"Glib" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... But no glib flow of figures fell from him. His eyebrows suddenly contracted, his body stiffened itself. Then for the next quarter of an hour nothing sounded in the quiet room but his turning of the creakling pages. Once or twice he glanced round swiftly over ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... age of 37,—my ideal of love is a powerful, strongly built man, of my own age or rather younger—preferably of the working class. Though having solid sense and character, he need not be specially intellectual. If endowed in the latter way, he must not be too glib or refined. Anything effeminate in a man, or anything of the cheap intellectual style, repels me ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... violence as only men bear with a woman in a temper. With the letting in of the fresh air, fresh energy in the prosecution manifested itself. The witnesses were being subjected to inquisitorial torture; their answers were still glib, but the faces were studies of the passions held in the leash of self-control. Not twenty minutes had ticked their beat of time when once more the jury, to a man, showed signs of shivering. Half a dozen gravely took out their pocket-handkerchiefs, and as gravely ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... people and officers; there are the altars of the spirits of the land and grain. Why must one read books before he can be considered to have learned?' 4. The Master said, 'It is on this account that I hate your glib-tongued people.' CHAP. XXV. 1. Tsze-lu, Tsang Hsi, Zan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hwa were sitting by the Master. 2. He said to them, 'Though I am a day or so older than you, do not ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... of respect for Edwin was now more securely based upon impartial intelligence than before; it owed less to her weakness for seeing the best in people. As for Edwin, he was saying to himself: "I wish to the devil I could talk to her without spluttering! Why can't I be natural? Why can't I be glib? Some chaps could." And Edwin could be, ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... you, Madame, shall I bear your reply to this gentle captain? For by my faith, Madame, you require a more careful go-between than this, one more discreet and less glib ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... myself, though mortal, once was nursed By fairy gossips, friendly at my birth, And in my childish ear glib Mab rehearsed Her breezy travels round our planet's girth, Telling me wonders of the moon and earth; My gramarye at her grave lap I conn'd, Where Puck hath been convened to make me mirth; I have ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... good intentions" is no longer a glib phrase to me; it is a conviction born of seeing some of the suffering of this country. The doctor has just been ashore to see a woman with a five-days old baby. No attempt whatever had been made to get her or her bed clean or comfortable. She had developed a violent ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... a butcher, scratching his head, and in a humble voice, "craving your pardon and the king's, this Master Robin sojourned a short time in this hamlet, and was a kind neighbour, and mighty glib of the tongue. Don't ye mind, neighbours," he added rapidly, eager to change the conversation, "how he made us leave off when we were just about burning Adam Warner, the old nigromancer, in his den yonder? Who else could have done that? But an' we had ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all, or else my head is full of what I was doing before I began to pray, or what I am going to do as soon as I get through. I do not believe anybody else in the world is like me in this respect. Then when I feel differently, and can make a nice, glib prayer, with floods of tears running down my cheeks, I get all puffed up, and think how much pleased God must be to see me so fervent in spirit. I go down-stairs in this frame, and begin to scold Susan for misplacing my music, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... says he, "with a man who was a poet; he could neither read nor write; but he was a poet by nature, having a muse wonderfully glib at making triplets and quartets. He was nicknamed Tum Tai of the Moor. He made an englyn for me to put in a book in which I was inserting all the verses ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... filled with a perverse envy of all the confused and stammering heroes of history. Is Washington faltering out a few broken and ungrammatical sentences, in reply to the vote of thanks of the Virginia legislature, less manly than the glib tongue in the court-room or in the club that can hit the mark every time? The test of a wit or of a scholar is one thing; the test of a man, I take it, is quite another. In this and some other respects ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... swallow up my poem in thy glib clumsiness, Zabastes!" he said lightly—"And thus wilt them hold up the most tasteless portions of the whole for the judgment of the public! 'Tis the manner of thy craft,—yet see!"—and with a dexterous movement of his arm he threw the fruit-peel through the window far out into ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... step; we are to follow Christ's example. Be humble, it is said, as Christ was humble. Theology indeed would prescribe annihilation rather than humiliation. Man in presence of the Infinite is absolutely nothing. Science, according to a glib commonplace of popular writers, agrees with theology in prescribing humility. But that very ambiguous word has a totally different meaning in the two cases. Science bids us recognize the inevitable limitation of our powers, and the feebleness of any individual as compared with ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... story pretty glib by this time; I had reeled it off with increasing particulars to the Westchester Park station-master, and the head man at the stables, and General Filbert, and I was so letter-perfect that I had a vision of the whole thing, especially of my talking with the general while I ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... could be won for the plot, a proposal to compromise the whole matter amicably might serve to beguile him to the chateau of his friend at Ebernburg till his safe-conduct should expire, and then the liars could throw off the mask and dispose of him with credit in the eyes of Rome. The glib and wily Glapio led in the attempt. Von Sickingen and Bucer were entrapped by his bland hypocrisy, and lent themselves to the execution of the specious proposition. But when they came to Luther with it, he turned his back, saying, "If the emperor's confessor has anything ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... Agrippina. She would go, she said, and take with her to the camp the noble boy who was now of full age to undertake those imperial duties which a usurper was exercising in virtue of crimes which she was now prepared to confess. Then let the mutilated Burrus and the glib-tongued Seneca see whether they could be a match for the son of Claudius and the daughter of Germanicus. Such language, uttered with violent gestures and furious imprecations, might well excite the alarm of the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... satisfy them," returned Robert Turold. "The first Robert Turold reverted to the Norman spelling when he settled in Suffolk. Turrald is the corrupted form, doubtless due to early Saxon difficulties with Norman names. The Saxons were never very glib at Norman-French, and there was no standardized spelling of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight line along the black stubble of his thin gunpowder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched after-math from a last week's shaving. His coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of colour and lustre, with the coarse yet glib cordage, which I suppose he called his hair, and which with a bend inward at the nape of the neck,—the only approach to flexure in his whole figure,—slunk in behind his waistcoat; while the countenance lank, dark, very hard, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... goatherd really a son of the man, or a serpent-tongued liar, a chosen master of craft whose seeming guilelessness had helped to delude us? It had been a crude first idea on his part to suggest the admission as refugees of a swarm of armed men, but, when this had failed, there had been glib readiness with the other and more subtle plan that had so nearly succeeded. And as I reflected on these things, I marked the young hypocrite for ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... knows how far down into their depths of misery and degradation the sweetness of that delicacy descends. It haunts the drunkard's dreams, and breathes a breath of purity into the bosom of the abandoned. That is the power of a noble innocence, a respect for our fellow creatures—glib phrases, but how little understood and acted on! With my father it was quite natural.... He was a hot hater, though, I can tell you. He hated hypocrisy, he hated lying, and he hated presumption and pretentiousness. ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... tread the shore of France—of sunny Provence—the last unvisited realm we have to roam through before returning home. It is with a feeling of more than common relief that we see around us the lively faces and hear the glib tongues of the French. It is like an earnest that the "roughing" we have undergone among Bohemian boors and Italian savages is well nigh finished, and that, henceforth, we shall find civilized sympathy and politeness, if nothing more, to make the way smoother. Perhaps the three woful ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... Tony, listening to her brother's glib excuses. "Thank goodness he can lie like that. Larry never could." And as her eyes met Ted's a moment later when they passed each other in the maze of dancers he murmured "All right" in her ear and she was well ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... wig and gown, and here the old Jew clothes-man under his dingy tiara; here the soldier in his scarlet, and here the undertaker's mute in streaming hat-band and worn cotton gloves; here the musty scholar fumbling his faded leaves, and here the scented actor dangling his showy seals. Here the glib politician crying his legislative panaceas, and here the peripatetic Cheap-Jack holding aloft his quack cures for human ills. Here the sleek capitalist and there the sinewy laborer; here the man of science and here the shoe-back; here the poet and here the water-rate collector; ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to another, for our monk is a glib talker, we come to the cheese-makers, the goatherds. "Even these honest rustics," says he, "are becoming sophisticated (mafsudin). Their cheese is no longer what it was, nor is their faith. For Civilisation, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... did the usually glib Henri vouchsafe in answer,—but clutching his sister's fingers in his own dirty, horny palm, he trotted meekly beside her out of the house and across the Square into the silence and darkness of Notre Dame. Their mother watched their little plump figures ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... were held in the literary and scientific society of Edinburgh, says: 'I think the epithet most in vogue concerning it was "commonplace."' He adds, however, that one of the most eminent of that society was of a different opinion, who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly, "I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in my humble opinion Walter Scott's sense is a still more ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... religion is, then, rational because attacked along irrational grounds; the Church is also reasonable because she has not been swayed by the attraction of heresy nor listened to the glib fallacies of those who always want to make her something more or ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... plans. It was a gusty March day when the Falkners went out with the architect to consider the lot, and spent an afternoon trying to decide how to secure the most sun. Falkner, weary of the whole matter, listened to the glib young architect. Another windy day in April they returned to the lot to look at the excavation. The contracts were not yet signed. Lumber had gone soaring, and there was a strike in the brick business, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... China. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy, so much subtle legerdemain that, if he chooses, the Chinese may give you no end of trouble to inform yourself on the simplest subject. The Chinese, like so many cavillers and calumniators, all glib of tongue, who know better than any nation on earth how to turn voice and pen to account, have taken the utmost advantage of extended means of circulating thought, with the result that an Englishman such as myself, even were I a deep scholar of their language, would ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... unconvincing—the glib reply was too ready—too like the studied answer to an anticipated question. She regarded him searchingly, but the simple directness of his gaze caused her own eyes to falter, and she turned into the house with a deep breath that ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... given a piece of Greek Testament to translate, for mercy's sake do not be too glib. Dinna translate a thing until you are sure it is there. They have an unholy habit of leaving out a couple of verses some place in the middle, and you're just the one to tumble head-first into the ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... marriage of the scheming Yankee, James Early, into the then wealthy and powerful family of Lavillotte, old-timers of Louisiana soil, was considered the opposite of an honor by them, with the exception of the young girl, educated in the north, who had been fascinated by his fine looks and glib tongue. Therefore, when Joyce was born, an edict was issued by its leading members—two patriarchal uncles who held control of the property—that she should be cut off from her maternal rights in the family estate unless allowed to take the family name. Now, the loss of ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... to howl, but he certainly could not talk, and it was hard for him to follow such a glib speaker as the president. However, the fact remained that he had distinguished himself, and brought honour to the Fifth Form in general by taking seven wickets; and for this reason his comrades would have been content had he merely stood up and reeled off the ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... to receive applause, the silence and constraint that hung over the assembly must have stirred a fear that something terrible had happened, which would be increased by Peter's question. It was a merciful opportunity given her to separate herself from the sin and the punishment; but her lie was glib, and indicated determination to stick to the fraud. That moment was heavy with her fate, and she knew it not; but she knew that she had the opportunity of telling the truth, and she did not take it. She had to make the hard choice which we have sometimes to make, to be true to some sinful bargain ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... horse. The youth who knew the dictionary and newspaper by heart had a black horse, and he who knew all about the corporation laws received a milk-white steed. Then they rubbed the corners of their mouths with fish-oil, so that they might become very smooth and glib. All the servants stood below in the courtyard, and looked on while they mounted their horses; and just by chance the third son came up. For the proprietor had really three sons, though nobody counted the third with his brothers, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... carabinieri, who ordered him to leave." And at the close "I was no longer alone with my friend as a neutral eye-witness. The British Admiral Sinclair appeared, causing much perturbation to the Italian officers, who though some of them had just taken part in the shambles, were already glib with excuses. 'The British Admiral wants to know' was enough to bring the Italian officer running and bowing, with 'I beg of you....' 'We are willing to explain all....' American naval officers of the destroyer Talbot were also among this post-mortem crowd. In a French motor ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Mr. Gamely said with a side glance at Pepsy. He was not going to have her witness his discomfiture at the hands of this glib little stranger. Moreover, a slur at his personal splendor was a very grave matter and not to ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... all about engines and fighting. It would help, he was certain, to be shanghaied. But no matter how wistfully, no matter how late at night he timorously forced himself to loiter among unwashed English stokers on West Street, he couldn't get himself molested except by glib persons wishing ten cents "for a ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... its achievements, but she possessed none of the instincts of a wire-puller. So long as the class offices were creditably filled she cared not who held them, and comparing her ignorance of parliamentary procedure with the glib self-confidence of Jean, Eleanor and their friends, she even felt grateful to them for rescuing the class from the pitfalls ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... the house had retired to rest, with what a sinister delight did he chuckle over the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge of which he had dragged from many an unwilling sinner! To oust him, when installed, was a plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only too glib in the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the last scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the one sees and what the other sees are in the same place. Since the shape and colour are not quite the same for the two men, this raises a difficulty, hastily solved, or rather covered up, by declaring what each sees to be purely "subjective"—though it would puzzle those who use this glib word to say what they mean by it. The truth seems to be that space—and time also—is much more complicated than it would appear to be from the finished structure of physics, and that the one all-embracing three-dimensional space is a logical construction, obtained by means ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... a young fellow who wanted more than evil weather and a dreich, black night to depress him. A fine, upstanding lad he was, with a glib English tongue that readily sold his wares, and which, along with a handsome, merry face, helped him with ease into the good graces of those whom he familiarly knew as "the lasses." Dandy Jim had had many a flirtation, but now he felt that his roving days were nearly past. He was ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... believed that the best and highest of their own idols had better means and skill of measurement: I can never forget the pregnant expression of one of the ablest of that school and party—Lord Cockburn—who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly: "I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in my humble opinion, Walter Scott's sense is a still more wonderful thing than ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... easily, in perfect repose of manner, the half smile still sketching her lips. She said just nothing at all in response to his glib excuses; but when he had quite finished she laid her hand in his arm. Mrs. Morrell, her colour high, continued to stare straight ahead, immobile except for the tapping of one foot. To Keith's request to be excused she vouchsafed a stiff half ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... reason of her increasing references to Claims, and the All-Mind, and to the fact that the pain in a neglected tooth was only a manifestation of cowardly unbelief. The doctor scented mischief in the glib phrases. He held his peace heroically, though, albeit now and then he longed to shake his babbling patient as the terrier shakes ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... Lord my God, that glib-tongu'd Aiken, My very heart and soul are quakin', To think how we stood sweatin', shakin', An' pish'd wi' dread, While he, wi' hingin' lips and snakin', [sneering] Held up ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... surprised by her glib enunciation of the difficult sentence she had quoted. "Why are we ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... result of sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, the better, provided there be an element of commonplace running through them; and any rough, yet never vulgar force ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pervert who, with a glib tongue, protests that his conscience drove him from the Church, that his enslaved intelligence needed deliverance, search him and you will find a skeleton in his closet; and if you do not find it, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... glib about democracy; we have assumed that this country was a democracy because we named it so. But now that we are called upon to die for the idea, we find that we have never realized it anywhere except perhaps in our secret hearts. In the life of ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and sees Cadmus and Teiresias in masque. Like the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious plays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of stupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy first infatuate. Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse mockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he understands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing feigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of women with ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... ketch's native rig, and to the glib Tripolitanese of the Sicilian pilot, no suspicion was excited in the Philadelphia's watch by the answer to their hail that she had lost her anchors in a gale and would like to run a line to the war-ship and to ride by it through the night. So completely were the Tripolitans deceived that ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... seem to think lecturing a very simple occupation, requiring only a glib tongue, and a good pair of lungs. Several years ago, I received a letter from a young man in which he wrote: "I heard you lecture last week. I would like to become a lecturer myself. I have no experience and very little education, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... questions in a flurry, though he had been glib enough. He had had no fear that his father would appreciate that he was getting half-truths, or, rather, truths prepared skillfully for paternal consumption; his flurry had come from a sense that he was himself not doing quite the manly, the courageous thing. ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... companion, and lightly assured her that I was as mad as a dingo dog. From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me. It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle just a few yards away from my ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... hearts and consciences of slaveholders, than if I was attacking them in America; for almost every paper that I now receive from the United States, comes teeming with statements about this fugitive Negro, calling him a "glib-tongued scoundrel," and saying that he is running out against the institutions and people of America. I deny the charge that I am saying a word against the institutions of America,{327} or the people, as such. What I have to say is against slavery and slaveholders. I feel at liberty to speak ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... But come, let us talk thus together no longer like children, standing in mid onset of war. For there are revilings in plenty for both of us to utter—a hundred-thwarted ship would not suffice for the load of them. Glib is the tongue of man, and many words are therein of every kind, and wide is the range of his speech hither and thither. Whatsoever word thou speak, such wilt thou hear in answer. But what need that we should bandy strife and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... public, who cannot be decided by anything but the event, looked upon it as the source of all our woes." The counsels of Abbe de Bernis had for some time past been pacific; from a court-abbe, elegant and glib, he had become, on the 25th of June, minister of foreign affairs. But Madame de Pompadour remained faithful to the empress. In the month of January, 1758, Count Clermont was appointed general-in-chief of the army of Germany. In disregard of the convention ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at the beginning of each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover. It was no longer fear. What was it? Was it the face of him, too strong and vital for a woman's, too handsome for a man's? Was it his dark, fiery eye which was always reversing what his glib tongue said? Some hidden magnetism? Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how resolutely she cast it forth. Even now she could not honestly say whether she was here to ask questions of Cunningham or of herself. Perhaps it was because he was the unknown, whereas ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... learned many things since those days," Rochester declared. "You have acquired the knack of glib speech. You have become a past master in the arts which go to the ensnaring of over-imaginative women. You have mixed with quack spiritualists and self-styled professors of what they term occultism. Go and practise your arts where you will, but remember ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with pilot, observer, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. The job was an offensive patrol—that is to say, we were to hunt trouble around a given area behind the Boche lines. A great deal of the credit for our "mastery of the air"—that glib phrase of the question-asking politician—during the Somme Push of 1916, belongs to those who organised and those who led these fighting expeditions over enemy country. Thanks to them, our aircraft were able to carry out reconnaissance, artillery observation, ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... at a trotting pace,[FN140] never stopping till he drew near the whelp. When I saw him, O my sister, I fell down for excess of fear; but the young lion rose and walked forward to meet the carpenter and when he came up to him, the man smiled in his face and said to him, with a glib tongue and in courtly terms, 'O King who defendeth from harm and lord of the long arm, Allah prosper thine evening and thine endeavouring and increase thy valiancy and strengthen thee! Protect me from that which hath distressed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... comes of your prating, husband! you presum'd On your ambling wit, and must use your glib tongue, Though you are beaten ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... flourish to some extent in Kimberley, but most of all in Johannesburg. You are soon able to recognise his points and identify him at a distance. He is a little too neatly dressed and his watch-chain is a little too much of a certainty. His manner is excessively glib and fluent, yet he has a trick of furtively glancing round while he talks, as if fearful of being overheard. For the same reason he speaks in low tones. He must often be discussing indifferent topics, but he always looks as if he were hatching a swindle. ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... they attended the movies, where Amory was fascinated by the glib comments of a man in front of him, as well as by the wild ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the dinners there was gambling. I always lost to the Major. He lost to others but I was careful never to win from him. He fell into the way of dropping around at my quarters. Like most of his set, the Major was a heavy drinker. When his face would become very hushed and his tongue very glib, I would try to draw things out of him, but I never could get anything worth while. The slightest suspicious question made him close up as tight as ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... chiming full many a clime in, Tolling sublime in cathedral shrine; While at a glib rate brass tongues would vibrate;— But all their music spoke naught like thine. For memory dwelling on each proud swelling Of thy belfry knelling its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon sound far more grand on The pleasant waters of the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... High German doctor, of the first class. He had taken his diploma of Beelzebub in the Black Forest, and was gifted with as fine a hand to force a card—with as glib a tongue to harangue a mob at wakes and fairs, as any professor since the birth of the fourth grace of life,—swindling. He would talk until his head smoked of his list of miraculous cures—of his balsams, his anodynes, his elixirs; in the benevolence of his soul he would, to accommodate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... ruined me. Now, therefore, let them use me as they please. I give up this body to them to be beaten, to be hungered, to be troubled with thirst, to be squalid, to shiver with cold, to flay into a leathern bottle, if I shall escape clear from my debts, and appear to men to be bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventive of words, a practiced knave in lawsuits, a law-tablet, a thorough rattle, a fox, a sharper, a slippery knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, ...
— The Clouds • Aristophanes
... glib Martinique negro, with an incongruous British accent and a tendency to be surly, whom Anthony detested. The passing of the old man had approximately the same effect on him that the kitten story had had on Gloria. He was reminded of the cruelty ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at home," she answered, with glib mendacity. And then she wondered why it was that Weldon's pallor turned from white to gray, as he ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... over the whole thing from bottom to top. Through it all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it becoming more and ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... with her family in great gaiety on the lawn under the cedar. Her offspring were unusually sweet that day, they had new blue cotton sunbonnets, and Baby and Annette at least succeeded in being pretty. And Millicent, under the new Swiss governess, had acquired, it seemed quite suddenly, a glib colloquial French that somehow reconciled one to the extreme thinness and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... sufficiently to address you as he fully hoped and intended to do to-day." At this all eyes sped to the Bishop, who stood certainly in a drooping attitude at the chaplain's side, his episcopal hands behind his back. "Something happened," the glib spokesman continued with stern eyes, "something that you do not often hear of in these days. His lordship was accosted, beset, and, like the poor man in the Scriptures, despitefully entreated, not many miles beyond your own boundary, by a ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... De [12], bold dame," cried the knight by the side of Edward, while a lurid flush passed over his cheek of bronze; "but thou art too glib of tongue for a subject, and pratest overmuch of Woden, the Paynim, for the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to her, you see; he had been the one man she trusted. She had gloried in his fustian rhetoric, his glib artlessness, his airy scorn of money; and now all this proved mere pinchbeck. On a sudden, too, there woke in some bycorner of her heart a queasy realisation of how near she had come to loving ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Marcus, as the shepherd concluded his glib recital. "Couldst thou identify these knaves, if once ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... gathering from their hiding-places. Discuss'd was many a notion. At last, it was resolved, on motion, To pacify the conquering banner, By sending homage in, and tribute. With both the homage and its manner They charged the monkey, as a glib brute; And, lest the chap should too much chatter, In black on white they wrote the matter. Nought but the tribute served to fash, As that must needs be paid in cash. A prince, who chanced a mine to own, At last, obliged them with a loan. The mule and ass, to bear the treasure, Their service tender'd, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... he did not run so far counter to the ideas of his patrons as to teach Cobbett's grammar at school, he always recommended it to me as the one by which alone I could learn to write good English. The learning of anything, especially of arithmetic and grammar, by the glib repetition of rules was a system that he held in contempt. With the public, ability to recite the rules of such subjects as those went farther than any actual demonstration of the power to cipher correctly or ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... so sure she was going to talk about the American child. She was not sure of anything, except that the household looked most irregular, and that Peter Byrne was trying to cover a difficult situation with much conversation. He was almost glib, was Peter. The tea was good; that ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he demanded. "What do you or I know of Lorrimore? I'm thinking yon Lorrimore was far too glib of his tongue—and maybe I was too ready myself and talked beyond reason to strangers. I don't ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Buren Sluysdael, died, you know—a year after they left Greyport. The widow was left all the money in trust for Johnny, except about twenty-five hundred a year which he was in receipt of as a separate income, even as a boy. Well, a glib-tongued parson, a fellow by the name of Belcher, got round the widow—she was a desperate fool—and, by Jove! made her marry him. He made ducks and drakes of not only her money, but Johnny's too, and had to skip to Spain to ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... commander of the ship, and startled anew by his expression of blank incredulity, the glib flow of words conned so often during the steadfast but dreadful hours spent in the lazarette ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... "hustling" was attempted; "roughs," who had come in late, occasionally tried to bully those who looked "soft" out of their ground. Being quite a youngster, I was, naturally, the kind of game these gentry were seeking. However, I sought and obtained help among my Kaffrarian friends, so when two glib tongued scoundrels endeavored to claim my burrow on the score of prior occupation, they were soon hunted off. Messrs. Tom Barry and George Ward were entrusted by the Landdrost with the survey. Ward, who had been in the Austrian Army, ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... shall I vnderstand you? Poet. I will vnboult to you. You see how all Conditions, how all Mindes, As well of glib and slipp'ry Creatures, as Of Graue and austere qualitie, tender downe Their seruices to Lord Timon: his large Fortune, Vpon his good and gracious Nature hanging, Subdues and properties to his loue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... he had been at the best school in England, that is, the most expensive, and also at College, was almost totally illiterate, so we let the Church scheme follow that of the coach. At last, bethinking me that he was tolerably glib at the tongue, as most people are who are addicted to the turf, also a great master of slang, remembering also that he had a crabbed old uncle, who had some borough interest, I proposed that he should get into the House, promising in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... river. Willie was in great glee, and when they arrived at the river, he wanted to go on the ice but his mother was afraid to venture. The river was frozen very hard, and the merry skaters seemed almost to fly, they went so fast over the glib ice. Now and then one of them would fall down, causing a burst of laughter from the others; but he would jump up and go it again. Skating is a pleasant and healthful exercise, but sometimes dangerous, for should the ice break many would probably be drowned. Little boys should be careful ...
— The Skating Party and Other Stories • Unknown
... a victory on such terms. Therefore he went to his wounded rival, tended and encouraged him, and in the end brought him to the contest in a litter, thereby gravely jeopardising his own chance of success. Richard, never at any time a glib jingler of rhymes, was in sorry case, for now that he had most need of his wits, his passion instead of sharpening them seemed to have removed them utterly. If he had but known it, he had a good friend in Queen Eleanor, who was determined that he should win, and ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... gloss on them. He labored assiduously to correct his grammar, and so well succeeded at the task that except when he was among associates and relapsed into the argot of the breed, he used language fit for a college professor—fit for some college professors anyway. At thirty he was a glib, spry person with a fancy for gay housings. At forty-five, when he reached the top of his swing, he had the looks, the vocabulary and the presence of an educated and a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... offered at Chinningfold. Admiral Fakenham's butler refused at first to take a name to his master. Gower persisted, stating the business of his mission; and in spite of the very suspicious glib good English spoken by a man wearing such a hat and suit, the butler was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... head of owl, Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, Feathered and ruffled in every part, Captain Ireson stood in the cart. Scores of women, old and young, Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: "Here's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt By ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... are advantageous, and three which are injurious. Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere; and friendship with the man of observation: these are advantageous. Friendship with the man of specious airs; friendship with the insinuatingly soft; and friendship with the glib-tongued: these ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... damned poor apology for a man—not worth the powder to blow you up. You hadn't the sand to fight for the money entrusted to you, nor the nerve to face me after you had lost it. Get out of here. Vamos! Don't ever let me hear yore smooth, glib ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... forebodings while Alfy's cheerful tongue was running on at this rate, and as she left the living-room for the kitchen at the rear both Lady Gray and Helena were laughing, partly at their own awkwardness at the tasks assigned them as well as at her glib remarks. ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... upon him that this was his true vocation. To renounce pleasure and discipline the mind; to live a life of self-denial, submitting himself humbly to the inspiration of the great masters. . . . To be serene, like this old man; to avoid that facile, glib, composite note—those monkey-tricks of cleverness. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Ed was partly Scotch, by nature he was entirely Irish. He possessed a glib tongue of the latter order and his habit was to address every one he met, be he Indian, Highland Scot, or French Canadian, in the dialect which the person was supposed to favour. So he roared out in his magnificent baritone, as he ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... bear, "but that was well turned. Now, sir, as you are getting a little glib, will you go still further and tell us how ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... concludes: "It is right, therefore, for one man to teach another. He that doeth so joyfully, upon him shall much be bestowed by God."[14] These last words, like the last phrases of my former quotation from him, may stand perhaps in the way of some, as nowadays they may easily sound glib or irreverent. But are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, as labours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, and obtain it? When Duerer thought of God, he did not only think of a mythological personage resembling an old king; ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... rustling of silk and satin, and a waving of ostrich feathers. The daughter is pale and interesting, and interprets Beethoven, and paints the old mill; while a skilled person, hired at a high price, rules in the dairy. The son rides a-hunting, and is glib on the odds. The 'offices'—such it is the fashion to call the places in which work was formerly done—are carefully kept in the background. The violets and snowdrops and crocuses are rooted up, all the sweet and tender old flowers ruthlessly eradicated, to make way for a blazing parterre after ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... ran higher and higher, but there was no indication that Barouche's hopes were sure of fulfilment. His face became paler as the day wore on, and his hands freer with those of his late constituents. Yet he noticed that Carnac was still glib with his tongue and freer with his hands. Carnac seemed everywhere, on every corner, in every street, at every polling booth; he laid his trowel against every brick in the wall. Carnac was not as confident as he seemed, but he was nearing the end of the trail; and his feet were free and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Jack, some things I saw made an impression on me and I can't forget them. When I hear my glib young cousin who sits and surveys life from the shelter of his father's income—when I hear ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... had allowed myself to heed the glib tongue of a hotel-runner before I left the rice-steamer, and he had commandeered my bag and taken it to the Oriente Hotel, of which I knew nothing except that it was in the walled city and across the river from the cable ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... frightens me a little. Valerie has, you see, made a mess of it. She has, you see, spoiled her life, in that aspect of it. To mend it now, so completely, to start fresh at—how old is she?—at forty-six, it's just a little glib. Somehow one doesn't get off so easily as that. One can't start so happily at forty-six. Perhaps one ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the reason why, he was appalled at his own ignorance. Something was wrong somewhere; something which would have to be put right. And the trouble was that it did not seem a matter of great ease to put it right. He felt that the glib phrases about Capital and Labour pulling together, about better relations between employers and men, about standing shoulder to shoulder, failed to hit the point. They were rather like offering a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... insignificant in person, and he had little to say for himself. Probably it would have struck his critics as little short of profane to make the comparison, otherwise there is a great example that might have stood him and all men not giants and glib of tongue in good stead. It is written of an apostle, and he not the least of the apostles, that he might have been termed in bodily presence mean, and in speech contemptible. But boys and girls are not wont ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... quite ordinary Frenchman to come and dine with you in London, and see what a genial and charming person he can be—what a quick bosom friend, and with what a glib and silver tongue to praise the warmth of your ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... said the glib Tam; "we were brought up in the same village, the village of Glascae, and tramped off to the same college at six every morning when the bummer went. There'd ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... Athenian insisted that Theseus was far superior, for his fortune had been in every way supremely blessed, whereas Hercules had at one time been forced to act as a servant. And he gained his point, for he was a very glib fellow, like all Athenians; so that the Theban, who was no match for him in talking, cried at last in some disgust, "All right, have your way; I only hope that, when our heroes are angry with us, Athens may suffer from the ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop |
