"Light-minded" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; O mark it and keep it. Since I received the same from the Master above: Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. Cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not, 'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us. Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Never to me nor to thee ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fidgety, tremulous; hesitating &c. v.; off one's balance; at a loss &c. (uncertain) 475. vacillating &c. v.; unsteady &c. (changeable) 149; unsteadfast[obs3], fickle, without ballast; capricious &c. 608; volatile, frothy; light, lightsome, light-minded; giddy; fast and loose. weak, feeble-minded, frail; timid, wimpish, wimpy &c. 860; cowardly &c. 862; dough-faced [U.S.]; facile; pliant &c. (soft) 324; unable to say "no", easy-going revocable, reversible. Adv. irresolutely &c. adj.; irresolved[obs3], irresolvedly[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... was courteous; he was a gentleman, and he saw she was no light-minded girl. He asked her the few questions needful as to the attack made on her, and the defence; but something moved him to go on and ask whether she had been on Portsdown Hill, and to obtain from her the account of the high words between the young men. She answered each question in a clear low voice, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the evocation of an instantaneous vision of the household thus thrown open to him. Such opportunities for falsity, artificiality, downright humbuggery, for plutocratic upholstery and indecorous statues and light-minded paintings, for cynical and insolent servants, for the deployment of vast gains got by methods that at best were questionable! Could he accept such hospitality ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... their clubs against the realm, and held it to be their sacred duty to destroy the nimbus which, had hitherto enveloped the throne, and to show to the hungering people that the queen who lived in luxury was nothing more than a light-minded, voluptuous woman,—all these enemies of the queen had had time to gain over public opinion and the judges. The trial had been a welcome opportunity to all to give free play to their revenge, their indignation, and their hate. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... before, it is almost impossible to make our light-minded times comprehend the earnestness with which those people lived. It was, in the beginning, no vulgar nor mercenary ambition that made her seek the Doctor as a husband for her daughter. He was poor, and she had had offers from richer men. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... giantess,* as that she should be a paragon in any other character, before we began to love her. Esmond's mistress had a thousand faults beside her charms; he knew both perfectly well! She was imperious, she was light-minded, she was flighty, she was false, she had no reverence in her character; she was in everything, even in beauty, the contrast of her mother, who was the most devoted and the least selfish of women. Well, from the very first moment he saw her on the stairs at Walcote, Esmond ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... it need not be said, the illustrious wielder of the sceptre which the three above-named princes desired to wrest from him. It does not appear that the sagacious monarch was esteemed by his subjects, as such a prince should have been esteemed. The light-minded people, on the contrary, were rather weary than otherwise of his sway. They were not in the least attached to his amiable family, for whom his Majesty with characteristic thrift had endeavored to procure ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and Kitty watched him through half-closed eyes. "And you like to feel that there are light-minded girls like me, who only care about the inside of shops and theatres and hotels, eh? You amuse me, you and your fish! But I mustn't keep you any longer. Haven't I given you every opportunity to state your ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... Loring, light-minded and unmeaning quips Come with but scant propriety from lips Fringed with the blue-black evidence of age. 'Twere well to cultivate a style more sage, For men will fancy, hearing how you pun, Our foulest missiles are ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... mindful of the fact that Attention and Unwearied Perseverance are most necessary to succeed in such processes as are here described, I have taken pains to show or explain how they may be rendered more attractive, tolerable, and habitual to the fickle or light-minded; this, too, being a subject which has been very little considered from ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... have too long neglected Philip Hayforth—too long permitted a cloud to rest upon his honor and constancy. He was not, in truth, the heartless, light-minded wretch that I fear you may think him. Pride, not falsehood or levity, was the blemish in his otherwise fine character; but it was a very plague-spot, tainting his whole moral nature, and frequently neutralizing the effect of his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... tell you what you know perfectly well already, he has, in defiance of what he knows I feel on this subject, connected himself with a thing I strongly disapprove of—a light-minded fiction.' ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... seeing things very clearly in her mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words; easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said several times over. For this reason," continued the doctor, "I was obliged to alter what I had to say from time to time, keeping her but a short time to one subject, to which, however, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... events been foreshadowed. A crisis was certainly at hand. Lucifer was fast gaining influence among the spirits—and they had their agency to follow whom they would. The revolting spirit had skill in argument; and the light-minded, the discontented, and ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... proved themselves far from happy. The Cousin Gaston, for instance, brought home a bride whose fortune rebuilt and refurnished his dilapidated chateau and who ended by making of him a well-behaved and cheery country gentleman not at all to be despised in his amiable, if light-minded good nature and good spirits. His wife, fortunately, was not a young woman who yearned for sentiment. She was a nice-tempered, practical American girl, who adored French country life and knew how to amuse and manage her husband. It was a genial sort of menage and yet though this was ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... not recognize in his daughter-in-law nearly the solidity that she had. He believed her to be light-minded, and only looked upon her as a great child, though he loved her much and her gaiety pleased him beyond measure, being himself of a gay nature. You may have heard that one day Madame rode in an omnibus. That is not correct. But ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... to go on to state that generally speaking those who have thrown religion to the winds hardly strike one as standing on a particularly high ethical level. One can only go by facts; and the facts are that the frequenters of the betting-ring, the dram-shop, the light-minded, pleasure-seeking throng that flutters from amusement to amusement without any interest in life's serious duties—these are hardly drawn from the Church-going strata of society. Religion says "no" to this whole ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... desirous to do better, to grow in grace, and yet feel ourselves terribly weak and light-minded, what practical steps can we take to the goal that we see far off? The one thing that we can do in moments of insight is to undertake some little responsibility which we shall be ashamed to discard. We can look round our circle, and it will ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... happened? How could that light-minded woman have so deeply wounded my father?" Anna asked ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... feverish Bohemian from the start, dropping in almost every day to tell Vernabelle all about himself and get out of convention's shell into the raw throb of life, as it was now being called. Lon always was kind of light-minded, even after the state went dry. He told Vernabelle he had a treasured keepsake hid away which he would sacrifice to Bohemia at the last moment, consisting of one quart bottle of prime old rye. And he was going to make over to her a choice building lot in Price's Addition, ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... BELLES LETTRES; and if you allude in their presence to the deplorably defective presentation of the ideas in some work distinguished for its learning, its profundity or its novelty, it is probable that you will be despised as a frivolous setter up of manner over matter, a light-minded DILLETANTE, unfitted for the simple austerities of science. But this is itself a light-minded contempt; a deeper insight would change the tone, and help to remove the disgraceful slovenliness and feebleness of composition which deface ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... of Syria, held all the lands from Persia to Asia Minor. His capital was Antioch, in Syria, which he had built and named after his son Antiochus, and which became a very splendid and beautiful city, full of a light-minded, merry people, fond of games and shows. He built many other places, calling them after himself or his son, and placing Greeks to live in them. Thus, though Alexander only reigned twelve years, he had made a great ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scornful. "Just leave that to me, please. It won't make me a bit more dishonourable to open the letter again—I've opened it once, and I don't feel any the worse for it. I have no conscience, and things don't weigh on my mind at all. I'm a light-minded person." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... birds was created out of innocent, light-minded men, who thought to pursue the study of the heavens by sight; these were transformed into birds, and grew feathers instead of hair. The race of wild animals were men who had no philosophy, and never looked up to heaven or used the courses of the head, but followed only the influences of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... expressly invited by the Caesar, and being admitted into the prince's council-chamber, without making the slightest preface he began in this inconsiderate and light-minded manner: "Depart," said he, "as you have been commanded, O Caesar, and know this, that if you make any delay I shall at once order all the provisions allotted for the support of yourself and your court to be carried away." And then, having ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... cowardly and corrupt people, living in water, which is a singular thing to do. Neither would many birds smoke, they have neither the stamina nor the teeth, but I am certain that crows and jackdaws would chew tobacco eagerly and with true relish. A large proportion of the insecta are too light-minded and frivolous to care for smoking. Beetles, however, a very reserved and dignified race, would smoke cigars, and so would cockroaches, a rather saturnine and cynical ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... be imagined than thirty or forty of these formidable-looking monsters charging down upon him, bouncing several feet from the surface of the earth. The experienced horse treats them with the contempt such light-minded senility deserves, and wades through their phantom attack indifferent. After the breeze has died the debauched old tumbleweeds are everywhere to be seen, piled up against brush, choking the ditches, filling the roads. Their beautiful spherical shapes have been frayed out so that they look ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... cyant think how I could a-been so careless-like, an' knowin' all de endurin' time dat I boun' fer ter be a widder. How could I a-been so light-minded?" ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... Mrs. Ogilvie is one of the most reserved women I ever met,' said the canon, proceeding to give an epitome of a character which he thought he—and perhaps only he—understood. 'She is impulsive yet cautious, clever yet light-minded; for a woman her intelligence is quite above the ordinary run, and yet she is often hopelessly difficult to convince.' He leaned forward on the table looking handsome and dignified, and his clean-shaven face had an appearance more clever ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... him, spelling the word slowly, syllable by syllable. "Ain't it fierce?" he wanted to know. "My mother must have sure been frivolous and light-minded when I was born. I'm the only boy she ever had, and there was two grandfathers that wanted a kid named after 'em; they sure make a hot combination. Yuh know what ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... call myself a Butterfly from choice. I only do it because I'm trying to be honest, and I think that it's just about what I am. But do we really know what a butterfly is? Have we given that ornamental (though I say it—that shouldn't) and light-minded (though I say it with shame) and light-hearted (though the very lightest of hearts must weigh something, you know) insect a square deal? I confess that only a light-hearted insect would perpetrate such a sentence as the foregoing; ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... upon all those amused, light-minded, sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward and knelt down before him. "Gentil Dauphin," she said, "God give you good life." "But it is not I that am the King; there is the King," said Charles. "Gentil Prince, it is you and no other," she said; then rising from her knee: ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... environment of the heroic early days, felt the need of just this hostile and scoffing mob about them to bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs was pre-eminently a fighting religion, which languished in peaceful fair weather, but flamed high in the storm. The throng of loafers and light-minded worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering interruptions and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon the scene a kind of visible personal devil, with whom the chosen could do battle face to face. The daylight services became more and more perfunctory, as the sojourn in the woods ran its ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... most remarkable exploits, as well as many brilliant sayings upon a great variety of subjects. He declares that I do not understand and appreciate him—that I am incapable of doing so; and that I have unjustly, though perhaps unintentionally, represented him as a trifling, light-minded sort of person. I have, therefore, felt bound to record this protest of the injured party, but having just read it to him, he pronounces it unsatisfactory, and an aggravation ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... dancettee or, with a mullet for difference. He carried no spear; for a man of his light build the sword was the arm. Thus then, within and without, was Messire Prosper le Gai, youngest son of old Baron Jocelyn, deceased, riding into the heart of the noon, pleased with himself and the world, light-minded, singing of the movement and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... let the catamount know it," growled March. "But you're young and thoughtless, and I'll overlook your ignorance. Come, Deerslayer," he added, with a good-natured laugh, after pausing a moment to reflect, "come, Deerslayer, we are sworn friends, and will not quarrel about a light-minded, jilting jade, just because she happens to be handsome; more especially as you have never seen her. Judith is only for a man whose teeth show the full marks, and it's foolish to be afeard of a boy. What did the Delawares say of the hussy? for an Indian, after all, has ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... general tendency of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little story. It is only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so cheerfully maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing with them. Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race he moved with great freedom and popularity. He danced well; when we went to fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures always procured him the prettiest partners, his professed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... a score. My lord never sang, nor danced, nor played; it was as much as he could do if he smiled. Would to God he had smiled oftener; and yet if he could not laugh, he could love. Ah me! how strait was his embrace. Was the love of that ruddy-faced, light-minded, lying dancer a thousandth part of Saul's? If David had loved Bathsbeba, would he have sought by the basest of deceit to force Uriah to her after she had fallen, so that her son might be taken to be his? And yet if Samuel had been alive, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... reverence, the spirituality of the true essence does not unite with their souls; they eat bread and wine, for they have not such a faith, love, and humility as enables them to possess the divine essence. And those that partake without reverence, light-minded, and during the ceremony disdain the simplicity of the institution, mock and deride it, they bring judgment upon themselves for eating and drinking the consecrated elements, but not for partaking [the] ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... people, which the writer of Proverbs said was like the crackling of thorns under a pot; that is a wearisome and even an ugly thing, because it does not mean that people are honestly amused, but have some basely exciting thing in their minds. Laughter must be light-hearted, not light-minded. Still less was it the dismal tittering of ill-natured people over mean gossip, which is another of the ugly sounds of life. No, I think it was rather the laughter of cheerful people, glad to be amused, who hardly knew that they were laughing; that is a wholesome exercise enough. It was ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to which human nature is liable, and provides for the public and private worship of God, the creator and governor of the universe, and for the performance of such acts of charity as are the ornament and comfort of Christian societies:—Whereas irreligious or light-minded persons, forgetting the duties which the Sabbath imposes, and the benefits which these duties confer on society, are known to profane its sanctity, by following their pleasures or their affairs; this way of acting being contrary