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More "Levity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not yield so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation of husband and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans. And, although ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... fault that he treated the matter with such brutal levity. It was a long time since he had been at school, and he could not quite realise what it meant to Barry not to be able to play against Ripton. As for Barry, he felt that he had never loathed and detested any ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... but Maryland and South Carolina. The higher Dutch families of New York also began to show considerable vigor socially; Philadelphia forgot the staid dignity of its founder; and even New England, especially Boston, began to use accumulated wealth in ways of levity that would ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... manners to observe towards her deputed father; yet, from some volatile thought, or some quick sense of feeling, which she had not been accustomed to subdue, she was perpetually on the verge of treating him with levity; but he would immediately recall her recollection by a reserve too awful, and a gentleness too sacred for her to violate. The distinction which both required, was thus, by ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... this letter was to suggest material for another of my "psychological studies;" but I submit that the whole affair is of too grave a character for treatment in the levity of fiction. And if the facts and coincidences should prove less puzzling to others than to me, a praiseworthy service might be done to humanity by the presentation of whatever solution a better understanding than mine ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... poet laughs at the grotesque misery which he himself exhibits, and purposely groups together objects with the intention of exerting to his readers the feeling of ridicule. But in no instance can we detect the faintest symptom of levity in the Hebrew penmen; their style, like their subject, is uniformly exalted, chaste, and severe; they wrote to men concerning the things of God, in a manner suitable to such a momentous communication; and they never ceased to remember that, in all their records, ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... should be sorry to discuss in a tone of unsuitable levity—occurred in the summer of 18—. Mr. Barnabas Shuttleworthy—one of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of the borough—had been missing for several days under circumstances which gave rise to suspicion of foul play. Mr. Shuttleworthy had set out from Rattleborough ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... pabulum for the growing intellect. It is to minds of this stamp—so truly the antipodes of all that is youthful, spontaneous, and child-like, (in a word: frivolous,) that we must look for those solid works which, in the Millennium that is coming, will perfectly supplant what may be termed, without levity, the "Cock and Bull" system of juvenile entertainment. Worldly people may consider this stuff graceful and touching, sweet and loveable; but it is nevertheless clearly mischievous, else pious and proper persons wouldn't have said ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... business I have to be present in solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony and I have long shaken hands; but I could not resist the importunities of the young lady's father, whose gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent on this occasion, and give away the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... CHILLINGLY.—"I don't approve the cynical levity of such remarks. Of course we must all be anxious to see, in the earliest stage of being, the future representative of our name and race. Who would not wish to contemplate the source, however small, of the ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Convention is call'd, and proper Remedies are sought by the chief Men of the Nation against the present Mischiefs; Which we know has been done upon like Accidents. A King, either through Infirmities of Age, of Levity of Mind, may not only be missed by some covetous, rapacious or lustful Counsellor; may not only be seduced and depraved by debauch'd Youths of Quality, or of equal Age with himself; may be infatuated ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... rate with my sister, and strange sights have we seen. They are, at least, strange sights to me; for, after having been accustomed to the gravity of Turks, I can scarce look with an easy and familiar aspect at the levity and agility of the airy phantoms that are dancing about me here; and I often think that I am at a puppet-shew, amidst the representations of real life. I stare prodigiously, but nobody remarks it, for every body stares here, staring is a-la-mode—there is a stare of attention and interet, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... crazy ye are intirely, ye ould omadhawn!" said Judy, whose notions of propriety were somewhat shocked with the undignified levity of her partner; "the likes of you I never seed; ye are too foolidge intirely. Have done now wid your diviltries, and set the stools for the gintlemens, while I ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... worship and happiness as with light. At last she knew that she was loved, that the things he said when they met on the marshes were not said as they had been when she was a child, and that there had lately been solemnity throned in his eyes' levity. He made no motion for her to come down, nor when Tom turned his head again did he throw any furtive look at the window. It was enough for him to have seen her; and soon he went away with bent head ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Achaeans,) his resentment never went far, nor did it ever break out into acts; but when it had vented itself in some citizen-like freedom of speech, there was an end of it. In fine, nobody charged malice or bitterness upon his nature, though many imputed hastiness and levity to it; in general, he was the most attractive and agreeable of companions, and could speak too, both with grace, and forcibly. For instance, to divert the Achaeans from the conquest of the isle of Zacynthus, "If," said he, "they put their head too far ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... 'Sermons on the Seriousness of Life;' they are the only ones he has printed, I believe," said Miss Harriet, with much pleasure. "They are considered very fine discourses. He pays you a great compliment, my dear. I feared that he noticed your girlish levity." ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rudeness or incivility on the part of a Post-Office servant is, next to dishonesty, one of the worst offences he can commit. This notice is not addressed to men alone. Of the young women employed by the department, there are, he says, some, if not many, whom it is impossible to acquit of inattention and levity in the discharge of their official duties. It is Sir JAMES FERGUSSON's intention to ascertain, at short intervals, the effect of this notice on the behaviour ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... was the little German crank, who strolled from one to the other with a smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. More than once he even went so far as to burst into a shout of laughter, until the chaplain sternly rebuked him for his ill-timed levity. ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were more than ever disposed to make it. For, although we could see no harm in the savages, yet we put no trust in them,—they appeared to have no serious side to them at all, but treated everything with such levity that we could not tell what to make of them. Sometimes we wished they would go away; and then again we wished they would stay; and then we wished they would take us with them, and then again we were afraid to trust them. Thus did our ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... as much for the pacification of the unreasonable contentions of Poland. I have to do there with brainless heads, each of which, instead of contributing to the common peace, on the contrary, throws impediments in the way of it by caprice and levity. My embassador has published a declaration adapted to open their eyes. But it is to be presumed that they will rather expose themselves to the last extremity than adopt, without delay, a wise and consistent rule of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... is tearing the very core of my heart. Myself alive, my sire's locks were seized, why should sonless people then entertain a desire of offspring?[258] People perpetrate unrighteous acts or humiliate others, moved by lust or wrath or folly or hatred or levity. The cruel and wicked-souled son of Prishata hath perpetrated this exceedingly sinful act in total disregard of me. Dhrishtadyumna, therefore, shall surely suffer the dreadful consequence of that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Do you expect me to regard you as a completed soul? Oh, you may well be afraid of me. There are moments when your levity, your ingratitude, your shallow jollity, make my gorge rise so against you that if I could not remind myself that you are a child I should be tempted to doubt your right to ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... his spittle, and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized, and say, "In odorem suavitatis," that is, "for a sweet savour unto the Lord;" wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle, for the uncleannesse; nor the application of that Scripture for the levity, can by any authority of ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... once, have I seen thy face, Elia! once only has thy tripping tongue Run o'er my breast, yet never has been left Impression on it stronger or more sweet. Cordial old man! what youth was in thy years, What wisdom in thy levity! what truth In every utterance of that purest soul! Few are the spirits of the glorified I'd spring to earlier at the gate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... were carrying coffins across the road to the prison, for the reception of the sufferers after execution. They were much pushed about, and this caused great mirth. I turned from the general display of levity with disgust. "On no account," I mentally exclaimed, "will I remain mixed up with such a herd of heartless beings. But who am I," I retorted on myself in the next moment, "that I should thus condemn my fellows, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... expressing from time to time, by uplifted hands and eyes, comical applause, Harriet Bowdler modestly mumbled some praise, but addressed it to Miss Thrale. I begged a truce, and retired to a chair in a corner, at the request of Miss W— to have a t'ete-'a-t'ete, for which, however, her strange levity gave me no great desire. She begged to know if I had written anything else. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... exerting her authority, if possible, still more beneficially by protecting virtue, discountenancing vice, and purifying a court whose shameless profligacy had for many generations been the scandal of Christendom. It is probable, indeed, that much of her early levity was prompted by a desire to drive from her mind disappointments and mortifications of which few suspected the existence, but which were only the more keenly felt because she was compelled to keep them to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the cabins, as my friend Bonflon had asserted, agreeable and healthful. I could also occupy the promenade deck for half an hour with little inconvenience, so far as the levity of the air was concerned; but the cold was severe; while the system, in consequence of an undue expansion of its particles, solid and fluid, from the diminished pressure of the atmosphere, was rendered doubly susceptible to its influence. The advice given by Mr. Bonflon to case myself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... were confounded with the history of biblical literature, and naturally it was the latter that suffered by the lack of differentiation. Orthodoxy assumed a purely divine origin for the Bible, while sceptics treated the holy book with greater levity than they would dare display in criticising a modern novel. The one party raised a hue and cry when Moses was spoken of as the first author; the other discovered "obscene, rude, even cannibalistic traits"[2] in the sublime narratives of the Bible. It should be the task of coming generations, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... home on that long journey from Cape Town, as the two half-brothers lounged on deck together in their canvas chairs, Granville Kelmscott was wholly at a loss to understand what seemed to him Guy Waring's unaccountable and almost incredible levity. The man's conduct didn't in the least resemble that of a person who is returning to give himself up on a charge of wilful murder. On the contrary, Guy showed no signs of remorse or mental agony in any way; he ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... too much exercised over my "wound"—as she persisted in calling the scratch on my cheek—and the loss of the ruby to encourage any levity. Honestly, at that moment I cared not a whit for the ruby. Besides, there were consolations which I need not record. It was real—very, very real; and I was the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... there is any approach in early times to what may be called critical laughter is recorded where Abraham and Sarah were informed of the approaching birth of Isaac. Perhaps this laughter was mostly that of pleasure. Sarah denied that she laughed, and Abraham was not rebuked when guilty of the same levity.