancy,—her utter inferiority to this man, who seemed to walk serenely in a starry plane far beyond the mire where ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... ocean's edge tries how small it can get but never dies outright; where the great coils of black hair that would not go inside any ordinary oilskin swimming-cap; where the incorrigible impertinence and flippancy be we never liked to miss a word of; where, in short, would Sally be if she had never emerged from that black ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... cordage; one heard, not the wail or the hiss or the roar, but the notes which—in our crude scale with its arbitrary division into tones and half-tones—Wagner had perforce to use to suggest them. There was even something of flippancy in it after Mottl's gigantic rendering: one longed for the dramatic hanging back of the time at the phrase, "Doch ach! den Tod, ich fand ihn nicht!" which is of such importance in the overture. On the other ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of a Country Town, is a very serious volume. It has taken four people to write it, and even to read it requires assistance. Its dulness is premeditated and deliberate and comes from a laudable desire to rescue fiction from flippancy. It is, in fact, tedious from the noblest motives and wearisome through its good intentions. Yet the story itself is not an uninteresting one. Quite the contrary. It deals with the attempt of a young doctor ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde |
