"Frivolity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his wishes, I passed another year at a very fashionable school—a year of girlish frivolity, in which my last chance of acquiring knowledge as a means of future independence was wholly thrown away. Before the close of this year I received another letter from George, which somewhat surprised, but did not at all dishearten me. It ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... had theretofore known only in day-dreams the life of light frivolity and fashion which found feverish and trumpery reflection at Frampton Court, was neither equipped nor disposed to be hypercritical in the first hours of her debut there; and at any other time, in any other temper, she knew, she must have been swept off ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... favor. She condescended to laugh at my witticisms and display an interest in my stories. Yet I felt that I had a rival in the person of a young man with quiet and refined tastes; and it struck me, at times, that she preferred his taciturn humor to my Parisian frivolity. He formed one in the circle of admirers that surrounded Miss Nelly at the time she addressed to me the foregoing question. We were all comfortably seated in our deck-chairs. The storm of the preceding evening had cleared the sky. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... against the dressing-room windows of their new house in one of the hilly suburbs of San Francisco, and threatening the unseasonable frivolity of the stucco ornamentation of cornice and balcony. Mrs. Tucker had been called from the contemplation of the dreary prospect without by the arrival of a visitor. On entering the drawing-room she found him engaged in a half admiring, half resentful examination of its new furniture ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... her mother, who knew of the former episode between her and Arthur and attached little importance to the renewed flirtation in which they indulged. That they were deceived in their estimate was due to the girl's reputation for frivolity where young men were concerned. She had been dubbed a "flirt" ever since she first began to wear long dresses, and her nature was not considered deep enough for her heart to be ever seriously affected. Therefore the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... Sunday afternoons ordinarily from two to a dozen girl friends called her up at the boarding-house, or dropped in by ones and twos to chat a while, tease her about Jack, or plan some mild frivolity. Hazel went home, wondering if they, too, would ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... inquiry, and excited so troublesome a curiosity as to their lining and comparative merits, together with a determination to test them by trying on, as to make her post a very conspicuous one. The ladies who had commodities of their own to sell, and did not want dressing-gowns, saw at once the frivolity and bad taste of this masculine preference for goods which any tailor could furnish; and it is possible that the emphatic notice of various kinds which was drawn toward Miss Tulliver on this public occasion, threw ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Gordon about and make him take an interest in the babies, but he wouldn't glance at them. He thinks I came just to spite him, which, of course, I did. Your siren call would never have lured me from the path of frivolity had Gordon not been so unpleasantly hilarious at the idea of my being able to manage an orphan asylum. I came here to show him that I could; and now, when I can show him, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... and withdrew—at first to gay society in Paris. Here he might naturally have sunk into the gutter with his companions, but for a great mental shock which became the main epoch and turning-point of his life, the crisis which diverted him from frivolity to seriousness. It was a purely intellectual emotion, not excited by anything in the visible or tangible world; nor could it be called conversion in the common acceptation of that term. He tells us that on the 10th of November, 1619, at the age of twenty-four, a brilliant idea flashed ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... being superficial: "True knowledge and solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds, women have not been found to spend their lives on mere entia rationis splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust them "from those public ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... Chatiments we scorn and vituperate its charlatan head or pity him profoundly as we see him ill and helpless in Zola's Debacle, most of us, if we are candid, will confess that the Second Empire, especially the Paris of Morny and Hausmann, of cynicism and splendour, of frivolity and chicane, of servile obsequiousness and haughty pretension, the France and the Paris that drew to themselves the eyes of all Europe and particularly the eyes of the watchful Bismarck, have for us a fascination almost as great as they had for the gay and audacious ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... her empty, false, disgusting in these creatures: far from finding there those first charms which her heart had had so much difficulty in defending, she saw in them now only frivolity, danger ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... that even while, in later and gloomier years, [Grafton, 806] accusing Richard III. of the murder of her royal sons, and knowing him, at least, the executioner of her brother and her child by the bridegroom of her youth, [Anthony Lord Rivers, and Lord Richard Gray. Not the least instance of the frivolity of Elizabeth's mind is to be found in her willingness, after all the woes of her second widowhood, and when she was not very far short of sixty years old, to take a third husband, James III., of Scotland,—a marriage prevented only by the death ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... desert. The room in the attic, with its bed, its desk, and its altar, suddenly became a terrible place, like a body from which the soul has fled. Every feature of it gave him pain, and he hurried back with Mona to the frivolity of Anne in her villa ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... precious to the philosopher. They paint the character of an individual or the manners of the age more perfectly than any other species of composition: it is in novels we observe as it were passing under our eyes the refined frivolity of the French; the gloomy and disordered sensibility of the German; and the petty intrigues of the modern Italian in some Venetian Novels. We have shown the world that we possess writers of the first order in this delightful province of Fiction ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... systems to which they are opposed, of distinguishing the personal character of an opponent from the opinions he maintains. Men lean most to justice, and women to mercy. Men are most addicted to intemperance and brutality, women to frivolity and jealousy. Men excel in energy, self-reliance, perseverance, and magnanimity, women in humility, gentleness, modesty, and endurance.... Their religious or devotional realisations are incontestably more vivid.... But though more intense, ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... in her easy chair, began to giggle at the anxious expression of the peasant, who, not understanding this frivolity, glanced at her angrily out of the corner of his eye and ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... delighting in his clothes, unhappy if he were deprived of his bottle and his game. Haggart, on the other hand, was before all things sealed to his profession. He would have deserted the gayest masquerade, had he ever strayed into so light a frivolity, for the chance of lightening a pocket. He tasted but few amusements without the limits of his craft, and he preserved unto the end a touch of that dour character which is the heritage of his race. But, withal, ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... not too much, of the Diary of a Master of the Ceremonies; where the important personages strangely contrast with the frivolity and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... pitch, or with fire. Keeping company with the wrong people: some of you lose there; treating Meetings and prayer lightly; resenting little unkindnesses and persecution; carelessness of speech; gossiping, frivolity, forgetting that whilst the Holy Ghost is a Spirit of Joy, He is grieved by lightness and frivolous jesting. These are some of the little holes through which the blessing drops out. You must watch and pray, that ye enter ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... challenging handwriting, and became a dictated typewritten letter, occurred the words, 'I am distressed.' He was chiefly distressed by the over-devotion most of us pay to politics and philosophy, by the struggle for wages, by the clash between master and man, by the frivolity of the rich, the stupor of the poor, by the blindness of the whole world to the necessity for the cleansed heart. He did not want to establish a Salvation Army, but to save the whole world. He did not want to be acclaimed by many nations, but to see suffering and poverty ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the spirit of the foreigner a kind of gross levity, an affectation of frivolity with respect to women, and a continual habit of vulgar vanity, which seems to run through all ranks and ages of the continental world. What can be more offensively trifling, than the conduct which Napoleon narrates of himself, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... his heart, there passed through it a thrill of inexpressible tenderness, a quick, passionate sense of possession, a rapture as of having won her and made her his own forever, by saving her from that horrible risk. The maze in which he had but now dwelt concerning her seemed an obsolete frivolity of an alien past; all the cold doubts and hindering scruples which he had felt from the first were gone; gone all his care for his world. His world? In that supreme moment, there was no world but in the tender eyes at which ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... the daughters of Samuel, lived in the household at Mount Vernon and evidently was a great cross, for we find Washington pleading as an excuse for her frivolity that "she was not brung up right, she has no disposition, and takes no care of her clothes, which are dabbed about in every corner, and the best are always in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... thus emphasizing the immense energies devoted to artistic enterprises is to lead us to consider what is the end of all this labor. He points out scathingly the ugliness, frivolity, and crudity of much that passes for drama in the theater, for music in the concert hall, and for literature between covers. He pleads for a simple art that shall express with sincerity the genuine emotions of the great ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Bedouins might ignore, but they knew that these raids fitted into the general tactical plan of operations; consequently, every Bedouin was imbued with a spirit of determination in spite of an apparent frivolity. ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... Tidman swaps grins, sort of sly and sheepish, like they wasn't used to indulgin' in such frivolity. They seemed to enjoy it, though, and the first thing I know I'm bein' put through a sort of highbrow third degree, the object being to show up what an empty loft I wear ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... bestows upon the property for which he alone is responsible? Will not the gladsome absence of care, which has certainly hitherto been brilliantly conspicuous in Freeland, eventually degenerate into frivolity and neglect of that for which no one in particular is responsible? The fact that this has not yet happened may perhaps be due—for it is not yet a generation since this commonwealth was founded—to the dominant enthusiasm that marked the beginning. New brooms, it is said, sweep clean. ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... "My lord, this is frivolity," I declared. "I came here to give the papers. If you do not care to take them in the only way in which I will give them, let ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... ferocious. He, it seemed, was the knife and boot boy at the "Blue Boar", "did a bit" with the gloves, and was willing to spar with Sheen provided Mr Bevan made it all right with the guv'nor; saw, that is so say, that he did not get into trouble for passing in unprofessional frivolity moments which should have been sacred to knives and boots. These terms having been agreed to, he put ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... concerned with foreign nations. It probably owes its place here to its peculiar superscription which conforms to the other superscription in xiii.-xxiii. In this chapter the prophet laments and very sternly rebukes the frivolity of the people of Jerusalem—whether shortly before the invasion of Sennacherib or after his retreat, it is hard to say. Trusting in their armour and fortifications they give the rein to their appetites, but he solemnly ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... however distant, to actual pleading before a court of law. But now even this element of reality has disappeared. The poetical readings which had been the fashion under Domitian gave place to rhetorical ostentations which were popular in proportion to their frivolity or misplaced ingenuity. The heroes of Marathon, [2] the sages of ancient Greece, had once been the objects of praise. They were now made the objects of derision and invective. [3] Speeches against Socrates, Achilles, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... speech, Ramsey had a certain gift of humour, which displayed itself in flippant witticisms generally at the expense of others. He undoubtedly possessed the art of provoking laughter, but there was always malice behind his frivolity. In appearance he was elegant without being engaging, and one felt the spitefulness of the dark eyes beneath the abundant hair, and the hardness of his mouth showed itself even when he laughed. An onlooker could not have failed to contrast Madame de Corantin's ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... all be moved by the grand and eternal Beauty of his spirit! Could Josephine, the empress of the French, stand in our presence, how the plumes of our vanity would come down and the lightness of our frivolity depart before the charms of her wisdom and virtue! Could the matchless Mrs. Hemans rise before us in her peerless Beauty of soul, how little should we prize the fleeting Beauty of these mortal bodies, and how ashamed should we be of our foolish pride and thoughtlessness! Could we invite before ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... represent on earth a majesty above their own. No waverer could face the terrors of that mighty gathering of infernal powers. And the Nicene age was a time of unsettlement and change, of half-beliefs and wavering superstition, of weakness and unclean frivolity. Above all, society was heathen to an extent we can hardly realise. The two religions were strangely mixed. The heathens on their side never quite understood the idea of worshipping one God only; while crowds of nominal Christians ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... of young people dancing, romping, playing any game, or even laughing heartily, she would interrupt them to say, "Children, are you sure you can ask God's blessing on all this? Do you think that beings with immortal souls to save should give rein to such frivolity! I fear you are sinning, and be sure your sin will find you out. Remember, that for every idle word and deed we must give an account to the Great Judge of Heaven ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... oracular air, and boasts that the Halachah is always according to his decision (Bava Metzia, fol. 59, col. 2), insists, on the other hand, that he who instructs his daughter in the law must be considered as training her into habits of frivolity; and the saying above ascribes to the sex such a power of frivolity as connects itself evidently with the foregone conclusion that they are by nature incapable of being developed into any solidity of worth or character. The Gemara, Tosephoth, and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... was not in the least ironical, but a little hurried, as though, having put the thing in a way that might sound ambiguous, he hastened to prevent any possible misapprehension. May had looked for a twinkle in his eye, but his eye was guilty of no such frivolity. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... frivolous, for we were pretty stanch in our Presbyterianism there. I think our love for Dr. Hemingway in itself would have kept the Sabbath sacred. He never found fault with our Sunday visiting. All days were holy to him, and his evening sermons taught us that frivolity, and idle gossip, and scandal are as unforgivable on week days as on the Sabbath Day. Somewhere in the wide courts of heaven there must be reserved an abode of inconceivable joy and peace for such men as he, men who ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... habitual reader of dramatic comment. The theater itself he regarded as an amusement designed for minds more tinctured with childish frivolity ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... answered Dick seriously. "But you may say, if you like, that I shall be very pleased to see Her Majesty and do what I can for her. And pray try to be serious, Phil, for once in a way; frivolity is well enough at a proper time, and in its proper place, but it will not improve these people's opinion of us if they see us laughing and obviously joking over a matter that seems to be a serious enough one for them, and may ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... consciences, their own beliefs. In England these men came to be called Puritans. They were deeply earnest; religion was ever in their thoughts; they had protested even against the wickedness of the theatre in Shakespeare's time; and now as they watched the light frivolity of the court they became imbittered. They called Charles the "man of sin." Round these stern fanatics began to centre the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers; teach them, that courage and truth are the ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... study the characters of those with whom he lives or converses, must keep up the appearance of a kind of recklessness and frivolity, for the mind closes itself up like the hedgehog, at the least sensible touch of observation, and will not be afterwards drawn out. Men have been known in the middle of a discovery of their character, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... solid elements of poise is, without doubt, a well-defined ambition, that is to say, one that is divested of the drawbacks of frivolity and directly winged toward the goal ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... characters from life, did not draw wholesale; he would take only a portion of a character that pleased him and work it up in combination with another distinct character. It was thus he dealt with Leigh Hunt, borrowing his amusing, airy frivolity, and combining it with the meanness and heartlessness of Skimpole. I have always fancied that Dowler in "Pickwick" was founded—after this composite principle—on his true-hearted but imperious friend, Forster. Forster was indeed also a perfect reproduction of Dr. Johnson and had the despotic ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... doubt, with a due amplification of all the details. The crisis of the whole affair was reached when one day the young lawyer suddenly set off on a journey along with the lady, nobody knew whither. "That's the way frivolity goes on; the forward young gentleman will lose his business," said the knowing ones. But this was not the case; for not a little to the astonishment of the public, old Eichheimer himself attended to his foster-son's business with the most painstaking ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... passes belief. As has always been the case under such circumstances, increasing wealth has brought about increased expenditure, principally in matters of dress, and the women in particular seem to have made the most of this opportunity. Vanity and frivolity multiplied on every hand as a natural consequence; the Church was growing daily less able to cope with the moral degeneracy of the time on account of its own immoral condition; thus, the foundations were being laid for those centuries of corruption and national ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... another opportunity for the snap-shotter when, LORD BOB lamenting the "ingrained frivolity of the Radicals in this grave crisis," ARTHUR MARKHAM ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... with his old loves and his new dances. He wondered how the deuce that fellow could be amused with such frivolity, and always look so serene and calm. Then there was Squib: that man never knew when to leave off joking; and Annesley, with his false refinement; and Darrell, with his petty ambition. He felt quite sick, and took a solitary ride: but he flew from Scylla to Charybdis. Mrs. Montfort could not forget ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... answer! that excused her frivolity by sharing it. Kind beyond her utmost merit. She did not say so, but she thought it, sitting dumb, in sudden tears, and burning with shame for her blindness to the hour's fearful realities. While Ned stepped to Watson's side to speak ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... I am glad to hear it: for I scorn a life of frivolity; but then, again, I should not like to give up everything, you know." Mrs. Dodd looked a little staggered, too, at so vast a scheme of capitulation But "everything" was soon explained to mean balls, concerts, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... deeper, broader, more vital than any for which you have yet asked or hoped. The esteem and veneration of the very men who have scorned you for your love of luxury, laughed at you for your ridiculous aping of foreign aristocracy, jeered at you for your love of glitter, your thirst for wealth, your frivolity and folly, and despised you for your arrogance and heartlessness—are already yours. Contempt for you has passed away forever. Let the dead past bury its dead. American women solve the riddle of woman's destiny. Vast ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the want of that discipline, obedience, self-control, and self-respect which can only be truly learnt at home. It is said that the Third Napoleon attributed the recent powerlessness of France, which left her helpless and bleeding at the feet of her conquerors, to the frivolity and lack of principle of the people, as well as to their love of pleasure—which, however, it must be confessed, he himself did not a little to foster. It would thus seem that the discipline which France still needs to learn, if she would be good and great, is that indicated by the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... speechless, the frivolity of this person's speech. Let all know, if perchance there be any who know it not, that enchanters of my degree deign not to concern themselves with the doings of any but kings, princes, emperors, them that be born in the purple and them only. Had ye ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only knew!" sighed Ted. "I am the usual back-stop for all frivolity. But if it comes to giving up this lovely loafing hour under our own grandmother poplar, I say girls, go ahead and knock, but spare the whisper. I'd die if I had to go tramping around seeing things and saying hello to that mob," with a sweeping wave of her ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... from him. And yet Petey went through school with a cloud over his young life, in the shape of a Pa who gave him a thousand dollars a year for expenses and wouldn't allow a single cent of it to be spent for frivolity. And he had a blanket definition for frivolity that covered everything from dancing parties to pie at an all-night lunch counter. By hard work Petey could spend about four hundred dollars on necessary expenses, and that left ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... period of ardent, laborious youth, he faithfully shut himself up in libraries, attended public lectures, and gave himself a solid foundation of learning, which sometimes awakened surprise when discovered under the elegant frivolity of the gay turfman. But while arming himself for the battle of life, he lost, little by little, what was more essential than ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... daily; the first on sciences, and the other two on belles lettres. The lecture on science is considered as very able, but those on the belles lettres were merely suited, as I understood, to French frivolity. The rooms were so full as to render our stay unpleasant, and we thereby lost an anatomy lecture, which was about to commence. I should not forget to mention, that all the Parisian journals and magazines, and many of the German periodical works, were lying on the ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... of the life in the capital, the condition of the army and the Confederate States, furnishing a continual surprise to Prescott, who now saw that beneath the man's occasional frivolity and epicurean tastes lay a mind of wonderful penetration, possessing that precious quality generally known as insight. He revealed a minute knowledge of the Confederacy and its chieftains, both civil and military, but he never risked an opinion as to its ultimate ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... metaphors as if they were elegant curiosities, ornamental excrescences, to be passed over abruptly on the way to more exacting topics. The mystics, and the mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this frivolity. Recognising that there is a profound and intimate correspondence between all physical manifestations and the life of the soul, they flung the reins on the neck of metaphor in the hope that it might carry them ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... man," said Sol, and he walked away jauntily. Under his apparent frivolity he concealed his joy at the find, which he knew to be of such vast importance. He approached the dusky group, and his really tender heart was stirred with pity for the rescued captives. Long Jim and Silent Tom held the smaller two on their shoulders, but the older ones and the woman, also, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my reviewers call me frivolous. Do you think all this kind of thing frivolous? Damn it all (excuse me) what can one be but frivolous about serious things? Without frivolity they are simply too tremendous. That you, who, with your hair down your back, played at bricks with me in a house of which I have no memory except you and the bricks, that you should be taken by someone of my miserable sex—as you ought to be—what is one to say? I am not going to wish you ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the quality of its head. When in the palace profusion and intrigue took the place of Frederick the Great's unflagging labour, the old uprightness, industry, and precision which had been the pride of Prussian administration fell out of fashion everywhere. Yet the frivolity of the Court was a less active cause of military decline than the abandonment of the first principles of Prussian policy. [13] If any political sentiment existed in the nation, it was the sentiment of antagonism ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... negative way, i. e., by that which they did not express in their verses. The great merit of the pre-classical writers is to have created space, on the one hand, for personal sensations, and, on the other, for the great new thoughts of the age. Hagedorn, with the elegant frivolity of the man of the world, continued the necessary sifting of antiquated material; Albrecht von Haller, with the deep seriousness of the great student of nature, once more squarely faced the eternal problems. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... their dress; and the restriction of the changes of fashion within certain limits. All which appears for the present quite impossible; but it is only so far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and shallow vices ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... that she probed the Doctor's wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... necessarily of contrasts. It brings together types that stand out from their background, but are abruptly different from each other, like the clown among the fairies or the fool in the forest. And his audacious reconciliation is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness. A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... would pay as for value received, they had doubtless often conferred, and concluded that was the happiest and best life for their sons, instead of allowing them to fritter away the precious years of youth in aimless frivolity, to be followed in later years by a disappointing and humiliating ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... morality play and told the story of Loyalheart's eventful pilgrimage through the Land of College, accompanied by her faithful friends, Honor, Forbearance, Silence and Good Humor. Her heroic efforts to keep her four friends with her in spite of the plots of Snobbery, Gossip, Jealousy, Frivolity and Treachery, and her readiness to extend a helping hand to Diffidence, Poverty and Misunderstood, result in the creation of an illusive being known to her only as the Spirit, a white-robed apparition ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the wrong night. That doesn't look as if I was very keen about it! However, I'm not blaming you, dear. It wasn't your fault. Mind you,' continued Bruce, 'I consider the Society Theatre pure frivolity. But one thing I'll say, a bad show there is better than a good show anywhere else. There's always jolly music, pretty dresses, pretty girls—you don't mind my saying so, dear, ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... nothing to her frivolity, but his smile was friendly. He lifted the round rubber cap of the distributor. Then Claire's faith tumbled in the dust. Twice had the wires been tested. Milt tested them again. She was too tired of botching to tell him ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... an unhappy pause. "I forget what a fellow does with the other hand. Might stick it in your pocket, loudly, or expectorate on the carpet. Indulge in little frivolity. Let a ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... wandering as they list. The quiet winding closes ring with songs of love and death, so that the old townsfolk lift their heads from their pillows, and, their nightcaps pushed to one side, wag gravely at all this frivolity. But youth knows nothing of this; it plunges reveling onward, with its surging blood. And one day the old people have the best of it; the blood surges no longer, but there they are, and there are the consequences, and the consequences ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to enhance his personal attractions increased, Donald's ever-growing anxiety led him to become more than ever impatient of such things and eager to hasten forward. He became provoked at his companion's frivolity, and regretted ever having consented to travel with him. When he finally discovered the prints of Indian moccasins about one of Cuyler's fires, the ashes of which were still hot, he grew so apprehensive of evil, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... ghosts—the ghosts that haunt such homes, made desolate by a breach of hearts. The city itself was crowded with opportunities for giving and receiving pain between mother and daughter. Christine had developed all the latent hardness of her mother's race with a sickly frivolity of her own. She made a great show of faith in her marriage venture. She boomed it in her occasional letters, which were full of scarce concealed bravado as graceful as snapping her fingers in her ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... political power. Life was rapid, boisterous, and rough. Nothing had settled into the conventional grooves of habit. The whole community was fearless in its gayety. It had not learned to affect the sobriety and demureness of stupidity lest its frivolity should be likened to the crackling ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... sure,' said Tackleton. 'Giddiness, frivolity, fickleness, love of admiration! Not considered! All left out of ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... shall no more hear of the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... income (the latter if he possesses land), in luxurious jewellery and carpets, and in unhealthy bribery and corruption, or in satisfying caprices which his voluptuous nature may suggest. The result? The Persian is driven to live mostly for his vanity and frivolity—two unbusiness-like qualities not tending to the promotion of commercial enterprise on a large scale, although it is true that in a small way his failings give rise and life to certain industries. For instance, even in remote, poor and small centres where food is scarce and the buildings humble, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... would meet in such a reproduction of a famous Parisian haunt. He thought of a Cafe chantant at Port Said, and said to himself, "It can't be worse than that." He was right then. The world had no shambles of ghastly frivolity and debauchery like those ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... how it is in other places, but every one who knows much of society girls in Boston must have been struck with a certain earnest note which sounds through all their frivolity. Few of them are satisfied to be simply society girls. They wish to identify themselves with some charity, or to make a thorough study of some art or science. It may be due to their Puritan ancestry, forbidding them to make pleasure the only ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... princess, the three masked ladies, the quaint, pedantic king; one of those amiable kings men have never loved enough, whose serious occupation with the things of the mind seems, by contrast with the more usual forms of kingship, like frivolity or play. Some of the figures are grotesque merely, and all the male ones at least, a little fantastic. Certain objects reappearing from scene to scene—love-letters crammed with verses to the margin, and lovers' toys—hint obscurely at some story of intrigue. Between these ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... taking no part in the gaiety of Howard and Joe. The serious man of letters was not easily led into paths of frivolity. Carl swore to himself: "Ben 's the only guy I know that's got any delicate feelings. He appreciates how Gertie feels when she's sick, poor girl. He don't make a goat of himself, like Joe.... Or maybe he's got ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... lively passions, are extremely susceptible, and in the general conduct of life more governed by the impetuosity of impulse than rectitude of principle. The ladies have less gravity than the Spanish, and less frivolity than the French, and in their style of dress incline towards the freedom of the latter. Some of the richest and most commodious convents of Europe are in Italy. The daughters of wealthy families are generally bestowed in marriage ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Loftus's first season in London since her second marriage with Mr. Doll Loftus. After a very brief sojourn in that city of frivolity she had the acumen to discover that London society was hopelessly worldly and mercenary; that people only met to eat and to abuse each other; that the law of cutlet for cutlet was universal; that young men, especially ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... smooth head, And he sees what a night-owl sees at dawn. The snot is dripping from his frosty nose, And stringed saliva falls on his wet breast— Not an odd tooth in his defenceless gums, Not an old ape so engraved with wrinkles. Naevolus, for shame leave this frivolity And no more cry, "All men," ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... judiciously and so delicately given, was at the time attended to, and during a short interval the offence complained of ceased. New comers have since recommenced the same course of conduct: and in fact, nothing could be worse than the exhibition of gaiety and frivolity, gallantry and coquetterie at St. Peter's yesterday. I almost wish the pope may interfere, and with rigour; though, individually, I should lose a high gratification, if our visits to St. Peter's were interdicted. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a whim. I was disgusted with London and society after my return from the front. Those who have been through this terrible war learn to see most things at their true worth, and the frivolity, the snobbishness, and the shams of London society at such a time sickened and disgusted me. They tried to lionise me in drawing rooms and make me talk for their entertainment. They put my photograph in ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... was Honora's face which was ravaged, though Mary had sinned the sin. True, pallor and pain were visible in Mary's face, even in the disguising light of that strange hour and place, but back of it Kate perceived her indestructible frivolity. She surmised how rapidly the scenes of Mary's drama would succeed each other; how remorse would yield to regret, regret to diminishing grief, grief to hope, hope to fresh adventures with life. Here in all verity was "the eternal feminine," ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... their best to eclipse each other in their table, their toilet, the comfort and luxury of their apartments, their pleasures and distractions, their banquets and fetes. An enormous mass of the produce of human labor is thus dissipated in futilities, for the benefit of unbridled frivolity and luxury. It is owing to this that a civilization which, thanks to science and progress, far surpasses all those which have preceded it in the richness of its means of production for the wants of humanity, not ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... and tedious, some were especially gratifying. My rule was, after office hours in the afternoon, to get into the open sledge; to make my visits; and as a result, of course, to see and hear a vast deal of frivolity and futility, but, from time ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... exclaimed restlessly, "you can't imagine how very tired I grow of it all—of lights and cities and restaurants and everything artificial! Surely these city days and nights of silly frivolity are only the froth of life! Have you ever longed to sleep in the woods," she added abruptly, "with stars twinkling overhead and the moonlight showering softly through ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... fertile.' Even good pastures were ploughed up to grow wheat at a guinea a bushel, and much worthless land was sown with corn. Manure was procured from the most remote quarters, and we are told a new science rose up, agricultural chemistry, which, 'with much frivolity and many refinements remote from common sense, was not without great operation on ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... the farmer ape the fashion, and the frivolity of the butterflies of town life, or permit his family to do it? It is the sheerest possible folly in him to do so. Yet, it is a folly into which many are imperceptibly gliding, and which, if not reformed, will ultimately lead to great discomfort to themselves, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... passions of refined and artificial life are becoming less important than the broad, deep, genuine manifestations of the common mind, we may hope for a bolder and more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true ground, and will create, rather than portray—delineate, rather than dissect human sentiment ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the oracular lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable. They were rarely unpleasant in any feature; but this particular morning—two days after the arrival ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... frivolity is perhaps even more remarkable than their gaiety; they have not sufficient steadiness for the uninterrupted avocations of graver life. In the midst of the most serious or deep discussion, a Frenchman will suddenly stop, and, with a look ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... first unable to bring any succour to faith here. However firm may have been the faith of the disciples in the appearances of Jesus in their midst, and it was firm, to believe in appearances which others have had is a frivolity which is always revenged by rising doubts. But history is still of service to faith; it limits its scope and therewith shews the province to which it belongs. The question which history leaves to faith is this: Was Jesus Christ swallowed up of death, or did he ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... traditions? The list is but a poor one. Marino, Tassoni, the younger Buonarotti, Boccalini and Chiabrera in literature. The Bolognese academy in painting. After these men expand arid wildernesses of the Sei Cento—barocco architecture, false taste, frivolity, grimace, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... done before breakfast. His office receives him at ten and keeps him till four, when he comes home and has tea, after which we ride or drive or play tennis somewhere. A look in at the Club for a game of billiards, more work, dinner, and, if we are not going to a dance or any frivolity, a quiet talk, a smoke, a few more papers gone through, bed, and the long Indian day is over. All day chuprassis, like attendant angels, flit in and out bearing piles of documents marked Urgent, which they heap ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... strange choice. He obliged us. It was not for his gratification he took the old cat; it was for us. She would relieve him of a vast responsibility. The vices of her character would prove too strong for the little faults of ours, which were only volatility, frivolity, flirtation— I will not ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Rousseau had appealed to him; and the charming Madame de Boufflers had drawn him into a correspondence, marked by almost passionate enthusiasm on her part, and as fair an imitation of enthusiasm as Hume was capable of, on his. In the extraordinary mixture of learning, wit, humanity, frivolity, and profligacy which then characterised the highest French society, a new sensation was worth anything, and it mattered little whether the cause thereof was a philosopher or a poodle; so Hume had a great ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Look also to the effect of art, and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher classes. See how their very habits of life tend to increase the sum of enjoyment; see the mighty activity that their very luxury, the very frivolity of their pursuits, create! Without an aristocracy, would there have been a middle class? Without a middle class, would there ever have been an interposition between lord and slave? Before commerce produces a middle class, Religion creates one. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of intellect. His weaker nature became more and more subject to one endowed with gifts far superior to his own. In every hour of perplexity, in every serious moment, when the better nature of the king gained a transient ascendency, he turned from the frivolity of the gay and thoughtless beings fluttering around him to Mary ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... such a background, the political and diplomatic frivolity of the Secretary of State is not so inexplicable as it would otherwise be. This background, as well as the intrigue of the Secretary, helps us to understand Lincoln's great task inside his Cabinet. At first the Cabinet ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... soul can feel the noble style of these buffo airs; they have neither the superabundant frivolity of Italian music nor the vulgar accent of French commonplace; rather have they the majesty of Olympus. There is the bitter laughter of a divine being mocking the surprise of a troubadour Don-Juanizing himself. But for this dignity we should be too suddenly brought down to ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... every quarter of an hour, till we were left with a very select party; the only recipients, by-the-by, of "bakhshsh." The Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed Effendi mounted a donkey the moment he stepped out of the R.R. carriage; and, utterly disregarding so vexatious a frivolity as asking leave, rode off to his home at Torah. His example was followed by the Sergeant Mabrk Awaz. And yet both these men had the impudence to call upon me at the hotel, and to apply for especial Shahdahs, or "testimonials" of good conduct. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... This trait of frivolity was to Tus-ka-sah the more revolting, since he himself was of a serious cast of mind and possessed of faculties, rare in an Indian, which are called "fine business capacity." He was esteemed at an English trading-house down on the Eupharsee ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Frivolity and Show. It is a day of Spring; I want to see my roses blow, And hear the blackbird sing. I wish to prune my apple-trees, And nail my peaches straight; Keep to the causeway, if you please— ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... variable minds. We emerged from the gulf of that speculative despondency, and wore buoyed up to the highest point of practical vigor. Never did the masculine spirit of England display itself with more energy, nor ever did its genius soar with a prouder preeminence over France, than at the time when frivolity and effeminacy had been at least tacitly acknowledged as their national character by the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... room—than reveal to him those occasional fits of creative fancy which caused me to neglect my lessons in order to put them on paper. Loving literature, in his way, he was characteristically incapable of recognizing the literary instinct, and the symptoms of its early stages he mistook for inherent frivolity, for lack of respect for the truth; in brief, for original sin. At the age of fourteen I had begun secretly (alas, how many things I did secretly!) to write stories of a sort, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... bore her honours with dignity and became a very great lady. Maria, Countess of Coventry, died aged twenty-seven, not untouched by scandal, and a victim to her own frivolity. Mrs Gunning received a valuable appointment as Housekeeper at one of the royal palaces. "The Luck of the ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... would have been an utter impossibility to have spoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now to understand and meet half way the frivolity of the ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... case is being tried, the court is well filled by lay persons in need of a thrill. Their presence seems to be rather resented as a note of frivolity, a discord in the solemnity of the function, even a possible distraction for the judge and jury. I am not a lawyer, nor a professionally solemn person, and I cannot work myself up into a state of indignation against the interlopers. I am, indeed, one of them myself. And I am worse ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... that her face was veiled. You may readily conceive, therefore, how deadly an injury the action of Candaules would seem to a woman thus brought up, while any other would doubtless have considered it only a culpable frivolity. Thus the idea of vengeance had instantly presented itself to Nyssia, and had given her sufficient self-control to strangle the cry of her offended modesty ere it reached her lips, at the moment when, turning her head, she beheld the burning eyes of Gyges ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... the most beautiful scenes of Nature, whose glories, interpreted by the glory in their hearts, helped to stamp on their minds the most fugitive details of that unique hour. There had not been the slightest shade of frivolity in Francesca's conduct. It was noble, large, and without any second thought. This magnanimity struck Rodolphe greatly, for in it he recognized the difference between the Italian and the Frenchwoman. The waters, the land, the sky, the woman, all were grandiose and suave, even their love in the midst ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... say so. Look at me—a wreck." After a moment he added: "You think Myra Nell is all frivolity and glitter, but she isn't; she's as deep as the sea, Norvin. I can't tell you how glad I am that you two— "Blake stirred uneasily. "I—I admire you tremendously, for you're just what I wanted to be and couldn't. I'm talking foolishly, I know, but this Carnival ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... circle; for people are very like sheep, and will follow their leader if it happens to be one they fancy. I don't ask you to be a De Stal, and have a brilliant salon: I only want you to provide employment and pleasure for others like yourself, who now are dying of frivolity or ennui." ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... sorrowfully toward the fort. It grieved them to see this frivolity in those to whom they had ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... respectable middle-class men who, if you found them unexpectedly in a Turkish bath, would explain in all sincerity that a doctor had ordered them to take Turkish baths; if you told them in return that you went there because you liked it, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive. In the same way, whenever a massacre of Armenians is reported from Asia Minor, every one assumes that it has been carried out "under orders" from somewhere or another, no one seems to think that ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... illustrious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a PUN. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.—It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... kaisers affect to review troops here, that they may be able to talk statecraft there; how princely compacts and contracts of marriage are made at sulphur springs; all these and such like leaked out as small-talk with a young and pretty woman, whose frivolity of manner went bail for the safety of the confidence, and went far to persuade Walpole, that though bank-stock might be a surer investment, there were paying qualities in certain women that in the end promised larger returns than mere money and higher rewards than mere wealth. 'Yes,' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... attitude in their reading. Women are more serious, not only about life, but about books. No type or kind of woman is capable of that lounging, defensive stupidity which is the basis of the tired giant attitude, and all through the early 'nineties, during which the respectable frivolity of Great Britain left its most enduring marks upon our literature, there was a rebel undertow of earnest and aggressive writing and reading, supported chiefly by women and supplied very largely by ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... among the lists we printed of the guests at the Entre Nous Card Club, the Imperial Dancing Club, the "Giddy Young Things" Club, the Art Club and the Shakespeare Club. But when she came to the office she was full of anxiety at the frivolity of society. She said that she so longed for intellectual companionship that she felt sometimes as if she must fly to a place where she could find a soul that would feel in unison with the infinite that thrilled ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another direction. He stopped, caught hold of the case, jumped back a pace or two, and, raising it to the level of his eyes, looked at it not without surprise ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... to the "Frivolity," to see the latest rays of the lamp of burlesque. That scene, at any rate, was familiar. There, in all their spotless panoply of expressionless face, and irreproachable shirt-front, sat the golden lads of the Metropolis ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... glances directed toward Judy's head. It took only a second glance to assure herself of what Judy had done and she frowned and compressed her lips. When the service was over, she made a little impromptu address to the students. College, she said, was a place for serious work and not for frivolity. Of course there were no objections to innocent fun, but absurdities would not be tolerated. All the time she was speaking she was looking straight at Judy, who, with chin resting on her hand and eyelids drooped, apparently read a hymn book. That afternoon Miss Julia ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... equalled by that of the people to see their new missionary. Pagans flocked in with Christians, until the church was crowded. We were very much pleased with their respectful demeanour in the house of God. There was no laughing or frivolity in the sanctuary. With their moccasined feet and cat-like tread, several hundred Indians did not make one quarter the noise often heard in Christian lands, made by audiences one-tenth the size. We were much delighted with their singing. There ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... expressed and deliberate judgment should be given effect by the courts, save in the extreme and exceptional cases where there has been a clear violation of a constitutional provision. Anything like frivolity or wantonness in upsetting such clearly taken governmental action is a grave offense against the Republic. To protest against tyranny, to protect minorities from oppression, to nullify an act committed in a spasm of popular fury, is to render ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... implications of suffering and love that surround the aging of parents and the growth of children. Cleopatra is a wanton, but no analysis can explain the subtleties with which the idealism and animalism, the sacrifice and frivolity—and how much else—of human passion are bound together in the few hundred lines which she speaks. It is impossible to affirm that each of the great characters is thoroughly consistent or offers a strictly accurate motivation. Rather, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of mind and lassitude of body, which at times crept over him, were the natural assistants of every temptation to extravagance, frivolity, and sin. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... eyes shone wildly from sunken, darkened sockets. Her frightened glances were continually turned upon Sadie. There is surely some wrecker angel which can only gather her best treasures in moments of disaster. For here were all these worldlings going to their doom, and already frivolity and selfishness had passed away from them, and each was thinking and grieving only for the other. Sadie thought of her aunt, her aunt thought of Sadie, the men thought of the women, Belmont thought of his wife,—and then he thought ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... trouble to distinguish between the honest and the dishonest person who claims psychic gifts. From the legal point of view it is all pretence. It is imperatively necessary that genuine psychic gifts should be protected from the depredations of frivolity as well as from the interference of an obsolete law. We have some idea of protecting great and uncommon gifts in music, mathematics, and poetry, but we leave psychic gifts without help or training. An institute for the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... govern by men of the people's choice. Lafayette saw that all this was very foolish. He saw that nothing could be worse than the state of France,—the tyranny of the nobility,—the extravagance and frivolity of the court,—and the wretchedness of the people. He was for amending all this; but he knew that these sins and woes were the growth of many centuries, and that no one person, or dozen of persons, was to be blamed as the cause. ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... of re-establishing order at Naples by his presence, speedily returned to Palermo, to indulge in his favourite amusements. Nelson, and the ambassador's family, accompanied the court; and Troubridge remained, groaning over the villany and frivolity of those with whom he was compelled to deal. A party of officers applied to him for a passage to Palermo, to see the procession of St. Rosalia: he recommended them to exercise their troops, and not behave like children. It was grief ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... as in her old days of dependence, wherever she went she seemed to take sunshine and gladness with her. In spite of Miss Alicia's undisguised contempt for her step-mother's childishness and frivolity, Lucy was better loved and more admired than the baronet's daughter. That very childishness had a charm which few could resist. The innocence and candor of an infant beamed in Lady Audley's fair face, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... avoidin' all foolish frivolity, Still at all saisons of innocent jollity, Where was the play-boy could claim an equality At comicality, Father, wid you? Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest, Till this remark set him off wid the rest: "Is it lave gaiety All to the laity? Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?" Chorus: ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... and, with a sigh, went and sat in the trench, where he was soon joined by Elmer. The disgraced preacher and the reformed convict had struck up a fast friendship. They sat with their backs towards the Jasper B., and Cleggett supposed from their attitude that they were sternly condemnatory of the frivolity and festivity ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis |
