"Flippantly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrative after a long interval there occurs the inevitable reflection that the realities out of which it was spun were material for another kind of study of this little group of church musicians than is found in the chapters here penned so lightly, even so farcically and flippantly at times. But circumstances would have rendered any aim at a deeper, more essential, more transcendent handling unadvisable at the date of writing; and the exhibition of the Mellstock Quire in the following pages must remain the only extant one, except for ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... that one observes for one's own comfort. For instance, never be flippantly rude to any inoffensive grey-bearded stranger that you may meet in pine forests or hotel smoking-rooms on the Continent. It always turns out to ...
— Reginald • Saki
... over you shelteringly, madame," I rejoined, somewhat flippantly, I fear, "and will to the end, no doubt; for, in its very organization, our country can never be subjected to the fluctuations of ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the fashion among our younger writers to speak slightingly and flippantly of Emerson, referring to him as outworn, and as the apostle of the obvious. This view is more discreditable to the young people than is their criticism damaging to Emerson. It can make little difference to Emerson's fame, but it would be much more becoming ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... generally read it with pleasure except indeed when he tries to be droll. A more insufferable jester never existed. He very often attempts to be humorous, and yet we do not remember a single occasion on which he has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. In one of his works he tells us that Bishop Sprat was very properly so called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... horse cantering up on his left side and looking he saw Nora Black. She was beaming with satisfaction and good nature. " Well, Rufus," she cried flippantly, " how goes it with the gallant rescuer? You've made a hit, my boy. You are the success of ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... Corinna. "But, dear boy, the way to make you human—and you've never been really human all through, you know—was not with a uniform and glory." She was talking flippantly, for they made a pretence now of alluding lightly to his years in France—he had gone into the war before his country—and to the nervous malady, the disabled will, he had brought back. "What you need is not to win more ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... and silk stockings. Afterwards they were to go to the little bon-bon play-house up by the more pretentious bon-bon Casino. He was to watch the antics of a band of actors toying with some mimic fate, flippantly, to the sound of music, when his own destiny swung trembling on the last silken thread of tortured suspense! Yet it was better than moping alone, he told himself. He hated loneliness. And until the last few weeks he had scarcely known the meaning of the word! There had always been that other ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... have the constitution broken up. Somebody says, "In Heaven there will be no secrets," which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If that were a revelation from the King of Heaven, of course I would not speak flippantly of it; but though towards Heaven we look with reverence and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, Dick and Harry's notions of it have any special claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foundations of society. Clairvoyance—if there ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... ones. They may be found not only in the tropical isles of the Orient, but in the Western world, in the lagoons and forests of Equatorial America. Many of the "sailors' yarns" of past times, which we have been accustomed so flippantly to discredit, on account of their appearing rather tough, have under the light of recent scientific exploration ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... "Don't speak so flippantly of it! How can you? And don't think for one instant. that I doubted your word. I didn't. But it didn't seem possible that such a thing—Mr. Brice!" she broke off earnestly. "You mustn't —you can't—think that Milo knew anything of this! I mean about the—the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... "Don't talk flippantly, please. I think it better to wait until to-morrow, George, before you do anything rash. I want to see something of the country. I want us to take a little journey together to-morrow, and then, out ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... for which gossip found no difficulty in accounting. Did not all the world know of the treachery and death of Duke Michael? Nevertheless, George bade Bertram Bertrand be of good cheer, "for," said he flippantly, "a live poet is better than a dead duke." Then he turned on me ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... to attempt to draw a comparison between the two men. The one was a colossal human genius, and the other, extraordinary in the art of his profession, was entirely without the faculty of understanding or appreciating the distinguished man he flippantly raged at from ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... cost more than $1 quart in Helena, and Jake Smith exhibits a marvelous lack of veneration for his kinswoman, by referring to each bean, as he places it before him upon the table, as his "aunt," or, more flippantly, his "auntie." Walter Trumbull has been styled the "Banker," and he says that at the commencement of the game he sold forty of these beans to each of the players, himself included (200 in all), at five (5) cents each, and that ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... the duke's ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months: blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters; changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds; sweet, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... gained a good deal of popularity of a certain sort; it therefore belongs somewhere in the literature of the day. Perhaps it would have been for the good of some of our readers, if we had done this sooner. But, indeed, to treat with entirely condign justice a book which deals very freely and flippantly with the literary and even the personal character of one who, though an eminent and to some extent a public man, was still only yesterday a private gentleman among us, a neighbor and a friend, is a matter of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... it from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about things—but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery, and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything for a man ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... my country are a disgrace, and nothing would ever induce me to avail myself of them. Besides, marriage, to me, is a very serious and solemn matter, and I can't permit you to speak about it flippantly, even by way ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... some time before. It was the first Socialist publication he had ever seen, and it had repelled him because its editor had printed his own picture in a conspicuous place, and also because in his leading editorial he had dealt flippantly with an eminent reformer and philanthropist for whom Thyrsis had ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... worry," flippantly replied Tessie. "I guess they are too busy thinking about their old ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... of the discussion; another which is the result of talking at random merely to make bulk. The first is tolerable; the last is contemptible. The moment one begins to talk for effect, or to hedge flippantly, he is talking insincerely. And when a good converser runs against this sort of talker, his heart calls out, with Carlyle, for an empty room, his tobacco, and his pipe. It is maintained by some one that there are three kinds of a bore: ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... the unfathomable, unintelligible, unconquerable epigrams of the Bible. I remember when Bentley had a burning boyish admiration for Professor Huxley, and when that scientist died some foolish friend asked him quite flippantly in a letter what he felt about it. Bentley replied with the chapter and verse reference to one of the Psalms, alone on a postcard. The text was, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of one of his saints." ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... there grew in her a tender remorse for the injustice she had done her husband. From little pricking suspicions on the first day she came on the last to conviction. It seemed that being with Bernal had opened her eyes to Allan's worth. She had narrowly, flippantly misjudged a good man—good in all essentials. She was contrite for her unwifely lack of abnegation. She began to see herself and Allan with Bernal's eyes: she was less than she had thought—he was more. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... the advance messenger of the coming change of weather entered by way of a lowered window. It was a smart little breeze and it flippantly sent the ashes flying on the hearth and several sheets of paper broadcast in the room. Truedale sprang to recover his treasures; he caught four or five, but one escaped his notice and floated toward the ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... presidents, princes, prime ministers, congresses, parliaments, and all other representatives of material strength, may repeat for formal use the conventional clause; but there is always what we flippantly know as a "joker" in the lip-recitation. "Kingdom, power, and glory," we can hear ourselves saying in a heart-aside, "lie in money, guns, commerce, and police. God is not sufficiently a force in the affairs of this world for us to give Him more ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... position! Prove to me that Germany has flippantly constructed a law of necessity; prove it to me in this hour, when your country has gone over to our enemies, and we have half the world to fight. You cannot do that; you could not do it on the 4th of August, and consequently you have assumed ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... his woman from Shyuamo," flippantly observed Shotaye; "it will make Turquoises cheaper." She turned away with an indifferent air. Her careless manner struck the young man, and when he saw that she would not speak, but only gazed at the sky, he ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... that his whole attitude was symbolized by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood through it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips were continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... Evelyn had interrupted flippantly, "were wise and good. Nobody wants to be wise and good in these days. We want to be smart and sophisticated. Your good old stuffy dining-rooms were like your good old stuffy consciences. Now my breakfast room is symbolic—the green and white for the joy of ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... of women in every community whom society flippantly denominates "old maids." The world needs yet to be told what uncrowned queens many of these women are, what undecorated heroines, what blessings to humanity, what builders of homes, what servants of others and of Christ. In thousands of cases they remain ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... restrain the madness of those who urge a coercive policy against the seceding States, then, indeed, I see no escape from that most dreadful of all calamities which can befall a nation—civil war. If those in this Chamber who talk so flippantly of war, had seen, as it has been my lot to see, some of its actual horrors, they might, perhaps, heed the warnings and respect the counsels of the sages and patriots whose language I have quoted. They would at least refrain from ungenerous ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... all the time, and of course too they find resistance to this impossible; though I must own that their method of circumventing the vow reminded me dangerously of the young man who used a cigarette-holder because he had been told to keep away from tobacco. I speak flippantly; but as a matter of fact the story of Edward and Sally is not free from tragedy, very simply and movingly told. If Concerning a Vow does not add to Miss BROUGHTON'S popularity it will only be because this is impossible; it certainly will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... such an oddity that her companion was moved, rather flippantly perhaps, to take it up. "Don't people as good as love their friends when they I ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... to Charteris on the subject, one might have thought that he considered the matter rather amusing than otherwise. This, however, was simply due to the fact that he treated everything flippantly in conversation. But, like the parrot, he thought the more. The actual casus belli had been trivial. At least the mere spectator would have considered it trivial. It had happened after this fashion. Charteris was a member of the School corps. The orderly-room ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse |
