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Glib   /glɪb/   Listen
Glib

adjective
(compar. glibber; superl. glibbest)
1.
Marked by lack of intellectual depth.  "A glib response to a complex question"
2.
Having only superficial plausibility.  Synonyms: pat, slick.  "A slick commercial"
3.
Artfully persuasive in speech.  Synonyms: glib-tongued, smooth-tongued.  "A smooth-tongued hypocrite"



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"Glib" Quotes from Famous Books



... smoking his evening pipe of Oronooko, and she working at her embroidery. The moment that I opened the door the man whom I had brought stepped briskly in, and bowing to the old people began to make glib excuses for the lateness of his visit, and to explain the manner in which we had picked him up. I could not help smiling at the utter amazement expressed upon my mother's face as she gazed at him, for the loss of his jack-boots exposed ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Scrooge's niece by marriage, is described after all, as may be remembered by the readers of the Carol, to to have been intrinsically "a mere nothing; you might learn to whistle it in two minutes." Say that in twenty minutes, or, at the outside, in half-an-hour, any ordinarily glib talker might have rattled through these comic recollections of Mr. Magsman, yet, when rattled through by Dickens, the laughter awakened seems now in the retrospect to have been altogether out of proportion. In itself the subject was anything but attractive, relating, as it did, merely to the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... my 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, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... 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 whom he remains day and night, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... since the war Nathan had grown into one of the most respectable of freedmen, but Uncle Boaz, with a glib tongue, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... 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, passing by their huts in some shape ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Hiram's 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 Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... ahead, knew nothing of the love scenes just behind them. They talked of many things, of the moonlight and the river and the scent of the flowers, but all the time Hugh felt diffident and tongue-tied. He had not the glib tongue of Gavan Blake, and he felt little at ease talking common-places. Mary Grant thought he must be worried over something, and, with her usual directness, went to ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... vive to see the "white fighter." Every body was crazy to feel the "white skin" she had healed. Then, with a sudden, childish freak of caprice, they ran off from me as if afraid, and at once rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as if I did, and peered into my eyes for answers, with impish devilry at my ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... 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 to say to me ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... teeth, but thou must bark outright? What devil wrings thee?"—" Now," said I, "be dumb, Accursed traitor! to thy shame of thee True tidings will I bear."—" Off," he replied, "Tell what thou list; but as thou escape from hence To speak of him whose tongue hath been so glib, Forget not: here he wails the Frenchman's gold. 'Him of Duera,' thou canst say, 'I mark'd, Where the starv'd sinners pine.' If thou be ask'd What other shade was with them, at thy side Is Beccaria, whose red gorge distain'd The biting ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... that anything she said would be taken down by myself and used in evidence against her," was the glib response. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in the people among whom ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... a various and motley company of the riff-raff and raggabash of the island,—young and elderly, silent and glib—rough as a pigskin, and smooth as their sleeves at the elbow; with just one feature common to the whole pack of pick-thanks, and that was ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... turned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike that man's average, but failed. He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. X arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "Can man ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... knew nothing. It seemed to have swallowed up Aunt Margaret's money; it might very well have left her defenceless. Her stepmother seemed familiar with its powers, and able to evoke them at will; and though she did not trust her, there was something in her glib utterance that struck fear into the girl's heart. She did not answer, and Mrs. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... sop, my head's a mop; I'm vet as any think; Oh! shan't ve cotch a cold!" "Your tongue is glib enough!" his rib exclaim'd, and made him shrink, —For ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... a 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 of all life and, in consequence, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... out too. Every one will know what we mean, that we are honest men and true; and you will be spared this everlasting palaver. Then we will have some rules, or by-laws, or something, for the workmen. Talk to Mr. Winston about it. He would make a capital speaker, with his glib tongue." ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... 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 ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... day passed. During dinner Aratoff chatted a great deal with Platosha, questioned her about old times, which, by the way, she recalled and transmitted badly, as she was not possessed of a very glib tongue, and had noticed hardly anything in the course of her life save her Yashka. She merely rejoiced that he was so good-natured and affectionate that day!—Toward evening Aratoff quieted down to such a degree that he played several games ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... not need their asseverations of veracity; the truth shone through their uncouth stories. They were widely different from the glib patter that runs out of a crook's mouth in the presence of an official. Some of these men were seasoned criminals; often they did not themselves understand how iniquitous was the "deal" that had been given ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... a long conversation with him," continued the earl, "in the book-room, and I think I have convinced him that it is for your mutual happiness"—he paused, for he couldn't condescend to tell a lie; but in his glib, speechifying manner, he was nearly falling into one—"mutual happiness" was such an appropriate prudential phrase that he could not resist the temptation; but he corrected himself—"at least, I think I have convinced him that it is impossible that he ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, a black and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a little rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a finger long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be still in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host of the stars, I occupying myself that night ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... there were some glib-tongued fellows who spoke the language without foreign accent, all of them of the lowest order of Democratic ward-politicians, of creatures skulking from the outstretched arm of avenging law; while the most degraded of the German population were represented; while it is ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... was 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 induced ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... plunged into 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, the kind of brick they had chosen being ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... relative of his, a niece of Mr. Cheng's wife, a Miss Wang, and has now been married for the last two years. This Mr. Lien has lately obtained by purchase the rank of sub-prefect. He too takes little pleasure in books, but as far as worldly affairs go, he is so versatile and glib of tongue, that he has recently taken up his quarters with his uncle Mr. Cheng, to whom he gives a helping hand in the management of domestic matters. Who would have thought it, however, ever since his marriage with his worthy wife, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... do at all," announced Foreman Owen, turning to the inventor. "I know their kind. They're glib talkers, and all that, but they belong to the know-it-all class of boys. I've had a lot of experience with that kind of 'prentices, and I don't want 'em bothering our work here. So I say, sir, the only thing for you to do is to send them about ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham

... 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 window. I keep asking ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... brow deepened, and Yates was quick to see that he had lost ground again, if, indeed, he had ever gained any, which he began to doubt. She evidently did not relish his glib talk about the university. He was just about to say something deferentially about that institution, for he was not a man who would speak disrespectfully of the equator if he thought he might curry favor with his auditor by doing ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... animating the breasts of his companions. Dealing blows right and left, they simultaneously set upon the surrounding Arabs, the old fellow who had bought the girl being the first knocked over, and the auctioneer with the glib tongue the second, the others, who drew their daggers, having their weapons whirled from their hands; while the greater number, astonished by the suddenness of the attack, took to flight in all directions, pursued by the now ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... lexicographer, he had gained an amount of miscellaneous information such as falls to the lot of very few minds of his order of intelligence. He had recently directed the compilation of a large Universal Geography or Gazetteer, the Carton or Vivien de St. Martin if those days—hence his glib references to the manners and customs of Laplanders, Caffres, Kamskatchans, and other recondite types of breeding. His imaginative faculty was under the control of an exceptionally strong and retentive memory. One may venture to say, indeed, without danger of exaggeration that his testimonials ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... well-bred mare, in Bourke, and he was anxious to get her into the yards before the horse sales were over; this was to be the last day of the sales. Jim was the best "barracker" of the two; he had great imagination; he was a very entertaining story-teller and conversationalist in social life, and a glib and a most impressive liar in business, so it was decided that he should hurry on into Bourke with the mare and sell her for ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... brute leans forward and wags his head to and fro with ignoble solemnity; another has fallen asleep and snores at intervals with a nauseous rattle; smart young men, dressed fashionably, fling chance witticisms at the busy barmaids, and the nymphs answer with glib readiness. This is the home of Jollity and Good-fellowship; this is the place from which Care is banished; this is the happy corner where the social glass is dispensed. Alas for the jollity and the sociability and all the rest ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... these gallant strangers, one of them with such fiery eyes and vivacious ways, and the other so tall and so dignified, with fair skin well-bronzed by the sun and large firm mouth that had such a pleasant smile on it; her eyes sparkled at sight of them both and her glib tongue rattled away at truly ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... slavery abroad will tell more upon the 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 ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... my God, that glib-tongu'd Aiken, My very heart and saul are quakin', To think how we stood groanin', shakin', And swat wi' dread, While he wi' hingin' lips and snakin', Held ...
— English Satires • Various

... proceeded, starting to put in the fancy touches. I dare say you have noticed on these occasions that the difficulty is to plant the main idea, to get the general outline of the thing well fixed. The rest is mere detail work. I don't say I became glib at this juncture, but I certainly became a dashed ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... advantageous: friendship with the upright, friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of observation. Three are injurious: friendship with a man of spurious airs, friendship with the insinuatingly soft, and friendship with the glib-tongued. ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... remarks are not more than the glib commonplaces of a man who had found Christianity convenient, but not exactly sufficient. In another place he says: "The wisest course evidently is to combine a portion of the philosophy of the tombstone with a portion of the philosophy of the publican ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... cheer, a man about thirty years of age came in, he said, to make our acquaintance. He was quite a sharp-looking fellow, with small, keen black eyes, a "glib" tongue, and told us that he was an out-and-out rebel, proud to meet us and ready to oblige. Steve forthwith proposed, as evidence of his good-will, an exchange of headgear. He dilated eloquently on the historic value of his own cap, and, while it did not entirely suit him, ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore

... influence of sympathy. There are some natures that are gifted with a blessed power to bring consolation to men. It is not that they are glib of tongue or facile of speech, but somehow the very pressure of their hand is grateful to the saddened heart. The simple and kindly action, of which we think nothing, may tell powerfully on others, and unclose fountains of feeling deep ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... 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, it is there just the same. A renegade priest some years ago, held forth before a gaping audience, at ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... more self-conscious, had a more glib way of expressing his convictions, but even he hid his purpose in the war under a covering of irony and cynical jests. It was the spirit of the old city and the pride of it which helped him to suffer, and in his daydreams was the clanging of 'buses from Charing ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... 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 ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... a person skilful in the arts of the harper and the senachie, and by no means contemptible in the quality of a second-sighted person or seer. While making this exposition, Major Dalgetty stammered and hesitated in a way so unlike the usual glib forwardness of his manner, that he could not have failed to have given suspicion to Allan M'Aulay, had not that person's whole attention been engaged in steadily perusing the features of the person thus introduced to him. This steady gaze so much embarrassed Ranald MacEagh, that his hand ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... that car certainly has been drove last night. Some of the battery connections got wet." The chauffeur was glib enough. ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... varlets, I would I knew which of ye burst Our wine-skin—what, ho! must I perish with thirst! Go, Henry, thou hast a glib tongue, go and ask Thy lord to send Ralph to yon inn ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... the lie that comes glib to a man's tongue. None of that for me. I leave the sneaking off to them soft-spoken chaps you're thinking of. No! If you love me you take me. And if you take me—why, then, the capstan-song of deep-water ships is sure to settle ...
— One Day More - A Play In One Act • Joseph Conrad

... I'm so happy! I wonder if any two people were ever so happy as Edwin and I. Am I not glib with my "Edwin"? I found it rather hard at first to keep from calling him Professor Green, but it seemed to mean so much to him that I have at last ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... looked up to him ever since they were children. Yet, all the time, he had a feeling that, since he alone knew all the circumstances of his case, he alone was entitled to blame or to excuse himself. The glib judgments that moralists would pass upon his conduct could be nothing but the imbecilities of smug and pharisaic fools—of those not under this drugging spell—of such as had not blood enough, perhaps, ever to fall ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... because of the rather mawkish sentimentality with which it is decked out; for if any scoundrel is really the instrument of God's will, why should he be blamed for his scoundrelism? And we observe how yet once more, by a glib and vapid phrase—"I believe in the {62} infinitude of wisdom and love; there is nothing else"—the fact of evil has been triumphantly got rid of. In words, that is to say, but not in reality; for in reality there is a great deal else—sin, and shame, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... is never silent talks much folly; a glib tongue, unless it be bridled, will often talk ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... the village charged with novel ideas about the immortality of the soul, accepting the literal truth of the text "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." I attended the meetings and took notes of the speaker's glib talk. I distinctly remember that it was from his mouth that I first heard the word "encyclopaedia." When he cited the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" in confirmation of some statement, I had no doubt of its truth, and I resolved sometime ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... to Gerald's lie to her. Indeed, Chirac had heard it. She knew Gerald for a glib liar to others, but she was naively surprised ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... instant, looking absently at the headstone of "Hephzibah," who was the later of Robert McCoy's two beloved wives, then she said, with an effort, for these staid descendants of Scottish ancestry were not given to glib talking of ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham

... had experience of Vooda's persuasive tongue and knack of casuistry, did not wish to argue the point—knowing, as he did full well, the object of Vooda's visit—and at once made up his mind that he would not see the glib-tongued constable alone. ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... Himself, the unchaste and the idle, the unjust and the unmerciful, and the covetous man, who is an idolater, says the scripture, though he may call himself seven times a Protestant, and rail at the Pope in public meetings, while he justifies greediness and tyranny by glib words about the necessities of business and the laws of trade, and by philosophy falsely so called, which cometh not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. Such a man loves and makes a lie, and the Lord of truth will surely send him to his ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley

... always in trouble, but provided with a programme of glib excuses and prepared at a moment's notice to call witnesses (false), always escape punishment. Some do not care if punished or not and who boast that they had full value for their "two days C.B." ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq

... of the New and Honourable Fraternity of war correspondents, who all possess the inalienable right of doing as much work as they can and getting as much for it as Providence and their owners shall please. To these things are added in time, if the brother be worthy, the power of glib speech that neither man nor woman can resist when a meal or a bed is in question, the eye of a horse-cope, the skill of a cook, the constitution of a bullock, the digestion of an ostrich, and an infinite ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... the cynical smile which so often disconcerted glib liars like Petit. "It is hopeless to expect you to tell the truth. However, I think I know a way to clear your wits. You must be brought face to face with La Belle Chasseuse. Perhaps when you are confronted with that lady in the room between the cafe ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... intimate," 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 I ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... needs be shallow. But it will be easily 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

... child, be reasonable. Your mamma, poor dear! is dead, and, let us trust, in heaven." The good soul's conscience pricked her when she said this glib formula, of which in this present instance she believed nothing. "Your father has the most perfect right to marry again. Neither the Church nor the Bible forbids it; and you cannot expect him to remain single all his life—when he needs a wife so much, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... to her, but she never turned her head. He stood glowering, grinding his teeth together, his glib tongue finding for once no way to better his sorry case. He was the picture of trickery rewarded; I could not repress a grin at him. Marking which, he burst out at me, vehemently, yet in a low tone, for Mayenne had not closed ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... chieftains desired Lewis to tell the Governor of Virginia that "they had taken up the Hatchet against all Nations that were Enemies to the English"; but Lewis, an astute student of Indian Psychology, rightly surmised that all their glib professions of friendship and assistance were "only to put a gloss on their knavery." So it proved; for instead of the four hundred warriors promised under the treaty for service in Virginia, the Cherokees sent only seven warriors, accompanied by three women. Al though the Cherokees petitioned ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson

... Marquess of Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommending her to select her son's governor with particular care, choosing rather a person of grave behaviour and assured morality than one of your glib ink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King's library without being the better qualified for the direction of a young gentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... sole and a flounder. I don't want to know. I don't want to be continually told. I wish these people would meet me on my own ground. I wish the Macleods would begin to talk after dinner about the Lord Chamberlain's interference with the politics of burlesque, and then perhaps they would not be so glib. I am tired of hearing about John Maclean's boat, and Donald Maclean's horse, and Sandy Maclean's refusal to pay the road-tax. And as for the drinking of whiskey that these sailors get through—well, it seems to me that the ordinary condition of things is ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... of swift deeds was performed with such a glib precipitancy that if was as though the action had been rehearsed a score of times. The garden was all drowsy peace now that Orestes spread his palms in a gesture of deprecation. A little distance from him, Ahasuerus with his forefinger drew upon the ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... their husbands, and talked in the same large ways about policy, and the duties and responsibilities of the rich. They were swayed by the same ethic that dominated their husbands—the ethic of their class; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears did ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him, I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... again to his companion. "I'm sorry, very sorry, that I asked you; sorry most of all that—" He halted diffidently, his great hands hanging loose at his side, his broad shoulders drooping wearily. He was not glib of speech, at best, and this second blow was hard to bear. A full half minute he stood so, hesitant, searching for words; then heavily, clumsily, he turned, started for the door. "I really must be ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... to take him to see the skaters on the 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 ...
— The Skating Party and Other Stories • Unknown

... 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 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... Van 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 avoid the trustees. And Johnny—for the Sluysdaels are all fools or ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... fairly launched in a recital glib on his lips, regained the dominance of manner which the attitude of his subordinates had momentarily imperiled. Increased composure brought with it a certain hauteur, and he paused again—perhaps to gratify the actor's ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy

... boatman dead and bleeding at my feet. A wild cry arose. The mob seized me, and I was carried to prison. Next day the case was investigated before the court of justice. I related the simple fact. A glib advocate doubted my asseverations; but the spectators, who were numerous, gave the fullest credit to the story, and I was spared the doom of a murderer, because the judges were of opinion that I could have no motive to commit the crime, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 481, March 19, 1831 • Various

... God! that glib-tongu'd Aiken, My vera heart and flesh are quakin, To think how we stood sweatin', shakin, An' p-'d wi' dread, While he, wi' hingin lip an' snakin, Held ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... for it but to leave all, save what I actually felt, unsaid. Diplomacy I was trained in, and on most matters I had a glib enough tongue. But to palter with women was a lightness I had always neglected, and if I had invented would-be pretty speeches out of my clumsy inexperience, Phorenice would have seen through the fraud on the instant. She had been nurtured ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... moment, the prince hesitated, but brief as the pause, scarcely the durance of an eye-flash, Lal Lu saw it, and gazed upon the prince with a disconcerting directness as he added, with the haste we note in the accused who attempt to distract suspicion by the utterance of glib generalities: ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... she, "to hear me quote holy writ so glib. I have pored over it this four years, and why? Not because God wrote it, but because I saw it often in thy hands ere thou didst leave me. Heaven forgive me, I am but a woman. What thinkest thou ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... he never married, Hakon had a son Harald Slettmali (smooth-talker, or glib of speech), and two daughters, Ingibiorg and Margret. Ingibiorg afterwards married Olaf Bitling, king of the Sudreys; and Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking, was of her line, and, as we shall see, in 1200 ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray

... take, Keep it, heap it hard and dry, That the gather'd flame may break Through the furnace, wroth and high. Smolt the copper within— Quick—the brass with the tin, That the glutinous fluid that feeds the Bell May flow in the right course glib ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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 ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... 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 hungry lion a halfpenny bun. They could always be relied on to raise a cheer from ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... Cree. Hooliam's answer was prompt and glib. "He says that the water was too low to bring a ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... years of the republic they seem honestly to have dignified their submission as "respect for the popular verdict." They even quoted from the Latin language the sentiment that "the voice of the people is the voice of God." And this hideous blasphemy was as glib upon the lips of those who, without change of mind, were defeated at the polls year after year as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... man," said 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

... until quite later years, can have lived in the spirit of their ancient worthies, or reverenced the most illustrious among these, we may argue from the fact that they should have endured so far to degrade the name of one among their noblest, that every glib and loquacious hireling who shows strangers about their picture- galleries, palaces, and ruins, is called 'cicerone,' or a Cicero! It is unfortunate that terms like these, having once sprung up, are ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... to his sergeant with a triumphant expression. "Just what I thought. Anybody that can't give a better account of himself than that had better be locked up. Spies—aha! Another of you came ashore a while ago—a glib-tongued, story-telling gentleman who fooled us into letting him off, but we've got you safe and sound and here you'll ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... it is, old chap," he confided, "you'll be making yourself unpopular before long. Another criminal at large, thanks to that glib tongue and subtle brain of yours. The crooks of London will present you with a testimonial ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... us at every 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 ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... 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 family ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... is a familiar story, although the depth of its significance is beyond the compass of any living human intelligence. It is easy to say in a glib sentence that the amount of wealth produced every few years nowadays is equal to all the accumulated wealth of all the centuries down to the early part of the nineteenth; but the social meaning of so great a change baffles all attempt ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw

... hence, and with this parting kiss, Which joins two souls, remember this: Though thou be'st young, kind, soft, and fair And may'st draw thousands with a hair; Yet let these glib temptations be Furies to others, friends to me. Look upon all, and though on fire Thou set their hearts, let chaste desire Steer thee to me, and think, me gone, In having all, that thou hast none. Nor so immured would I have Thee live, as dead and in thy grave; But walk abroad, yet wisely well ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... the rhymester with no poetic gift, but full of "subtle" ideas; in the circle young lads of seventeen talk glibly and learnedly of women and of love, while in the presence of women they are dumb or talk to them like a book—and what do they talk about? The circle is the hot-bed of glib fluency; in the circle they spy on one another like so many police officials.... Oh, circle! thou'rt not a circle, but an enchanted ring, which has been the ruin of many a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... that glib and ready lie come so aptly to your lips? Your father never said a word to you on the subject. It is doubtful if he knew you were going to Burnsville at all, and he never had seen Mr. Burns in his life. How carefully, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... history Comfortable reassurance that one was still his client Dumb grief which has never learned to moan Gilt-edged orthodoxy Glib assurances that naive souls make so easily to others He have all the pleasure, I have all the work He was asleep, for he knew not remorse In work alone man rests from grief Kind of sporting energy, a defiant spurt Meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs virtuous Private grudge against Time ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... alone would not be heeded. Hartwell, the Eastern manager of the company, was a shallow, empty-headed man, insufferably conceited. He held the position, partly through a controlling interest in the shares, but more through the nimble use of a glib tongue that so man[oe]uvred his corporal's guard of information that it appeared an able-bodied regiment of knowledge covering ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... of a fight for independence, were heard throughout Norway. Meetings were held more or less secretly, and at each of them was some one with well-filled pockets and glib tongue, to enlarge on the country's wrongs, and promise assistance from an outside irresistible power as soon as they showed that they meant to strike for freedom. No one openly named the power. That was not necessary; it was everywhere felt and understood. Men who were real patriots began to believe ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... yes!" replied Brother Roach, heartily; "none more so. Felix Kendrick's ways is in good shape for some preacher wi' a glib tongue. Felix was a good man; he wanted his just dues, but not if to take them would hurt a man. He was neighbourly; who more so? And, sir, when you got to rastlin' wi' trouble, he'd find you and fetch you out. I only hope the Chinee ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... Lords, what seaman casts away his card because it has four-and-twenty points of the compass? and yet those are very near as many and as difficult as the orders in the whole circumference of your commonwealth. Consider, how have we been tossed with every wind of doctrine, lost by the glib tongues of your demagogues and grandees in our own havens? A company of fiddlers that have disturbed your rest for your groat; L2,000 to one, L3,000 a year to another, has been nothing. And for what? Is there one of them that yet knows what a commonwealth is? And are you yet afraid of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... the surface,) are to be sternly tallied with the poets themselves, and tried by them and their lives. Who wants a glorification of courage and manly defiance from a coward or a sneak?—a ballad of benevolence or chastity from some rhyming hunks, or lascivious, glib roue? ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... have told them that I will be their backer at need; I made the deal wi' them direct and ye have nowt to do with it. You are ill to please, young man! You come here with a very singular story, and nowt to back it but a glib tongue and your smooth, innocent-like young face—and you go back hame with a heaped gowpen of gold, and mair in the kist ahint of that. I think ye do very ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... went on, "ought to bring great happiness, great position, great love; and how can I let you throw yourself away at eighteen on a commonplace boy with a glib tongue and a high opinion of himself? Don't tell me that it will make you happy. That would be the worst of all, if you turned out to be so limited that you were satisfied,—that would be a living death. O my darling, I give you my word that if ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... gentlemen, before that toast is honoured I beg to propose to you a toast. The toast, always the premier toast in every gathering composed of English gentlemen." The joke was then mine. In the most perfunctory and glib manner I gave the Royal Toast. After it was duly honoured I gave the second Loyal Toast, "The House of Lords," "The Houses of Parliament," "The Army, Navy and Reserve Forces,"—each time calling upon some one or two to respond. The reply for "The Navy," I recollect, fell to Sir Spencer ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... was a 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... answer any of these telegrams," he muttered, tearing up the offending messages. "Oh, why did Radwin have to take wings at the very time when I need him most! Fred Radwin, with his cool nerve, his steely eyes and his glib, lying tongue, would have been ready with answers for all these questions. But I can't do it. I'll need a strait-jacket, if these telegrams ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... isn't that we are simply backward in these things, we are antagonistic. The British mind has never really tolerated electricity; at least, not that sort of electricity that runs through wires. Too slippery and glib for it. Associates it with Italians and fluency generally, with Volta, Galvani, Marconi and so on. The proper British electricity is that high-grade useless long-sparking stuff you get by turning round a glass machine; stuff we used ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... sweetened and enriched the mere act of living. Though he was less demonstrative than Lucy, who had outgrown the plainness and the reticence of her childhood and was developing into a coquettish, shallow-minded girl, with what Miss Priscilla called "a glib tongue," Virginia learned gradually, in the secret way mothers learn things, that his love for her was, after his ambition, the strongest force in his character. Between him and his father there had existed ever since his babyhood a curious, silent, yet ineradicable hostility. Whether the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... about the Guttenchild crowd putting over a big steal on the public that the party leaders are scared stiff. I couldn't pick up a newspaper anywhere without seeing your name in the headlines. It was fierce." Selfridge had found his glib tongue ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... 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 ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... gentlemen of the highest birth and most spotless integrity act when they wish to make themselves agreeable to their constituents, and have some end to gain of the country folks. How is it that we allow ourselves not to be deceived, but to be ingratiated so readily by a glib tongue, a ready laugh, and a frank manner? We know, for the most part, that it is false coin, and we take it: we know that it is flattery, which it costs nothing to distribute to every body, and we had rather have ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

... painfully, after reading those most interesting Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, that the especial danger of this time is intellectual sciolism, vagueness, sentimental eclecticism—and feeling, too, as Socrates of old believed, that intellectual vagueness and shallowness, however glib, and grand, and eloquent it may seem, is inevitably the parent of a moral vagueness and shallowness, which may leave our age as it left the later Greeks, without an absolute standard of right or of truth, till it tries to escape from its own scepticism, as the later Neoplatonists did, ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... look-out for dramatic and instructive contrast in the House of Commons, one could not do better than study Mr. Morley and Mr. Chamberlain for a week. Mr. Chamberlain—glib, shallow, self-possessed, well-trained by years of public life—debates admirably. Nobody can deny that—not even those who, like myself, find his speaking exasperatingly empty and superficial and foolish. He is master of all his resources; ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... sudden prosperity, there were deeply-marked dark circles about his eyes. The Bowery's delights were telling upon the frightened lad, who had sealed his glib tongue now behind lying lips. Flattered by the "cop's" familiar manner, Emil greedily swallowed the ground bait artfully scattered by the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... immigration will probably become negligible not only during the war, but for some time after it. Usually the reason for leaving home lies in the crowded population of European States and the lack of opportunity for advancement, plus the glib tongue of some agent of a contractor or of a steamship company. In recent years those who have come have not been desirable additions to our population because they came from nations alien in blood, language, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... longhand to his manager's dictation, and was strengthened in the conviction that Penton had stolen that parcel of silver. Usually the manager composed hesitatingly, especially when addressing head office, but now he was glib, and seemed familiar with his subject. He even appeared to be in suppressed good humor over ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... forth in a manner that is worthy of Athens, and are already in action. Words without the reality must always appear a vain and empty thing, and above all when they come from Athens; for the more we seem to excel in the glib use of such language, the more it is distrusted by every one. {13} The change, then, which is pointed out to them must be great, the conversion striking. They must see you paying your contributions, marching to war, doing everything with a will, if any of them is to listen ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes

... been able 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 list of prepositions ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... son.' 3. Tsze-lu said, 'There are (there) common 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 ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge

... auctioneer, in his glib tones, "we are presenting to-day a most unusual opportunity. Prizes will be distributed to many enterprising people of Gridley, though these prizes are all so valuable that I trust none of them will go for the traditional 'song.' It is seldom, indeed, in any community, however ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock

... of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the cure interposed a ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... time," thinks I, "Mr. Smarty from the metrolopin deestricts, you're liable to git waxed—shore!" But the feller didn't 'pear to think so at all, and played right ahead as glib-like and keerless as ever—'casion'ly a-throwin' in them sircastic remarks o' his'n,—'bout bein' "slow and shore" 'bout things in gineral—"Liked to see that," he said:—"Liked to see fellers do things with plenty o' deliberation, and even ef a feller wuzn't much of a checker-player, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various

... have believed. The state is justified in insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity. Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell

... resplendar 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 lips of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 picked his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... of the frontier. An echo of Pigeon Creek informed the young storekeeper's first state paper, the announcement of his candidacy, in the year 1832. His first political speech was in a curious vein, glib, intimate and fantastic: "Fellow citizens, I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are short and sweet like the old woman's dance. I am in favor ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... by an effort. His sharp glance at Blair made him keep quiet also. Neither was at all impressed at the story Crane told them, except to be moved to ridicule. Well they knew how a Ouija Board will make glib statements as ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... with the 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 Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... should come. Men rolled their bodies through the forests in a kind of pagan ecstasy of self-sacrifice to meet Him. So credulous are the negroes of the Black Belt, says a resident white lawyer, that if a fellow with a wig of long hair and a glib tongue should appear among them and say he is the Christ, inside of a week the turmoil of ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 4, April 1896 • Various

... his earnest importunitie, after I had moistned my lips, to make my lie run glib to his journies end, forward I went as followeth ..." And the good apostle stops again; the cider and his own words have moved him; he is a little fuddled, so is mine host; they both fall to weeping. The innkeeper is ready ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... the packman, was 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. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... word 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 ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... 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

... two hundred dollars. It is no more than just that the laborer should have a share—he only asks a beggarly share—of the prosperity which he has helped to build up." This was specious and taking. Then there came down from the great city a glib person disguised as The Workingman's Friend,—no workingman himself, mind you, but a ghoul that lives upon subscriptions and sucks the senses out of innocent human beings,—who managed to set the ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly beyond their reach—to the shelter and food of the nearest village, where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of his honoured employers. Crouched against a ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... which was puzzling Birralong. The last man in the district whom they expected to be carried away by the glib tales of nuggets by the bucketful and gravel running two ounces to the dish, was Tony Taylor; still less did they expect that he would leave his selection home, to say nothing of the charms of Birralong and Marmot's verandah, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 one fortnight to ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... spit-box over dere. By chance, have you got any 'bacco? Make me more glib if I can chew and spit; then I 'members more and better de things done ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... by no means,' he began, listening vaguely to the glib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. 'Your father, my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on the road to recovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of course—two heads, we know, are so much better ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... companions to give a true account of what they had seen. The wonderful things lost nothing in the telling, the climax always being that they had finished the whole world, and had turned only when there was no more land. One glib old gentleman asked, "Then you reached Ma Robert (Mrs. L.)?" They were obliged to confess that she lived a little beyond the world. The presents were received with expressions of great satisfaction and delight; and on Sunday, when Sekeletu made his appearance at church ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... 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

... able to form a pretty clear estimate how much of this glib story was fact and how ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed

... bar and whispered something in the ear of the landlord, a burly man, who stood with his coat off and shirt sleeves rolled up. Drinks were now quickly compounded for each man, who seized his glass as the Captain, who was glib of tongue, commenced a speech in compliment of me. It surprised me not a little, that he made me the hero of more political conquests than were written down in our history since the declaration of independence; but as he vouched for the truth of every one of them, with an oath to every sentence, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... hypnosis of the conventional—provided it be glib. One reads such an assertion, and provided it be suave and brief and conventional, one seldom questions—or thinks "very strange" and then forgets. One has an impression from geography lessons: Mediterranean not more than three inches wide, on ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... explanation (readily accepted, since a police commissary gave it) that the man who belonged with the machine had met with an accident; indeed, this was true, for the genuine chauffeur had used Gibelin's bribe money in unwise libations and appeared the next morning with a battered head and a glib story ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... once was a fortress named Gib, Whose manners were haughty and glib! If you tried to get in, She replied, with a grin, 'I'm Great ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... 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 my own ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell

... Coombe regarding her with an expression of speculative interest. Her airy bringing forth of her glib time-worn little scraps of orthodoxy—as one who fished them out of a bag of long-discarded remnants of rubbish—was so true to type that it almost fascinated him for ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... some dreary private lodging-houses—then, at right angles to these, a street of shops; the cheese-monger's very small, the chemist's very smart, the pastry-cook's very dowdy, and the green-grocer's very dark, I was still looking out at the view thus presented, when I was suddenly apostrophized by a glib, disputatious voice ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... reason for suspecting him. He is too glib with his Princeton. Himmel! Did you ever hear a man talk so fast and so much and use such words? I can speak as good English as any man my age, but there were words, dozens of them, that I had never ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston

... bottle to Swanson, who stood listening to his glib tongue in amused wonder, and invited him to test the medicine. Nothing loth, the giant ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... if John Fletcher hadn't really done a good deal to make Abrahama think he did want her," said Sylvia. "He was just that kind of man. I never did think much of him. He was handsome and glib, but he was all surface. I guess poor Abrahama had some reason to cut off Susy. I guess there was some double-dealing. I thought so at the time, and now this will makes me think so ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... well. But the truth is, of course, that his achievement consists precisely in making patent the impenetrable mystery of her, and of the tangled complex of striving and aspiration of which she is so helplessly a part. It is in this sense that "Sister Carrie" is a profound work. It is not a book of glib explanations, of ready formulae; it is, above all else, a ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... 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 the garden ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... his glib English fashion as we descended to my study, but I did not hear half that he said. He looked surprised at two or three of the answers I made to his questions, and I am sure there were several of them that I didn't respond to at all. He must ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... 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 the belfry knelling Its bold notes free, Made the bells of Shandon Sound far more grand on The pleasant waters Of ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy



Words linked to "Glib" :   persuasive, superficial, plausible, pat



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