to their own interest ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... give up the land, cannot get employment in manufactures, or regular employment in husbandry. The common people use a sort of food so very cheap that they can rear families who cannot procure employment, and who have little more of the comforts of life than food. The Irish are light-minded—want of employment has made them idle; they are irritable and brave, have a keen remembrance of the past wrongs they have suffered, and the present wrongs they are suffering from England. The consequence of all this is, eternal riot and insurrection, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... "we rely on you to exercise a good influence upon Robert. He is so light-minded, and ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... recitations were over and his muscles ached for exercise, he donned his old farm hat and went, stepping in his high, awkward, investigating way around the town—unaware of himself, unaware of the light-minded who often turned to smile at that great gawk in grotesque garments, with his face full of beatitudes and his pockets full of apples. For apples were beginning to come in from the frosty orchards; and the fruit dealers along the streets piled them into pyramids of temptation. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... Parliament; but, unlike his father, he was unwilling to arouse the nation against him. He did not propose to let anything happen which would send him on his travels again. He and his courtiers were fond of pleasure of a light-minded and immoral kind. The licentious dramas of the Restoration seem to indicate that those who had been forced by the Puritans to give up their legitimate pleasures now welcomed the opportunity to indulge in reckless gayety without ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... example, such as Byron, Musset, Poe, Leopardi, Kleist, Gogol (I do not dare to mention much greater names, but I imply them), as they now appear, and were perhaps obliged to be: men of the moment, sensuous, absurd, versatile, light-minded and quick to trust and to distrust, with souls in which usually some flaw has to be concealed, often taking revenge with their works for an internal blemish, often seeking forgetfulness in their soaring from a too accurate memory, idealists out of ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... the light-minded fellow. "I was thinking of occupations that would keep one in touch with the earth. A gardener's occupation keeps him constantly in the charmingest possible sort of touch with her, and ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... is also a bound set as to how we should proceed with reference to election. There are many light-minded persons who have not felt much of the power of faith, who fall in this matter, stumbling upon it; and they trouble themselves at first with it, and by reason would satisfy themselves whether they are elected, so that they may be assured whereon they stand. But desist from this, at once; ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... myself think, though the light-minded may imagine it to be so, that it was because there was a young one that John gave in. It was because he could do nothing else, the noise and chatter of the voices being entirely destructive of that undisturbed state of the atmosphere in which work can be done. It was not merely ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... delicate and difficult as if it arose on a far more conspicuous stage. The people he found to be eminently gifted by nature with that subtlety which is apt to degenerate into sophistry, and prone to be both rather light-minded and extremely suspicious. The permanent officials in Downing Street, with less polite analysis, had been accustomed to regard the islanders more bluntly as a 'pack of scamps.' This was what had done the mischief. The material ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... hither since I have dwelt here. Forsooth, when he first came, he seemed to us, to me, and yet more to my Lady, to be as beautiful as an angel, and sorely she loved him; and he her, after his fashion: but he was light-minded, and cold-hearted, and in a while he must needs turn his eyes upon me, and offer me his love, which was but foul and unkind as it turned out; for when I nay-said him, as maybe I had not done save for fear of my Mistress, he had no pity upon me, but spared ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... therefore linger in its vengeance. Nevertheless, my brethren, our course is clear. Let us resign to the chatelaine the key of the letter-bag and the censorship thereof. If, after due warning, our light-minded friends will write to us in terms that mislike that excellent and punctilious inspectress, they must aby it in the cold looks and bitter innuendoes which will be their portion when they come to us in the next hunting season. Our conscience, at least, will be pure and undefiled, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... The young ladies called him openly and fondly a "fool"—a term of endearment, as they applied it meaning only that he kept them in a more or less constant state of wonder and merriment; and indeed it would have been hard for them to say whether he was really light-minded and frivolous or the wisest of them all. He was twenty now and at the age for love-making; yet he remained, as in Hannibal, a beau rather than a suitor, good friend and comrade to all, wooer of none. Ella Creel, a cousin on the Lampton side, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Now let no light-minded person say that I am here taking extravagant parallels; for the parallel is not only perfect, but plain. For this reason: that the difference between torture and vivisection is not in any way affected by the fierceness or mildness of either. Whether they gave the rack half a turn ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Amy, when they talked it over alone, 'It seems as if good people could do wrong with less impunity than others. It is rather like the saying about fools and angels. Light-minded people see the sin, but not the repentance, so they imitate the one without being capable of the other. Here are Philip and Laura finishing off like the end of a novel, fortune and all, and setting a very bad example to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... light-minded youth of Eden Valley called the parlour with the faded red velvet chairs by the name of "Little Heaven"—because so many marriages ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... thee that he is light-minded," said the irritated Menes. "Two months ago I sent him a great plan for lessening the toil of laborers, and he laughed at me. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to the world in the character of a harper, but only if he should happen to be a bad one. Even in those days, however, imperfect as were the means of travelling, rebellion moved somewhat too rapidly to allow any long interval of security so light-minded as this. One courier followed upon the heels of another, until he felt the necessity for leaving Naples; and he returned to Rome, as the historian says, prtrepidus; by which word, however, according to its genuine classical acceptation, we apprehend ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... son sat confronting each other the contrast between them was significant of the old Bengal and the new. The silly, light-minded girls in England who had found the younger man's attractions irresistible and raved over his dark skin and the fascinating suggestion of the Orient in him, should have seen the pair now. The son, ultra-English ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... me play the car's musical siren, though; a fascinating bugbear, supposed to warn children, chickens, and other light-minded animals that something important is coming, and they'd better look alive. It has two tunes, one grave, one gay. I suppose we would use the grave one if the creature hadn't ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... occasional guests. Then there is that great mass of pessimism which is the result, not of thought, but of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical. One may have attacks of pessimism from a variety of small causes. A bad stomach will produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it. The light-minded get it from changes in ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... decorations, and of the music here and there introduced. The French critics show themselves in general indifferent, or rather unjust towards every suggestion of genuine fancy. Before they can feel respect for a work it must present a certain appearance of labour and effort. Among a giddy and light-minded people, they have appropriated to themselves the post of honour of pedantry: they confound the levity of jocularity, which is quite compatible with profundity in art, with the levity of shallowness, which (as a natural gift or natural defect,) is so ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... at Guy Park and Butlersbury and Tribes Hill, nor in Albany, either. I knew Clarissa Putnam; I also knew Susannah Wormwood and her sister Elizabeth, and all that pretty company; and many another pretty minx and laughing, light-minded lass in county Tryon. And a few in Cambridge, too. So I was no niais, no naive country fool, unless to remain aloof were folly. And I often wondered to myself how this might really be, when Boyd rallied me ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... late in inconspicuous seats was drowned in the deeper and sadder unrest that the music awakened. For the music spoke separately to each heart, roused up the secrets hidden there, fanned dying hopes or silent longings. It made the light-hearted lighter in heart, the light-minded heavy in soul. Where there was a glimpse of heaven, it opened the heavens wider; where there was already hell, it made the abysses gape deeper. For those few moments each soul communed with itself, and met with a shuddering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... unthankful, sandy, moory country, must of themselves make the people more serious, more enterprising, more capable of contentment than in the south, where Nature is not so like a step-mother, nay, has flattered her favourites, thereby rendering them light-minded, indolent, and desirous of enjoying. Here the flesh triumphs over the spirit; there the spirit over the flesh, "nos besoins sont ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... care for her own puppies it would not be so bad," the Woman complained; "but every once in a while some light-minded gad-about roams around at will, or runs away, and leaves her offspring for Mego to raise. Why, sometimes you would think she was the matron of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... sharply, fixing his keen glance upon her face, "doubtless thou speakest truth, Charmion. Be ever mindful of thy oath, girl, and of the cause to which thou art sworn. Be not light-minded, and I charge thee forget the beauty with which thou hast been cursed. For mark thou this, Charmion: fail us but one jot, and vengeance shall fall on thee—the vengeance of man and the vengeance of the Gods! To this service," he continued, lashing himself ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... might be apt to ask advice rather than act hastily and perhaps foolishly; but yet in this the Duke had not perfectly succeeded, as he was by nature grave and austere, and even his face seemed to have in it a sort of rebuke for lively and light-minded persons. Still the Prince, though he was not at ease with the Duke, trusted him exceedingly, and thought him wise and good, even more than ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in hiring false litigants as actors so as to draw the crowds. The performance not being genuine soon lost its interest. The patrons left them and many courts became bankrupt. So like their predecessors, those light-minded courts have practically ended. ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... Margharita and a beautiful great voice; but her long-delayed soul was the size of a small island and one family. Funny notion of a soul! A hen might have it. No, not a hen—she is a light-minded promiscuous creature; but a stork, let us say; she is monogamous and quite bound up in her family. No—not a stork either—storks migrate; no island would satisfy her. Apparently it takes a human creature to be proud of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... not far off, Niccolo," said the sallow, mild-faced man, seizing his opportunity like a missionary among the too light-minded heathens; "for a time of tribulation is coming, and the scourge is at hand. And when the Church is purged of cardinals and prelates who traffic in her inheritance that their hands may be full to pay the price of blood and to satisfy their own lusts, the State ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... you at length seem to have come to some fixed resolution. For I was much put out by your letters in the first months of your absence, because at times you seemed to me—pardon the expression—to be light-minded in your longing for the city and city life, at others timid in undertaking military work, and often even a little inclined to presumption—a thing as unlike your usual self as can be. For, as though you had brought a bill of exchange, and ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Freres Princes de Constantinople, which have not come in my way. There is, however, probably no cause to regret this, for the author assures us that his new work is "as far above the two former in beauty as the sun is above the stars." If any light-minded person be disposed to scoff at him for this, let it be added that he has the grace to abstract the whole in the Avis au Lecteur which contains the boast, and to give full chapter-headings, things too often ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... The hot-tempered, light-minded Queen Eleanor's open contempt of the English drew upon her such hatred, that vituperative ballads were made on her, some of which have come down to our times. One attacks even her virtue as a wife, and another is entitled a "Warning ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the bright and light-minded colored boy who sold papers on the morning train, "don't you stay in the city and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Here some light-minded person may exclaim against the truth of this statement; they will say that there is not in all France a girl so silly as to be ignorant of the art of angling for men; that Mademoiselle Cormon is one of those monstrous exceptions which ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... "Jeff's rather light-minded, I'm afraid, sir. He wanted to branch off to side lines. But I insisted on a serious talk. Before I left him he promised to think over ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of along and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pikestaff, he would continue to smoke ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... heard and obeyed. The queen herself was affected to tears by the enthusiastic affection displayed toward her, nor at such a moment did she suffer her feeling of the evanescent character of popularity among so light-minded a people to dwell in her mind, or to mar the pleasure which such a reception was well calculated ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... about her without putting himself out, and how he was always sorry to leave her and sometimes came back for another kiss, and she felt enormously proud of being the dispenser of such satisfactions, and began to put on her hat and coat with peacocking gestures and recklessly light-minded glances in the mirror. The reflection of a crumpled face-towel thrown into a wisp over the rail of the washstand reminded her in some way of the white-faced wee thing Mr. Philip had been during the last few days when she had gone back to the office, and this added to her exhilaration, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... that he once saw a woman surrounded by seven former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat, describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35), explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... glad you ain't, for they're naturally light-minded. I remember 'em well." He wandered on with his questions and comments. "Is it a fact, Tom, or was you just joking when you wrote home that the soldiers ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... dragged to the scaffold, the day when the Directory shipped off their principal opponents for Guiana, or the day when the Legislative Body was driven from its hall at the point of the bayonet? We do not speak of light-minded and enthusiastic people, of wits like Sheridan, or poets like Alfieri; but of the most virtuous and intelligent practical statesmen, and of the deepest, the calmest, the most impartial political speculators of that time. What was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and embarrassed them both. Life was a serious thing to them only by reason of its relation to eternity; a constant underrating of this world had made them doubtful of its dignity. Marg'et Ann felt it rather light-minded that she should have a lump in her throat whenever she thought of her father on crutches for the rest of his life. She wondered how Laban felt about it, but it was not likely that she would ever know. Laban had made the crutches ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Ruth," Helen said, admonishingly. "I wonder you are so light-minded at such a time as this. You are laughing when those horrid guns may be throwing shells right among our poor boys. Dear, dear! I wish they ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... bitterness, the latter with patience and without irritation—is peculiarly appropriate to genuine friendship, it is no less true that there can be nothing more utterly subversive of friendship than flattery, adulation, and base compliance. I use as many terms as possible to brand this vice of light-minded, untrustworthy men, whose sole object in speaking is to please without any regard to truth. In everything false pretence is bad, for it suspends and vitiates our power of discerning the truth. But to nothing it is so hostile as to friendship; for it destroys that frankness without which ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the nature of sin). "The Lady Eleanor, my honoured mistress," he wrote, "is a most saintly and devout maiden, full of heavenly lore, and caring nought for the things of this world;" and he added, "'tis beautiful to see such devotion where for the most part are sinful and light-minded persons." ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... at all discomposed by her light-minded raillery. "I should think it would be a very good thing for you to try, Miss Pat," she said sedately. "Clothes go out of fashion so dreadfully soon nowadays and the singing exercises will last most ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... Bingham!" The old man wheeled about sharply in his chair, and fastened a keen scrutiny upon the other's face. Bingham had never talked to him like this before; he had never seemed so light-minded, so slanted towards the jocular. "See here, Bingham, what ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... once so dreadful, questioning, and questionable as this formula: it promised a transvaluation of all ancient values—It was the Orient, the PROFOUND Orient, it was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on Rome and its noble, light-minded toleration, on the Roman "Catholicism" of non-faith, and it was always not the faith, but the freedom from the faith, the half-stoical and smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made the slaves indignant at their masters ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... I agree to the terms. No letters, no books, no—ye gods! if I could only send the flowers now! Who would expect to win a girl without orchids? You do, you certainly do, rate me with the light-minded, don't you? Music also is proscribed, of course; that's the one other offering allowed at the shrine of the fair one. All right—all right—I'll vanish, like a fairy prince in a child's story. But before ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... to fancy herself unfeeling, when she found him so much more depressed than she was herself, and unable to feel it a relief to know that the time of rest and want of occupation was over. She thought it light-minded, though she could not help it, to look forward to the daily studies where she might lose her sad thoughts and be as if everything were as usual. But suppose she should be to blame, where would now be the gentle discipline? Poor Ethel's feelings were not such as to deserve ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... to stimulate thought when the time for thought arrives, we must be careful never to yield to the superficial demands of our people. The Kindergarten, which is refreshment and help to the plodding German child, may become a snare to the light-minded American. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... On many a homeward road and in many a cabin would these issues be fought over before election day, and Rice Jones's arguments quoted and propagated to the territorial limits. The serious long-jawed Virginia settler and the easy light-minded French boatman listened side by side. One had a homestead at stake, and the other had his possessions in the common fields where he labored as little as possible; but both were with Rice Jones in that political sympathy which bands unlike ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the suspicion with his usual dignity, and went on to adjure Caesar not to visit on an industrious and dutiful community the sins of a light-minded girl's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and rarely spoke except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence, and at length, knocking out the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the head of a poet; but in the letters which we were forced to lack of space to suppress, a better judge would have admired the dignified and gracious reserve which Modeste had substituted for the rather aggressive and light-minded tone of her first letters. The father, however, was only too cruelly right on one point. Modeste's last letter, which we have read, had indeed spoken as though the marriage were a settled fact, and ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... trace of the existence of a culpable intimacy. This calumny must be classed among those with which malice delights to blacken the characters of men more brilliant than their fellows, and which are so readily adopted by the light-minded and unreflecting. I freely declare that did I entertain the smallest doubt with regard to this odious charge, of the existence of which I was well aware before Napoleon spoke to me on the subject, I would candidly avow it. He is no more: and let his memory ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... restrain the expression of it was in his countenance. Was it possible that the American habit of being jocular had actually held its own in a matter as serious as this? And could even the most cynical and light-minded of ducal personages have been involved in its unworthy frivolities? But no one looked jocular—Tembarom's jaw was set in its hard line, and the duke, taking up the broad ribbon of his rimless monocle to fix the glass in his eye, wore the expression of a man whose sense of humor ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have been she," commented Solomon, "for she is a light-minded one, as is proper an' becomin' in ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... is a bad thing altogether to be light-minded," retorted the queen, who was beginning to ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... believed them too light-minded to judge of a poet's merits. Finally they fell back upon your master, because he understands tragic poetry.[460] But let us go in; when the masters are busy, we ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... perfumer. Even careless minds gained an idea of the immensity of human disaster from the aspect of this man, on whose face sorrow had cast its black pall, who revealed the havoc caused by that which had never before appeared in him,—by thought! N'est pas detruit qui veut. Light-minded people, devoid of conscience, to whom all things are indifferent, can never present such a spectacle of disaster. Religion alone sets a special seal upon fallen human beings; they believe in a future, in a divine Providence; from within them gleams a light that marks ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... the mind in sickness, and exercises it in health. It is rest to the overworked intellect, and relaxation to the fatigued body. It lessens the grief of the mourner, and heightens the enjoyment of the happy. It teaches the angry man to restrain his passions, the light-minded to become grave, the cautious to be bold, and the venturesome to be prudent. It affords a keen delight to youth, a sober pleasure to manhood, and a perpetual solace to old age. It induces the poor to forget their poverty, and the rich to be careless of their wealth. It admonishes ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... Godfrey was in a fair way to become a new man in this completely novel position to one so frivolous, so light-minded, and so thoughtless. He had hitherto only had to allow himself to live. Never had care for the morrow disquieted his rest. In the opulent mansion in Montgomery Street, where he slept his ten hours ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... son of Atreus rejoiced, as the ripe ears of corn, when the dew descendeth upon them, in the glistening cornfield. And he spake kindly to Antilochus, and said, "Lo! at once do I put away my anger; for of old thou wert never rash or light-minded; but now thy reason was overborne by the impetuosity of youth. Therefore I grant thy prayer, and will even give thee the mare; for I am in ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... want Mrs. Dodge to be sending people here," she said, after hearing Elsie's explanation of her visit. "A light-minded, rollicking woman is my niece Dodge. She'll never make that house ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney
... civility and govern my behaviour by the principles of honesty and honour. Providence hath deigned to rescue me from this abyss, and I direct my conduct since my conversion by the admonitions the Director of my conscience gives me. But I have been so light-minded and thoughtless as not to seek his advice on this question of New Year's gifts. What you tell me of them, sir, with the authority of a man alike admirable for sober living and sound doctrine, ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... whom the Mandarin was conversing, speaking in so unfeignedly disturbed and terrified a voice that several who were passing by stopped in order to learn the full circumstance, 'have this person's ears been made the object of some unnaturally light-minded demon's ill-disposed pastime, or does the usually well-balanced Chan Hung in reality contemplate so violent and un-Chinese an action? What but evil could arise from a single word of the change which he proposes to the extent of a full written book? The entire fixed nature of events would ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... Light-minded as my friend generally was, the opportunity of playing the master was but too desirable. He read the piece through with attention, and, while he sat down with me to make some trivial alterations, turned ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... tea. She remained in the parlor, talking with me and the boys, and reading the paper, until the girls returned from the Wednesday evening meeting. Something had occurred to excite their mirth, and they came home in such a "gale" that she playfully rebuked them for being so light-minded. But at the same time she couldn't help joining in their mirth. In truth, she was quite as much a girl as either of them; and her laugh ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... not much of a joke, but they seemed to enjoy it. They were good fellows, as I have said, but I fear rather light-minded. ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... eyes at this wan an' flirtin' wid that wan an' spakin' swate to the t'other, an' kapin' all on the string till they can nayther ate nor slape nor be half the min they were till ye bewildered 'em. Ye're nothin' but a giddy, light-minded, shallow crather, a spoilin' min for your own fun. I've kep' company wid ye a year, and ye've jist blowed hot and cowld till I'm not meself any more, and have come nigh losin' me place. Noo, by St. Patrick, ye must show whether ye're a woman or a heartless ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... with the young boy, Leon, as inexperienced as herself. She coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. After looking at her for a moment, he said: This woman is all right. She will be easy prey, because she is light-minded and inexperienced. As to the fall, will you re-read pages 42, 43 and 44. I have only a word to say about this scene and that is: there are no details, no descriptions, no image that can trouble the senses; a single word indicates the fall: ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... collection of books. There is a homogeneity and consistency to the whole which lead us to speak of scripture as being a single story, not many revelations. The Bible is the exhaustless book. It may sometimes prove exhausting to its light-minded readers, but it never exhausts itself. "It is the wonder of the Bible," observes Dr. Joseph Parker, who has preached more than twenty-five volumes of sermons upon scriptural subjects, "that you never get through it. You get through all other books, but you never get ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... of a light-minded race and nation, Angela; and it is easy to her to forget; or she would not easily forget that so-adoring husband whose fortunes she ruined. His most fatal errors came from his subservience to her. When I saw her in her new splendour ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... line of sight, and change their values. Mothers are beginning to clutch at their sons; and even self-centred fathers and selfish pretty sisters look at their male relatives with questioning, with a hint of respect or even awe in it. Perhaps the women feel it more than the men. Good-looking, light-minded, love-making George has assumed a new aspect to his mother and to Kathryn. They're secretly yearning over him. He has assumed a new aspect to me. I yearn over him myself. He has changed—he has suddenly grown up. Boys are doing it on ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... castaways set out to explore their island for food in any such light-minded manner as you ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... at night was a nice problem, he explained. Being a little light-minded about sunshine, it seemed that they were unable to discriminate between heaven's high lamp and the electric one on the porch, and would dutifully arise when either appeared. Once down from their ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis |
