Famous quotes with Smart-alecky

• Ever since the war he's had a low opinion of people and of nations, they're selfish, all of them, without the imagination to see the injustices they're perpetrating. The idealism of his youth, a belief in the moral mission of mankind and the enlightened spirit of the white race that he took from the lectures of John Stuart Mill and his followers, was buried once and for all in the bloody mire of Ypres and the chalk quarry at Soissons where his son met his death. Politics disgusts him, the cool conviviality of the club and the showy self-congratulation of the public banquet repel him; since the death of his son he's avoided making new acquaintances. His own generation's sour unwillingness to recognize the truth and its inability to adapt to the postwar era anger him, as does the younger generation's smart-alecky thoughtlessness. But with this girl he's regained belief, a vague devout gratitude for the mere existence of youth; in her presence he sees that one generation's painfully acquired mistrust of life is fortunately neither understood nor credited by the next, and that each new wave of youth is a new beginning.

  Stefan Zweig

Related words & questions

Related words: smart alec, smart alecks, who is a smart aleck, what does a smart aleck do, what is a smart aleck

Related questions:

What does it mean to be a smart aleck?

Why are people so smart alecky?

Can you be a smart aleck?

What is being a smart aleck like?

non-evolutionary

The antonyms for the word "non-evolutionary" are "evolutionary," "progressive," and "adaptive." These words indicate a trend towards change, growth, and development - quite the opp...