[4] ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... entirely disdained these abject and fruitless efforts. On one occasion I was fortunate enough, as I absurdly thought, to get introduced to a Marquis. It was an awful honour, to which I was unused; and instead of addressing him with the frothy and impertinent levity which characterized his own manners, and which he encouraged in the creatures that were admitted to his familiarity, I stood confounded, expecting he should have read my play, which I had transcribed for his perusal, have understood the value of the poet who could write it, and have been anxious ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... opinion in England subsequently confirmed, Ross, in spite of qualities as a naval officer of the highest order, showed extraordinary apathy and levity on this voyage, appearing not to trouble himself in the least about the geographical problems for the solution of which the expedition was organized. He passed Wolstenholme and Whale Sounds and Smith's Strait, opening out of Baffin's Bay, without examining ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... so much mischief in his nature that he would rebound at any moment from a mood of pathos or seriousness to one of levity. "Well, Annette," and he leaned yearningly towards her, "when you leave me to take the chances of this tumultuous time, the greatest light that I have known will have gone out ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... am addressing myself confidentially to men of honor," said the colonel, elevating his chest above the bar-room counter of the Prairie Rose Saloon, "I trust that it will not be necessary for me to protect myself from levity, as I was forced to do in Sacramento on the only other occasion when I entered into an explanation of this delicate affair by—er—er—calling the individual to a personal account—er. I do not believe," added the colonel, slightly waving his ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... birthday, and I was two and twenty years of age. For two and twenty years have I swung around the sun. And in all seriousness, without a touch of levity, and from the bottom of my soul, I assure you that I have at the present moment the very vaguest idea as to whence I have come from, whither I am going, or what I am here for. It is not for want of inquiry, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... not take an antidote if I had one! The world has no antidote to cure me. I have no wish to be cured of love for Angelique, and in fine I cannot be, so let me go and receive the rod for coming to Belmont and the reward for leaving it at her summons!" He affected a tone of levity, but Amelie's ear easily detected ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... great height, and descended, at the expiration of ten minutes, at the distance of about 1 1/2m. This was the discovery of the balloon. The brothers Montgolfier imagined that the bag rose because of the levity of the smoke or other vapour given forth by the burning straw; and it was not till some time later that it was recognized that the ascending power was due merely to the lightness of heated air compared to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Breze, with a shrug of the shoulders and in a tone of levity that seemed to ridicule the assertion he volunteered; "Virtue and Honour banished from courts and salons and the cabinet of authors ascend to fairer heights ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... superiority: "There is but one decision here, if the morality of this noble city is to be preserved and the maiden daughters of her patrician families secured henceforward from the misfortune of being a plaything for the wanton levity of reckless heart breakers. But this decision, on which I firmly and resolutely insist, as lady and princess, in the name of my whole sex and of all knightly men who, with me, prize the reverence ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Sirajuddaula he resolved to turn his arms against the French. They were suspected of helping the Nawab in his expedition against Calcutta: it was known that the Nawab, treating his engagements with reckless levity and faithlessness, was trying to persuade Bussy, the French commander in the Dekkan, to help him to expel the British from Bengal. There was excuse enough for an attack ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... humble instrument of making a fortune for you; it was also my lot to draw up the papers depriving you of the same!" Culver laughed amiably. "'Oft expectation fails, where most it promises.' Pardon my levity! There were two wills; the first, in your favor; the last, in his daughter's. I presume"—with a sudden, sharp look—"you have no intention of contesting the final disposition? The paternity of the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... fairer than a star, thou of more levity than a cork, and more passionate than the blustering Adriatic; with thee I should love to live, with thee ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... the opportune reforms that might have retrieved his fortunes. The emigration left her to confront alone the vengeance of the people. The terrific experience of October, when she saw death so near, and was made to feel so keenly the hatred she inspired, sobered in a moment the levity of her life, and brought out higher qualities. It was on that day that she began to remind those around her whose daughter she was. Ignorant as she was and passionate, she could never become a safe adviser. But she acquired decision, vigour, and self-command, and was able sometimes to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and keep ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a joyful and diverting youth. His fathership, as they told us, had acquired the priory by means of a gift of a thousand ducats, which he had sent to the Father Provincial. After dinner he invited some of us to visit his cell, and there it was we came to know the levity of his life. It exhibited little of the appearance of a life of penance and self-mortification. We expected to find in the habitation of a prelate of such an establishment a most magnificent library, which would furnish ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with a freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnised and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me as I drew near. I say he was somewhat solemnised just then; for, with the admirable instinct of all men and animals under restraint, he had so wound and wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor so much ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the centurion. He was quite ready to believe in the anchorite's confession, for the more unworthy the man for whom Sirona had broken faith, the greater seemed her guilt, and the more unpardonable her levity; and to his man's vanity it seemed to him easier—particularly in the presence of such witnesses as Petrus and Dorothea—to bear the fact that his wife should have sought variety and pleasure at any cost, even at that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and profound in that sort of thing, who was the dupe of his Mississippi, and in good faith believed in forming great and wealthy establishments in America. He reasoned Englishwise, and did not know how opposed to those kinds of establishments are the levity of our nation and the inconveniences of a despotic government, which has a finger in everything, and under which what one minister does is always destroyed or changed by his successor." The disasters caused by Law's system have recoiled upon his memory. Forgotten are ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the narrative is written in a humorous tone, which shows itself, not only in thought and word, but in a jolting measure, and even grotesque rhymes. The speaker desires it to be understood that he is not the less in earnest for this apparent "levity;" and the levity is quite consistent with religious seriousness in such a person as the poem depicts. But, as I have shown, it is alone enough to prove that the author is not depicting himself. The poem reflects him more or less ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... not human, Matthew Berry," I said, answering his levity with spirit. "And I'm sorry I can't be at home for your amusement to-day, but my chickens are laying while I wait, and the least I can do is to get these nests ready for 'em. You'll excuse me, won't you, and go in to talk ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... accept presumptive evidence of the fact, the statement is clearly borne out, for in his wit, his indifference to religion, to say the least, his satirical turn, his love of the world, and his contempt of all that was great and good, he strongly resembles his reputed son; whilst the levity of Lady Walpole's character, and Sir Robert's laxity and dissoluteness, do not furnish any reasonable doubt to the statement made by Lady Louisa Stuart, in the introduction to Lord Wharncliffe's 'Life of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... conscienceless strength, of disciplined ferocity. She has shown an equally amazing failure to read the character of her foes aright. We now know what German Kultur means: but of the soul and spirit of England she knows nothing. Least of all does she understand that formidable and incorrigible levity which refuses to take hard knocks seriously. It will be our privilege to assist in educating our enemies on these and other points, even though, as Lord Kitchener thinks, it takes three years to do it. The Mad Dog of Europe is loose, but we remember ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... The same female levity is no less fatal to them after marriage than before: It represents to their imaginations the faithful prudent husband as an honest, tractable, and domestick animal; and turns their thoughts upon the fine gay gentleman that laughs, sings, and dresses ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greater part of mankind—indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have not been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself, in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... answers it would appear that money seems sometimes capable of being treated with levity. Can you give me an instance when cash is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... himself to-day is just how far the gigantic sufferings and still more monstrous warnings of this war have shocked the good gentlemen who must steer the ship of State through the strong rapids of the New Peace out of this forensic levity their training has ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... were not so bad as she believed. In my experience I have found that folly, and playing with everything that is right is more common than absolute wrong—and men like Philip Compton are made up of levity and disregard of everything that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... beyond their years are ever the pets of big sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, zealous care on the part of their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved his parents for levity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... universal law, that all substances gain instead of losing weight by undergoing combustion; and after the usual attempt to accommodate the old theory to the new fact by means of an arbitrary hypothesis (that phlogiston had the quality of positive levity instead of gravity), chemists were conducted to the true explanation, namely, that instead of a substance separated, there was, on the contrary, a ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... her grandson ascribes to it; [ Memoires de Brandebourg (Preuss's Edition of OEuvres, Berlin, 1847 et seqq.), i. 112.] she died without epigram, and though in perfect simple courage, with the reverse of levity. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... truth of the matter was that the difficulty in question had arisen not from any tendency in the lady to behave in the Lombard capital with more reprehensible levity than, it must unfortunately be admitted, she had been very well known to have behaved in other places and on other occasions; but from a change in her manners in a diametrically opposite direction. It was a change of tactics, which the strictest moralist ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the same operation, morally cleansed himself, and left every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds and reputation in his bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, was rosy, round, shining with irrepressible good-humor and youthful levity. His large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise and thoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested his elbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a boy's delight in ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... inoffensive, a more virtuous life, than Wordsworth, or who has adorned it with nobler studies?"—and what does Porson answer? "I believe so; I have always heard it; and those who attack him with virulence or with levity are men of no morality and no reflection." [116] Thus you print Wordsworth's praise in rubric, and fix it on the walls, and then knock your head against them. You must have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... reasons and opinions of my friends, might I not, after the declarations I have made (and Heaven knows that they were made in the sincerity of my heart), in the judgment of the impartial world and of posterity, be chargeable with levity and inconsistency, if not with rashness and ambition? Nay, farther, would there not be some apparent foundation for the two former charges? Now, justice to myself and tranquillity of conscience require that I should act a part, if not ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... less dreadful than the pleasures that attack Virtue. . . . Youth is full of presumption and arrogance, though nothing in the world is so frail: it fears nothing, and vainly relies utmost levity and ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... look, she said: "I prithee, deliver thyself like a man of the world." The levity of this quotation jarred so discordantly on the romantic inamorato that he sprang to his feet, and beat his forehead with his clenched fist. The young lady was terrified, and, taking his hand in hers, said in her tenderest tone: "What ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... a good deal of levity, the temper of the Gallio who cares for none of these things. But this was not the temper of the men to whom we refer. Their greatest difficulty, indeed, arose from their intense interest in religious truth. They could not conceive a ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... something separate from himself, so that he could see her without seeing himself all the time; and it shone upon the garden in Solomon's Song, and the roses of Sharon, and the lilies of the valley, and the land flowing with milk and honey," said she, in a childish tone of levity which had an undercurrent of earnestness in it. All her emotional nature and her pride arose against Pyramids and Old Testament battle-fields, when she had only been conscious that the moon shone upon Horace and herself. She was shamed and angry as she had never been ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... simply of a chronic case of the snuffles. Jones has simply gone to the opposite extreme and transformed the Temple of the Deity into a variety dive. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; but Jones indulges in the levity of the buffoon while consigning millions of human beings to Hell. Alas, that so few preachers understand the pity which permeates all ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... his wife's family, she attacked the wife herself. With all the cunning and smoothness of a seducing demon, she encompassed the young man's heart, and filled it with mistrust against Josephine. She accused the forsaken one with levity and unfaithfulness; she filled his heart with jealousy and rancor; she used all the means of perfidy and calumny of which a woman is capable, and in which she finds a refuge when her object is to ruin, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... men do in this country. What we understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun of the verb) in our ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... have I ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. I have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify as they reward our utmost ardor and earnestness of pursuit. That it justifies them must be my present task to prove; ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... man into distress, and into contact with low persons; they cause him to commit unrighteous deeds, and produce impurity in him; they make him regardless of the future, and encourage carelessness and levity. And lastly, they cause him to be disbelieved by all, received by none, and despised by everybody, including himself. It is notorious, moreover, that many men who have given themselves up to pleasure alone, have been ruined along with their families ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... Faulkners, who were always ready for anything, and a Miss Mordaunt, were reckoned up, and their dresses quickly discussed; but all the time Marian said not a word. She was thinking of the waste of time and consideration, the folly, levity and vanity, the throwing away of money, all this would occasion, and enjoying in her own mind the pleasure of resisting it in toto. She supposed she must go to the archery meeting, though why people could not be contented to ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... little note of their characters or domestic life, and her mother had kept herself even more secluded. Indeed the poor lady felt that it was hardly right to smile in view of her husband's absence and misfortune, and she often chided Belle for her levity; but Belle's life was like an over-full fountain in spring-time, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... obstinate, but justice set the responsibility down to her account, not to his; analysing her temperament, without excusing it, she found a spirit of adventure and experiment—or should she say of restlessness and levity?—which Marchmont did not minister to nor yet assuage. The only pleasure that lay in this discovery came from the fact that it was so opposed to the general idea about her. For it was her lot to be exalted into a type of the splendid calm patrician ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... widow—he cannot tell her age, nor whether she has children or no) who has an alternate eye to her character, her interest, and her pleasure: Shakespeare's Cressida is a giddy girl, an unpractised jilt, who falls in love with Troilus, as she afterwards deserts him, from mere levity and thoughtlessness of temper. She may be wooed and won to anything and from anything, at a moment's warning: the other knows very well what she would be at, and sticks to it, and is more governed by substantial reasons ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging parsimony; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved in debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the score of a certain levity in her behaviour; and it was rumoured that even during the brief space of their union she had proved a faithless wife. Yet she contrived to keep Francesco's confidence, and it is certain that her family profited by their connection with the Peretti. Of her six brothers, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... illness which followed the shock of that dreadful July night, by the unwearying assiduity of his kinswoman, Miss Willoughby. On his recovery, the bride (for the Earl won her heart and hand) who stood by him at the altar looked fainter and more ghostly than the bridegroom. But her dark hour of levity was passed and over. There is no more affectionate pair than the Earl and Countess of Embleton. Lady Mary, who lives with them, is once more an aunt, and spoils, it is to be feared, the young Viscount ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... mobs rendered all order a mockery; when the greed for money was the master passion of the people; when utility was the watchword of philosophy, and material gains the end and object of education; when public misfortunes were treated with the levity of atheistic science; when private sorrows, miseries, and sufferings had no retreat and no shelter; when conjugal infelicities were scarcely a reproach; when divorces were granted on the most frivolous pretexts; when men became monks from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... followed by the constable in equally wild efforts to restrain him by tugging at the end of the line. The extraordinary race continued to the town until the constable fell, losing his hold of the line. This seemed to impart a singular specific levity to the Deacon, who, to the astonishment of everybody, incontinently sailed up into a tree! When he was succored and cut down from the demoniac kite, he was found to have sustained a dislocation of the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... and gay gentleman, pleasing both in his person and manners, attempted by every possible means to render himself agreeable to her, to raise her spirits, and calm her apprehensions. By degrees his manner changed from levity to tenderness. He represented to her, that he was not a brutal wretch, who could be gratified by any triumph in which the affections of the heart have no share; and he assured her, that in any connexion which she might be prevailed upon to form with him, she should be treated ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... bills; which he shrewdly took care to convert into cash, having as little faith in the system as in the piety of his new convert. A more grave and moral community might have been outraged by this scandalous farce; but the Parisians laughed at it with their usual levity, and contented themselves with making it the subject of a number of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... will consider it quite proper for you to see her again at my house?" said Lady Canterbridge, with a return of conventional levity. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... wit was and ready as were her brilliant quips and sallies, there was no levity in her demeanour, and she kept Mistress Margery Wimpole in discreet attendance upon her, as if she had been the daughter of a Spanish Hidalgo, never to be approached except in the presence of her duenna. Poor Mistress Margery, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... some ultimate important purpose upon which the whole gravity and earnestness of his being seemed to be concentrated; and if his solemn features occasionally relaxed into a smile, it was precisely the habitual gravity of his mien that lent his passing levity such extraordinarily ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... was in a hurry!" There was no attempted levity in his tone,—he spoke rather listlessly, as one who had found the world, or its problems, slightly wearisome. The composer-publisher now arose; a new thought ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... wanting with regard to any point. You are aware that after being suspended for a long time, I have, through the influence of M. Mellarede, obtained permission to resume my priestly duties, as a means of livelihood. I used to say Mass with the levity that comes from long experience even of the most serious matters when they are too familiar to us; with my new principles I now celebrate it with more reverence; I dwell upon the majesty of the Supreme Being, his presence, the insufficiency of the human mind, which so little realises ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... evidence as to what he did, what he said and how he actually died; the question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us.—All the attempts that I know of to read the history of a "soul" in the Gospels seem to me to reveal only a lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank in psychologicus, has contributed the two most unseemly notions to this business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the genius and that of the hero ("heros"). But if there is anything essentially ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... banished the glum looks which Grosvenor's ill- timed levity of demeanour had called up, and restored matters to the favourable condition that had been momentarily endangered. A brief consultation was held, and at its conclusion Malachi, the chief Elder, hurried away to seek ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Sir Isaac Newton's slumbers not nor sleeps, and all the vital organs droop and drop when we neglect deep breathing. Inertia is a vice. The gods cultivate levitation, which is a different thing from levity, meaning skyey gravitation, uplift, aspiration expressed in bodily attitude. When levitation lets go, gravity doubles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Ossaroo would have bean sufficiently ludicrous for Caspar to have laughed at it, but for the danger in which the shikaree was placed. This was so evident, that instead of indulging in anything akin to levity, Caspar looked on with feelings of deep anxiety, Karl being equally apprehensive about the result. Neither could do anything to aid or rescue him, as they were unarmed—both having dropped their pieces when ascending ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... and loose and irregular habits, had a wonderful fascination for Burns, who admired him for what he thought his independence and magnanimity. "He was," says Burns, "the only man I ever knew who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of lawless love with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... beg pardon for my levity," said Darrell, touched by the other's manner. And the two men clasped hands and parted for ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Joe that there was something in Morgan's eyes which betrayed his heart. Little gleams of his underlying purpose which his levity masked, struck Joe from time to time, setting his wits on guard. Morgan must be watched, like a cat within leaping distance of an unfledged bird. Joe set himself the task of watching, determined then and there that Morgan ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... much in America, much said and much done, since the war broke out that has surprised the world. I may confess for myself, and I believe that I shall speak for many other Europeans in this matter, that what we feared most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... judgments of contemporaries, who have thrown themselves boldly on the judgment of a far posterity, that should have had time to review, to ponder, to compare. There have been great actors on the stage of tragic humanity that might, with the same depth of confidence, have appealed from the levity of compatriot friends—too heartless for the sublime interest of their story, and too impatient for the labour of sifting its perplexities—to the magnanimity and justice of enemies. To this class belongs the Maid of Arc. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... notwithstanding a growing tendency to like every one of their pleasant, really agreeable faces. There was neither solemnity, sourness, nor bitterness to be seen anywhere; at the same time, there was no sign of levity. In every countenance was the same inexplicable mixture of wisdom and benevolence that distinguished Estra. Nowhere was there hostility, and nowhere was there crudity. Somehow, the big geologist would have felt more at ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... been pained to witness, on the part of some of our newspapers, a disposition to treat this decision with indifference, by some even with levity. Has it come to this, that because she is a woman the defendant can not get a fair and impartial trial? The case of the inspectors was not treated in this way—but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the whole time I was with them, I never heard them indulge in a joke, or other levity, and the practice of it is apt to give offence: they are so accustomed to take what is said in its literal meaning, that irony was always considered a falsehood, in spite of explanation. They could not see the propriety of uttering what was not strictly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... be urged, from a sense of public duty, to give up my highly lucrative private practice," he said with a pitiful attempt at levity, though his voice was husky, and his tightly clenched hand, where the white knuckles ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... light—fictions, too, which were composed long before the Hindus came in contact with the Muhammedans. Even in Europe, during mediaeval times, maugre the "lady fair" of chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times: it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other extreme!—According to an Arabian writer, cited by Lane, "it is desirable, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... what was once Government House. The President, after having organised a band of pic-pockettini (desperadoes taken from the gaols), has gone into the provinces, declaring that he has a toothache. By some, this declaration is deemed a subterfuge, by others, a statement savouring of levity. The artillery are now reducing the entire town to atoms, under the personal supervision of the Minister of Finance, who deprecates waste in ammunition, and declares that he is bound to the President by the tie of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... the Reverend Mother, and the heavy figure of Mother Philippa. "Even in their backs they are like themselves," she thought. She smiled at her descriptive style, "like themselves," and then, seeing that Mass had begun, she resolutely repressed all levity, and began her prayers. She had not felt especially pious till that moment, and to rouse herself she remembered Monsignor's words, "That at the height of her artistic career she should have been awakened to a sense of ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... us, I suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. I can't help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness. He puts on an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does. He did not make ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... alarm which so lately threatened their destruction, seemed now merely to heighten the avidity with which they were sought. Yet never was the disunion of happiness and diversion more striking and obvious; Mr Harrel, in spite of his natural levity, was seized from time to time with fits of horror that embittered his gayest moments, and cast a cloud upon all his enjoyments. Always an enemy to solitude, he now found it wholly insupportable, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... passions, but of passion past: The pride, but not the fire, of early days, Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise; 70 A high demeanour, and a glance that took Their thoughts from others by a single look; And that sarcastic levity of tongue, The stinging of a heart the world hath stung, That darts in seeming playfulness around, And makes those feel that will not own the wound; All these seemed his, and something more beneath Than glance ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Leighton, flushing at her levity before the very portals of the church. "She's all right. I looked back, and saw her crossing ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... admitted by herself, disentitle her to plead her character in answer to the charges against her. Young men do not speak of love to young and beautiful married women, still less to ladies of so high rank, unless something more than levity has encouraged them; and although to have permitted such language is no proof of guilt, yet it is a proof of the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... saw the Colonel the latter had regained his wig, his natural complexion and his dignity, the last being so great that it was a perfect danger signal warning away all levity or even the slightest sign of it on the part of ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... days after, the marriage was celebrated, to the entire satisfaction of all parties. The Baron ordered the doors to be thrown open, and the house free for all comers; with every other token of joy and festivity. Edmund appeared full of joy without levity, of mirth without extravagance; he received the congratulations of his friends, with ease, freedom, and vivacity. He sent for his foster father and mother, who began to think themselves neglected, ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... father and wondered. A miracle had changed Virginia. Her poise, her gentleness, her dignity, were the effects which people saw. Her force people felt. And this is why we cannot of ourselves add one cubit to our stature. It is God who changes, —who cleanses us of our levity with the fire of trial. Happy, thrice happy, those whom He chasteneth. And yet how many are there who could not bear the fire—who would cry ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to be very serious about the matter.' BOSWELL. 'He may have intended this to introduce his book the better among genteel people, who might be unwilling to read too grave a treatise. There is a general levity in the age. We have physicians now with bag-wigs[842]; may we not have airy divines, at least somewhat less solemn in their appearance than they used to be?' JOHNSON. 'Jenyns might mean as you say[843].' BOSWELL. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... went up with a stronger sense of desolation in his heart than usual, going up to see her in order to get consolation from the sight of her face and the sound of her voice. Their former levity had given place to a seriousness of manner which was very different. A deep, intense joy shone in the eyes of each at meeting, but that quick repartee and light badinage which they had used of old had ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... socially complex, as of a religion or a civilization, there is question of many human lives, their hopes, their joys, their strivings, their yearnings, disappointments, agonies, and deaths; and he is able to perceive that in the ports of levity there is no refuge for hearts that mourn. Does not love itself, in its heaven of bliss, turn away from him who mocks? The lover of the intellectual life knows neither contempt nor indignation, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... There was no levity. Every man seemed to sense the situation and stood to his post of duty grimly conscious of the serious business upon which he had embarked. Through the minds of the lads flitted visions of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... They are born leaders where acumen and craft are not needed. Large game was made for them, and they for it. They are the vermin destroyers of the universe. They throw life from them with both hands, they play the game of life with a levity which they never showed in the business ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... guardians of the law; and let them issue orders that he or she shall carry away their private rites to the public temples, and if they do not persuade them, let them inflict a penalty on them until they comply. And if a person be proven guilty of impiety, not merely from childish levity, but such as grown-up men may be guilty of, whether he have sacrificed publicly or privately to any Gods, let him be punished with death, for his sacrifice is impure. Whether the deed has been done in earnest, or only from childish ...
— Laws • Plato
... am in a hurry to have done with all this: though I 'doted upon folly,' yet I was terrified at the thoughts of any thing worse. The idea of a divorce, the public brand of a shameful life, shocked me in spite of all my real and all my assumed levity. O that I had, at this instant, dared to be myself! But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate hurry to get home? ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... holy keeping! I have done my part, and on this score I do not dread appearing before the Highest of all Judges. Do not be afraid to come to me to-morrow; as yet I only suspect; God grant that those suspicions may not prove true, for to you it would be an incalculable misfortune, with whatever levity my rascally brother, and perhaps your mother also, may treat the matter to the old woman. I ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... is no time for levity!" he roared forth menacingly. "You are on the verge of being arrested for murder. Did you ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... thus only can be had exemption from temptation to low habits of mind, leisure for solid education, and dislike to innovation, from a sense in the several classes how much they have to lose; for circumstances often make men wiser, or at least more discreet, when their individual levity or presumption would dispose them to be much otherwise. To what extent that constitution of character which is produced by property makes up for the decay of chivalrous loyalty and strengthens governments, may be seen by comparing the officers ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... lax morals of the cheque-book; a pound is just twenty shillings to them, and each shilling is an entity, and each is spent with an indomitable aim to get the most out of it. How would my wife regard the definite disappearance of five thousand shillings? Not with levity, I knew; and I thought it best to say nothing of that guinea volume on the Tombs of the Etruscans. The Tombs of the Etruscans would have meant to her three pairs of boots; and I wished that I might conceal it in mine. A wise bishop once argued that marriage was ordained ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... only too true, but her wifely submission ought not to have acknowledged it, and they would not hear when they could not comfort; and so they were forced to launch her on the world, with a tyrant instead of a guide, and dreading the effect of dissipation on her levity of mind, as much as they grieved for her feeble spirit. It was a piteous parting—a mournful departure for a bride—a heavy penalty for ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are more things in heaven and earth," he began; then he heaved his shoulders as if flinging off an attempt at levity. "The human mind is a strange organ, and no man can explain its mysteries. I have seen too much of atavism to ridicule any theories. There is nothing we can do but wait and hope that the German servant's prediction is true. Six or ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... early periods of the Revolution, he, in common with many of his countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and yet more ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... any who know the men of Ulster. To make light of the deep-rooted convictions which fill the minds of those who will listen to Mr. Bonar Law to-day is a shallow and an idle affectation, or a token of levity and of ignorance. Enlightened Liberalism may smile at the beliefs and the passions of the Ulster Protestants, but it was those same beliefs and passions, in the forefathers of the men who will gather in Belfast to-day, which saved Ireland for the British Crown, and freed the cause of civil and religious ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... deserves, perhaps, pity for her misfortunes, more than our censure for a behaviour to which the artifices of her aunt very probably contributed, and to which very young women are often rendered too liable by that blameable levity in the education ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... joyous poets, full of the gladness of life. They are secular, not religious poets; the best of the Spanish-Hebrew poetry was devotional, and the best of the Italian so secular that it was condemned by pietists as too frivolous and too much "disfigured by ill-timed levity." ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... this man's character in a new light. I had mistaken the heroism of friendship for the phrenzy of love. He who had gained my affections, may be supposed to have previously entitled himself to my reverence; but the levity which had formerly characterized the behaviour of this man, tended to obscure the greatness of his sentiments. I did not fail to remark, that since this lady was still alive, the voice in the temple which asserted her death, ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... obedience to Instincts which had been Implanted in him in circumstances for which he was not responsible, and which might, for anything he knew, have been conceived in a spirit of mischief by the Author of all Good. This levity was stopped by a shocked expression on the lady's face. "Well," said the gentleman, "you mustn't blow me up, Miss Dickenson. I am only repeating, as desired, the words of a profane poet. He had apologized, he told me, for what he said, when ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... themselves at the breakfast table, Mrs. Duncan improved the opportunity to enlarge upon the duties we owe to ourselves and to others, in connection with the Sabbath day. It is true that John's levity occasionally detracted from the effect of the lessons; but it was not wholly lost, even ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... Gillenormand, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate quality. He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering in any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing, dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his great age added to it. One is not a century with impunity. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the Franciscans embraced among their lay brethren nearly all the population of Italy, and to die in the habit of the order was thought the safest way of cheating the devil of his due. Corruption had gone so far and deep that it was universally recognized and treated with the sarcasm of levity. It roused no sincere reaction, and stimulated no persistent indignation. Every one acknowledged it; yet every one continued to live indolently according to the fashion of his forefathers, acting up ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... levity which jarred on him, Alix now recommended her lover to go back to his quarters and have a good sleep; and then, having again passed through the gate and pushed their way up the tunnel, the two young people parted in something very ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... just come back from Sunday School,' said Kenneth, looking across at me with a twinkle in his eye, 'and so she is doubly shocked with our levity. I assure you, Mrs. Parker, her religious scruples are such that I don't think she would pick a flower in the garden if you were to ask her to ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... soldiery pours out their kindred blood like water, they exult and triumph as if they themselves had performed some notable exploit. I am really ashamed of the fashionable language which has been held for some time past, which, to say the best of it, is full of levity. You know that I allude to the general cry against the cowardice of the Americans, as if we despised them for not making the king's soldiery purchase the advantage they have obtained at a dearer rate. It is not, Gentlemen, it is not to respect the dispensations of Providence, nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Doctor left the room, leaving Paul in a state of abject horror and dread which need not be described. Never, never again would he joke, as he had been wont to do with Dick in lighter moods, on the subject of corporal punishment under any circumstances—it was no fit theme for levity; if this—this outrage were really done to him, he could never be able to hold up his head again. What if it were to get about in ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... aghast at her literalness, and saying to himself in warning that he must be careful of what he said to Leam Dundas. It was evident that she did not understand either badinage or a joke. But her very earnestness pleased him for all its oddity. It was so unlike the superficiality and levity of the modern girl—that hateful Girl of the Period, in whose existence he believed, and of whose influence he stood in almost superstitious awe. He liked that grave, intense way of hers, which was neither puritanical nor stolid, but, on the contrary, full of unspoken ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... people, they have invariably brought them on themselves. In incoherent misery, I run over in my head, as well as the confusion of it will let me, our past meetings and dialogues. In almost all, to my distorted view, there now seems to have been an unseemly levity. Things I have said to him; easy, familiar jokes that I have had with him; not that he ever had much sense of a jest—(even at this moment I think ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... which they had been delighted to perceive, had not perhaps been understood in its true sense: but his stormy departure, his disordered countenance, all knew, or at least thought they could tell the reason of. Madame's levity of manner, her somewhat bitter jests,—bitter for persons of a sensitive disposition, and particularly for one of the king's character; the great resemblance which naturally existed between the king and an ordinary mortal, were among the reasons assigned ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... was finally opened and one by one the dull yellow bars were piled on the scales, there was too much tenseness to allow of even a show of levity. Zephyr had no doubts. No one could have got at the safe while in the river; he could swear to that. From its delivery to the driver by Firmstone there had been no time nor opportunity to tamper with its contents. As for Firmstone, he had too much at stake to be entirely free from anxiety, ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... of the most worthless of mankind; and zeal for religion fled before the spirit of banter and sneer. The enthusiasm of 'fierce wars and faithful loves,' of piety and of freedom, were succeeded by the reign of profligacy and levity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... dash, as above. It was with great effort he wrote the lines which follow, for he had got an ugly blow on the forehead, and his eyes were "in mourning," as the gentlemen of the ring say, with unbecoming levity. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The momentary levity of expression vanished from Horace's face. The family question was far too serious a question to be lightly treated A becoming shadow of solemnity stole over his manner. He looked as if it was Sunday, and he ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... be concealed under the mask of gaiety is neither very new nor very strange: the reign of our Charles the Second was equally famous for plots, perjuries, and cruel chastisements, as for wanton levity and indecent frolics: but here at Venice there are no unpermitted frolics; her rulers love to see her gay and cheerful; they are the fathers of their country, and if they indulge, take ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of honours, clothes, and luxuries, the sole mark of multitudinous ambitions and desires. I doubt if you could find a man in Europe so bold as to attempt this piece of tact and government. And seemingly Tembinok' himself had trouble in the beginning. I hear of him shooting at a wife for some levity on board a schooner. Another, on some more serious offence, he slew outright; he exposed her body in an open box, and (to make the warning more memorable) suffered it to putrefy before the palace gate. Doubtless his growing ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his brother, a pompous man, "You and I have reversed the natural course of things; you have risen by your gravity; I have sunk by my levity." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... who hated each other across the floor of the House sat side by side in perfect amity. The heir to the oldest dukedom in England met there the latest champion of the latest phase of democratic socialism; the great tragedian from the Acropolis met the low comedian from the Levity on terms of as much equality as if they had met at the Macklin or the Call-Boy clubs; the President of the Royal Academy was amused by, and afforded much amusement to, the newest child of genius fresh from Paris, with the slang of the Chat Noir upon his ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... that this is the most important part of the power of a wise man, that he can guard against being entangled, and provide against being deceived. For there is nothing more incompatible with the idea which we have of the gravity of a wise man than error, levity, and temerity. Why, then, need I speak of the firmness of a wise man? whom even you too, Lucullus, admit to be never guided by mere opinion. And since this is sanctioned by you, (if I am dealing ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the admission of Mr. Mackinlay, as one of the ministers to the Laigh, or parochial Kirk of Kilmarnock, on the 6th of April, 1786. That reverend person was an Auld Light professor, and his ordination incensed all the New Lights, hence the bitter levity of the poem. These dissensions have long since past away: Mackinlay, a pious and kind-hearted sincere man, lived down all the personalities of the satire, and though unwelcome at first, he soon learned to regard them only as a proof of the powers ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... they had been toys in the hands of a company of sportive children. Even the Beggar's Opera Burke could not endure to hear praised for its wit or its music, because his mind was filled by thought of its misplaced levity, and he only saw the mischief which such a performance tended to do to society. It would be hard to defend his judgment in this particular case, but it serves to show how Burke was never content with the literary point of view, and how ready and vigilant he was for effects more profound ...
— Burke • John Morley
... herself, followed by an approving little escort of nurses and novices, for it was of course permissible to appreciate and admire the smart clothes of a benefactress, whereas it would have been the height of levity to bestow so much attention on a lady visitor who was merely fashionable and had done nothing for the institution. This, at least, was the novices' point of view. But the little white volcano seemed quietly cross, and held her small ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... penalty. Promissory oaths are of equally little worth. There is not a public functionary from the President of the United States to the village constable, who does not take what is meant to be a solemn oath (though often administered with indecent levity) to be loyal to the constitution of the country or state, and faithful in the discharge of his official duties. Yet what effect has this vast amount of swearing, if it be not to make perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... give them is, in the final analysis, intended to be applied to lofty constructive purposes. They may, in their desire to speak practically, forget the moral values which should underlie this intimate information. Never should the spirit of levity intrude itself in these intimate personal sex colloquies. Restraint and ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... so long on miraculous food that he rolled pleasantly down like a ball, with no other injury than a few scratches; or he had become so very, very thin with living simply on expectations, in default of more substantial fare, that he gently floated down by virtue of levity, like ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... not disposed to treat the philosophy of the "absolute" either with levity or with scorn. We feel that it brings us into contact with some of the most profound and most deeply mysterious problems of human thought. Finite as we are, we are so constituted that we cannot avoid framing the idea, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... now reached the church, and as Mary adhered to her resolution of attending divine worship, Lady Emily declared her intention of accompanying her, that she might come in for her share of Lady Juliana's displeasure; but in spite of her levity, the reverend aspect, and meek, yet fervent piety of Dr. Barlow, impressed her with better feelings; and she joined in the service with outward decorum if not with inward devotion. The music consisted of an organ, simply but well ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us.—All the attempts that I know of to read the history of a "soul" in the Gospels seem to me to reveal only a lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank in psychologicus, has contributed the two most unseemly notions to this business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the genius and that of the hero ("heros"). But if there is anything essentially unevangelical, it is surely ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... others. Literature was a polished mirror in which the gay world saw its own grinning face. It threw back a most brilliant picture of the surface of society, showed manners but not the elementary passions of human nature. As a whole, it leaves an impression of hardness, shallowness, and levity. The polite cynicism of Congreve, the ferocious cynicism of Swift, the malice of Pope, the pleasantry of Addison, the early worldliness of Prior and Gay are seldom relieved by any touch of the ideal. The prose of the time was excellent, but the poetry was merely rhymed prose. The recent ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... help us, I suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. I can't help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness. He puts on an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does. He ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... its way: and, amidst so many impediments to its progress, so much difficulty in procuring audience and attention, its actual success is more to be wondered at, than that it should not have universally conquered scorn and indifference, fixed the levity of a voluptuous age, or, through a cloud of adverse prejudications, opened for itself a passage to the hearts and understandings of the scholars of ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... sour morose temper, and hated nothing more than the symptoms of happiness appearing in any countenance, I represented all kind of diversion and amusement as the most horrid sins. I inveighed against cheerfulness as levity, and encouraged nothing but gravity, or, to confess the truth to you, hypocrisy. The unhappy emperor followed my advice, and incensed the people by such repeated barbarities, that he was at last ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... Heliographic communication had been opened with the relieving army, and it is on record that the first message flashed through from the south was a question about the number of a horse. With inconceivable stupidity this has been cited as an example of military levity and incapacity. Of course the object of the question was a test as to whether they were really in communication with the garrison. It must be confessed that the town seems to have contained some ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... melancholy mingled in her smile. It was not the thoughtless levity of a girl—it was not the restrained simper of premature womanhood—it was something which the poet Young might have remembered, when he ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... austerity of his early portrait. Rossetti was not in a distinct sense a humourist, but there came to him at intervals, in earlier manhood, those outbursts of volatility, which, to serious natures, act as safety-valves after prolonged tension of all the powers of the mind. At such moments of levity he is described as almost boyish in recklessness, plunging into any madcap escapade that might be afoot with heedlessness of all consequences. Stories of misadventures, quips and quiddities of every kind, were then his delight, and ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... pity! It were better for him - how does the Bible say? - that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the depth of the sea. Let us take a drink," he concluded suddenly, but without any levity of tone. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I erred through levity and want of thought! How many resolutions have I taken at random! how many judgments have I pronounced for the sake of a witticism! how many mischiefs have I not done without any sense of my responsibility! The greater part of men harm one another for the sake of doing ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... there be those in this country who think that American democracy means public levity and intemperance, or a lack of skill and sagacity in politics, or the absence of self-command and self-denial, let them bear in mind a few of the most salient and recent facts of history which may profitably be recommended to their reflections. We emancipated a million of negroes by ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... first or last to the paper. This proposition was instantly assented to; and Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killaloe[244], drew up an address to Dr. Johnson on the occasion, replete with wit and humour, but which it was feared the Doctor might think treated the subject with too much levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as it stands in the paper in writing, to which I had the honour to ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Juniper, Succour Justicia, Perfection Kennedia, Mental Beauty Kingcups, Desire of Riches Laburnum, Pensive Beauty Lady's Slipper, Win Me Lagerstroemia, Eloquence Lantana, Rigour Larch, Audacity Larkspur, Lightness, Levity Larkspur, Double, Happiness Larkspur, Pink, Fickleness Larkspur, Purple, Haughtiness Laurel, Glory Laurel, Common, Perfidy Laurel, Ground, Perseverance Laurel, Mountain, Ambition Lavender, Distrust Leaves, Dead, Sadness Lemon, Zest Lemon ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... were owing mainly to his levity. If he passed briskly from one camp to the other, an impartial [v.04 p.0668] observer might usually detect some personal motive at the bottom. But it is hardly probable that he was himself conscious of anything of the sort. When he was in reality acting under ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... "It is this levity," continued he, addressing a group of butterflies who had gradually assembled in the air, attracted by the conversation, "it is this fatal levity that constrains me to despair wholly of the future of you insects. That you ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... of losing the Lady Margaret, or the hope of gaining her. The missionary had refrained from questioning the young knight, nor did Gilbert reveal any secret to his venerable friend. Whether he might have recovered his former levity can scarcely be answered, but the death of Rodolph seemed to have extinguished it forever. So great a change had this last incident wrought in him, that it was not only evident to Father Omehr and Sir Albert, but all who knew him were struck with his altered ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... difference with their preference for the open prairie country in contrast to the endless and sombre forests where were the homes of the Iroquois. Their history abounds in great men, whose ambitious plans were foiled by the levity of their allies and their want of persistence. They it was who under King Philip fought the Puritan fathers; who at the instigation of Pontiac doomed to death every white trespasser on their soil; who led by ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... God—that it consisted simply of a chronic case of the snuffles. Jones has simply gone to the opposite extreme and transformed the Temple of the Deity into a variety dive. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; but Jones indulges in the levity of the buffoon while consigning millions of human beings to Hell. Alas, that so few preachers understand the pity which ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... entitled me to a heavier article. I must have seen that lady at least four times in the twenty years following. She never alluded to my salvation in any way. People occasionally ask me to act as godfather to their children with a levity which convinces me that they have not the faintest notion that it involves anything more than calling the helpless child George Bernard without regard to the possibility that it may grow up in the liveliest ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... interesting, those with whom he came in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his sufficiency. It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... were a half-dozen or more choice spirits—George Augustus Sala, Henry Sampson, Tom Hood the younger, Captain Mayne Reid, and others less known to fame. I am sorry to say my somber news affected these sinners in a way that was shocking. Their levity was a thing to shudder at. As Sir Boyle Roche might have said, it grated harshly upon an ear that had a dubious check in its pocket. Having uttered their hilarious minds by word of mouth all they knew how, these hardy and impenitent offenders set about writing "appropriate ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... spot where the curtains had fallen together behind the departing figure of Stephen Langdon; then he turned his eyes toward Beatrice, to discover that she was convulsed with laughter. But whether her demeanor and her quick surrender to expressions of levity had been excited by the departure of the banker, or by Duncan's attitude of dismay, the young man could not have told. He laughed with her, for there was a distinctly ludicrous side to the situation, following, ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... with a threat of punishment, conveyed by pinching his own ear, slapping his own face, kicking out his foot, and similar indications of chastisement, with a knowing nod at the offender. But if he saw an approach to levity over the word of God, his manner wholly changed. Tears filled his eyes, he looked all grief and entreaty, and the words, "God see," were earnestly spelled on his uplifted hands. No one could stand the appeal; and very rarely had he occasion ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... at the early age of thirty-three. Though having the most beautiful wife in England, his affections wandered, and tales are told of his attachment to that siren singer, Mrs. Billington. The Duchess's manner had somewhat of levity and much coquetry in it, though she could not be classed with that company who have not time to be virtuous. At the time of her lord's death, she was living with her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, in Berkeley Square, London, having been partially estranged from her husband. ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... there is nothing in my past life for which I have cause to blush." He looked fixedly at Mademoiselle Marguerite, as if he were striving to read her inmost soul; and in a solemn tone, that contrasted strangely with his usual levity of manner, he added: "If the name I bear should ever be compromised, my prospects would be blighted forever! The only course left for me would be to tender my resignation. I will leave nothing undone ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... never heard—and he became very doleful. This meant no good he was sure. There was something in it which looked like a warning. But when I remarked that surely another figure of a woman could be procured I found myself being soundly rated for my levity. The old boy flushed pink under his clear tan as if I had proposed something improper. One could replace masts, I was told, or a lost rudder—any working part of a ship; but where was the use of sticking up a new figurehead? What satisfaction? How could one care for it? It was easy to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... cannot excuse," said Mrs. Bartley Simson, "is the tone of levity in which she answered Mr. MacTavish when he met her on the way from the station. It is possible that she had some good reason for coming on that particular train. I am not one of those who hold that ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... steps, gave a suppressed chuckle, which I think no one heard but myself. I was vexed with his levity, but, nevertheless, gave him a warning nudge with my toe, in payment for the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... with a grave and weighty slowness upon him, contrasting strongly with his daughter's levity: 'I beg the favour of your explaining—ha—what it is you mean.' 'I mean, papa,' said Fanny, 'that if Mrs General should happen to have any matrimonial projects of her own, I dare say they are quite enough to occupy her spare time. And that if she has not, so much ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... St. Croix's story loses in my telling. The simple expressions, the grace of the narrative, were its charm: and these, alas! I can neither translate nor imitate, no more than I can convey the strange mixture of deep feeling and levity, shrewdness and simplicity, that constituted the ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... its genuine value, therefore, an abstract conception may be divided into three classes—physical, moral, and intellectual. Whiteness and colours in general, levity and weight, hardness, sound, and the like qualities, are all abstract types which belong to the physical class. Goodness, virtue, love, hatred, and anger must be assigned to the moral class; and equality, identity, number, and quantity, etc., ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... loss to interpret this singular levity. He had never truly believed that reading of Nancy's character by means of which he tried to persuade himself that his marriage was an unmitigated calamity, and a final parting between them the best thing that could happen. His memories of her, and the letters she had written ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... more ambition than comported with her mental calibre or her force of character; she had taken it into her head to govern, by turns promoting and overthrowing the ministers, herself proffering advice to the king, sometimes to good purpose, but still more often with a levity as fatal as ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... just so. Count Rumford hence infers that no alteration of temperature can take place in a fluid, without an internal motion of its particles, and as this motion is produced only by the comparative levity of the heated particles, heat cannot be ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... and kingdom, and a fourth with thanksgiving,—neither part of the quartette being for an instant confused with the other. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his hour-glass, may say,—but that he will not anticipate the levity to be born in a later century with Mather Byles,—"Now, my hearers, we will take ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... matters, a tone of levity at any time seems to infect these pages, I cry ye mercy; for nothing was further from my intention; yet, though acknowledging this, I maintain that it is a vain thing to look on religion as on a winter night, full of terror, and darkness, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... ardor was considerably damped by this event, and when next it revived our choice could not be accused of levity. Our aim was infinitely more ambitious, and our task more arduous. Racine's "Andromaque" was selected for our next essay in acting, and was, I suppose, pronounced unobjectionable by the higher authorities. Here, however, our mainstay and support, Mademoiselle Descuilles, interposed a very ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... molasses candy has been here, but when she leaves she does not carry the confusion with her which she causes.... Deborah requested eight of us larger girls to remain last evening, for the purpose of reproving us. The cause was the levity and mirthfulness which were displayed on Third day of the week previous. She compared us to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his master with a kiss. She said there were those amongst us who would surely have to suffer deep affliction for not attending to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... very seriously," thought Mr. Cruger. Mrs. Cruger glanced at her husband and noticed a rather injured expression appear upon his face. Evidently he was not highly pleased at Helene's levity. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... scraps of rhetorical logic were but as straws in the storm of anti-warlike passion that was then raging. Nor did Defoe succeed in turning the elections by addressing "to the good people of England" his Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man, or by protesting as a freeholder against the levity of making the strife between the new and the old East India Companies a testing question, when the very existence of the kingdom was at stake. His pamphlets were widely distributed, but he might as soon ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the little creatures the seeds of all those virtues and qualities which they will one day find so indispensable; when I behold in the obstinate all the future firmness and constancy of a noble character; in the capricious, that levity and gaiety of temper which will carry them lightly over the dangers and troubles of life, their whole nature simple and unpolluted,—then I call to mind the golden words of the Great Teacher of mankind, "Unless ye become like one of these!" And now, my friend, these children, who are our ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... remarks, while evidently spoken in a spirit of levity, aroused strenuous opposition above. There was an immediate movement of the object straddling the limb. Then two arms waved vigorously, and ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... be a place eminently adapted to study and education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure, and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... there; nor was her anxiety to make both ends meet by any means equal to her sister's in keeping up appearances, and avoiding detrimentals. The two sisters met occasionally, but Lady Delmar was so compassionate and patronising that Annaple's spirit recoiled in off-hand levity and rattle, and neither regretted the occupation that prevented them from ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tendency to levity, which she knew to be unbefitting the occasion, and likely to defeat its significance. She said: "I am sure, Mrs. Chump, we are very much attached to you as Mrs. Chump; but after a certain period of life, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... equally zealous in using the most persuasive arguments with the chiefs to take care of our garden, and rear and propagate the plants when we were gone; to all which they lent a deaf ear, and treated the subject with much levity, saying, they might be very good to us, but that they were already plentifully supplied with every thing they wished or wanted, and had not occasion for more. But on the Lieutenant's representing, that if, on our return, they ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... hopping-sallows open, and yield their palms before other sallows, and when they are blown (which is about the exit of May, or sometimes June) the palms (or olesikarpoi frugiperdae, as Homer terms them for their extream levity) are four inches long, and full of a fine lanuginous cotton. Of this sort, there is a salix near Dorking in Surrey, in which the julus bears a thick cottonous substance. A poor body might in an hour's space, gather a pound ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... sounded his strongest bass. "Pardon me. I cannot accept such a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I must deplore. No matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end we have the spectacle of a struggle between men where lying decides the survival of the fittest. Better, far better, if it ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... of great abilities, with a strong desire for power under the guise of levity and good-nature. He was far-reaching, bold, and of concentrated energy; but his real character was not fully comprehended until the Crimean war, although he was conspicuous in politics for forty years. His frank utterances, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... sufficiently to begin melting ice at a depth of 3 inches in less than about two hours. As, therefore, the heated water cannot impart its heat to its neighboring particles, it remains expanded and rises by its levity, while colder portions come to be heated in turn, thus setting up currents ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... for six months shared with Winny Dymond a room off Wandsworth High Street, so that, as he put it, he might feel that she was near him; with the desolating result that they weren't by any means, no, not by a long chalk, so near. For Maudie, out of levity or sheer exuberant kindness of the heart, had persuaded Winny Dymond to join the Polytechnic. In her proud beauty and in her affianced state she could afford to be exuberantly kind. And Booty in his ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... regretfully forced into materialism by some mental confusion or obscurity, but he revels in it, and invites all to taste and see how gracious a philosophy it is. There is an ill-concealed levity and coarseness in his handling ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... Skelton, for want of something better to say, and with a callous sort of levity; "perhaps you hold the idea—some people do—that murdered men can't rest in their graves until their murderers have expiated ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... tendency to social exhilaration, which prevail, will incline to such a fault in many cases. An English reserve inclines to moroseness, and Scotch perseverance to obstinacy; so this aerial French nature may become levity and insincerity; but then it is neither the sullen Englishman, the dogged Scotchman, nor the shallow Frenchman that we are to take as the national ideal. In each country we are to take the very best as ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... graves of those we have known? And whom can we call up, of our early companions, who has not left us to regret his loss? This, indeed, may be one of the salutary effects of grief; inasmuch as it prepares us to loose ourselves also without repugnance. Doctor Freeman's instances of female levity cured by grief, are certainly to the point, and constitute an item of credit in the account we examine. I was much mortified by the loss of the Doctor's visit, by my absence from home. To have shown how much I feel ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... and art of flying as his privilege and his peculiarly enviable happiness; such a person, who believes that on the slightest impulse, he can actualize all sorts of curves and angles, who knows the sensation of a certain divine levity, an "upwards" without effort or constraint, a "downwards" without descending or lowering—without TROUBLE!—how could the man with such dream-experiences and dream-habits fail to find "happiness" differently coloured and defined, even in his waking hours! How could ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... conic sections next), so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature. Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good things so successfully as Mrs. ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... with the charm of fine manners, and under his easy nonchalance there lurked more earnest and patriotic conviction than he ever cared to admit. 'I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings,' said Sydney Smith, 'and to brush aside the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honesty and diligence.' Ridiculous rumours filled the air during the earliest years of her Majesty's reign concerning the supposed undue influence which Lord Melbourne exerted at Court. The more advanced ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... discovery of conspiracies it is impossible so to guard as that either through treachery, want of caution, or levity, the secret shall not be found out, whenever more than three or four persons are privy to it. And whenever more than one conspirator is arrested, the plot is certain to be detected, because no two ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... whether he had to stand on his head to put things right somewhat. We suggested he had used his bread-board for a raft, and from there comfortably had stoked his grate; and we did our best to conceal our admiration under the wit of fine irony. He affirmed not to know anything about it, rebuked our levity, declared himself, with solemn animation, to have been the object of a special mercy for the saving of our unholy lives. Fundamentally he was right, no doubt; but he need not have been so offensively positive about ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of adapting words to these airs, is by no means easy. The poet who would follow the various sentiments which they express, must feel and understand that rapid fluctuation of spirits, that unaccountable mixture of gloom and levity which composes the character of my countrymen, and has deeply tinged their music. Even in their liveliest strains we find some melancholy note inhere, some minor third or flat seventh which throws its shade as it ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... We are never so apt to lose our sense of proportion as when we consider those beloved writers whom we hold to be humourists because they have made us laugh. It may be conceded that, as a people, we have an abiding and somewhat disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth when it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and we habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration, accepting, perhaps unconsciously, Hazlitt's verdict: "Lying is a species of wit, and shows spirit and invention." ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... two reverend friends of mine—able, eminent, and renowned professors of biology, bibliology, ethnology, and sockdology—who at once pronounced it ancient Cush and proceeded to translate it; one remarking with a levity which but indifferently became his calling, as I thought, that the exceeding toughness of the yarn no doubt accounted for the difficulty of sawing into it—in which view his collaborator, to my ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... their natural growth or furthering the reader's knowledge of them, Rosa passes through the swift transformations which a "Hey, presto!" is quite sufficient to announce. In the early part of the book she is an embodiment of silliness, levity and selfishness—in the latter part she is reason, self-devotion and passionate love personified. As for Dr. Staines, there is no need of any apotheosis in his case: as the hero of the book he must perforce be that renowned prestidigitateur whom Mr. Reade long since presented ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... is doubtless very unjust to the clergy to suppose that they turn the barrel of sermons to save themselves the trouble of writing new ones. Nothing but the levity of the pews could be guilty of such a suspicion. The preacher knows that one squeezing does not take all the juice out of an orange; and how much jucier a fruit is a good sermon! Moreover, the pews are so pachydermatous, so rhinoceros-skinned, that nothing ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... it; and the more so, because there are other analogies in favour of so long a duration of the prophetic office, which was sometimes entered upon even in early youth. The inscription has the same authority in its favour as every other part of the book; and it is hardly possible to understand the levity with which it has, in recent times, been pretty generally designated as spurious, or, at least, suspicious. [Pg 173] It is altogether impossible to sever it from the other parts of the book. There must certainly ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... be said in extenuation of our nymph-like damsel's apparent subjection to levity—a declension which, in the sequel and in certain quarters, went neither unnoticed nor undeplored. But to labour this point is to forestall history. Immediately her change of attitude announced its existence innocently enough. For the sacramental meal once consumed, and courteous parting ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... of what is undeniably true in this book; there is also, I venture to think, a good deal that is undeniably untrue. I do not think it is unfair to say that in some respects Chesterton allows his cleverness to lead him to certain errors of judgment, and a certain levity in dealing with matters that are to a number of people so sacred that to reinterpret them is almost ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... friends, might I not, after the declarations I have made (and Heaven knows that they were made in the sincerity of my heart), in the judgment of the impartial world and of posterity, be chargeable with levity and inconsistency, if not with rashness and ambition? Nay, farther, would there not be some apparent foundation for the two former charges? Now, justice to myself and tranquillity of conscience require that I should act a part, if not above imputation, at least capable of vindication. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... sapling well fed from the old tree. Taller than his father by many inches, broader, heavier, and larger in all ways, with the slow eyes of a seal and something of a seal's face as well. But with his father's sprawling legs and his father's levity and irony of manner and of voice—a Manxman disguised out of all recognition of race, and apeing the fashionable follies of the ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... an article in the Quarterly Review, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. The bishop declared that the work tended "toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been "guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception of the essay by Dr. Temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and scepticisms." He was especially bitter against Prof. Jowett's dictum, "Interpret the Scripture like any other book"; he ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... witty, and sometimes rather free, and I felt somewhat disturbed at the idea of entering a house so serious as yours—a house peopled by dignified lawyers and young ladies. But I was so fond of your brother, I found him so full of novelty, so gay, so wittily sarcastic and discerning, under his assumed levity, that not only did I go everywhere with him, but I followed him to the extent of meeting you. And I never cease to thank him for it. Do you remember when I entered the drawing-room where you and your family were sitting, ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... story; where she hath ever since led a disconsolate life, and deserves, perhaps, pity for her misfortunes, more than our censure for a behaviour to which the artifices of her aunt very probably contributed, and to which very young women are often rendered too liable by that blameable levity in the ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... half-savage nature acknowledged—to creep into his soul, to master it; but he felt no hope, cherished no scheme while the young lord lived. With the death of her betrothed, Fanny was free; then he began to hope,—not yet to scheme. Accidentally he encountered Peacock. Partly from the levity that accompanied a false good-nature that was constitutional with him, partly from a vague idea that the man might be useful, Vivian established his quondam associate in the service of Trevanion. Peacock soon gained the secret of Vivian's love for Fanny, and dazzled by the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... must appear such as he would persuade others to be, and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life. I believe it might be of great service to let our public orators know, that an unnatural gravity, or an unbecoming levity in their behaviour out of the pulpit, will take very much from the force of their eloquence in it. Excuse another scrap of Latin; it is from one of the Fathers: I think it will appear a just observation to all, as it may have authority with some; Qui autem docent tantum, nec faciunt, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... amongst the female servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother was mistaken. Women of humble station, less than any other class, have any tendency to sympathize with boldness that manifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion. Perhaps a natural instinct tells them that levity of that nature will pretty surely extend itself contagiously to other modes of conscientious obligation; at any rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regarding infidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... touching melody, the overflowings of a light and innocent heart. And scarcely less melodious was the joyous and gleeful laugh, in which she ever and anon gave way to the promptings of a lively and playful imagination. Let it not, however, be thought that all this apparent levity of manner was the result of an unthinking or uncalculating mind, or that it was in her case, as it frequently is in others, associated with qualities which exclude the finer and better feelings of female nature. It was ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... had stepped within the great, silent, shadow-filled cathedral. The lights and sunshine of the out-of-doors made the contrast more impressive and in the wonder of the moment the girls drew closer together. Gone was all their levity now, buried deep beneath an overwhelming reverence for this great architectural masterpiece—exalted resting place of ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... been imputed to the emperor Nero. The spirit of Madame de Pompadour's saying breathes the same selfish levity; and it amounts to the same thing. But it merits remark that the words of Metternich were of an entirely distinct signification. They did not imply that he cared only for himself and the affairs of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... the race-balls in my company, whenever the coast was clear of the rascally bailiffs who beset me. This gave the lie to any of those maligners who said I wished to make a prisoner of my wife. The fact is, that, knowing her levity, and seeing the insane dislike to me and mine which had now begun to supersede what, perhaps, had been an equally insane fondness for me, I was bound to be on my guard that she should not give me the slip. Had she left me, I ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with an honest frankness which the novelty of her situation excused she confirmed the truth of what he had before heard, and, addressing him by the name of FAIR MONTAGUE (love can sweeten a sour name), she begged him not to impute her easy yielding to levity or an unworthy mind, but that he must lay the fault of it (if it were a fault) upon the accident of the night which had so strangely discovered her thoughts. And she added, that though her behavior ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... gives a map of the Bakhatla country with its rivers and mountains, and is quite at home in the geographical details, crowning his description with some sentimental and half-ludicrous lines of poetry. No reasonable man will fancy that in the wailings of his heart there was any levity or want of sincerity. What we are about to copy merits careful consideration: first, as evincing the depth and tenderness of his love for these black savages; next, as showing that it was pre-eminently Christian love, intensified by his vivid view of the eternal world, and belief ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... was no use his having entered the diplomatic career if he weren't able to bear himself as if this interesting generalisation had no particular message for him. He did Mrs. Bonnycastle moreover the justice to believe that she wouldn't have approached the question with such levity if she had supposed she should make him wince. The whole thing was, like everything else, but for her to laugh at, and the betrayal moreover of a good intention. "I see, I see—the self-made girl has of course always had a past. Yes, and the young man in the store—from ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... all levity depart from his face, giving way to a look of sternness and command. Although he was engaged in a joke, the subordinate must see no sign of fooling in his countenance. He said a sharp word to a blue-jacket, who nimbly sprang to ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... Tradition be true of that Extravagance which forc'd him both to quit his Country and Way of Living; to wit, his being engag'd, with a Knot of young Deer-stealers, to rob the Park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford: the Enterprize favours so much of Youth and Levity, we may reasonably suppose it was before he could write full Man. Besides, considering he has left us six and thirty Plays, at least, avow'd to be genuine; and considering too, that he had retir'd ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... be forgiven for this, perhaps misplaced, levity, we proceed to Act III., in which we find that, fortune having shuffled the cards, and the judge and jury cut them, Mr. Titmouse turns up possessor of Yatton and ten thousand a-year; while Aubrey, quite at the bottom of the pack, is in a state of destitution. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... future course. The recent wreck had dismayed even the voyageurs, and the fate of their popular comrade, Clappine, one of the most adroit and experienced of their fraternity, had struck sorrow to their hearts, for with all their levity, these thoughtless beings have great ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... down and watch," said his sister, in a tone intended to quell any undue levity on her ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... Buddy. She allows she don't have enough to keep her doin' in the new—" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty dollars ye've gone ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... the World. Assure Mrs Checkley of our kind Regards for her. I hope she will enjoy a better State of Health than she has had in time past. You have now devolvd upon you the weighty Cares of a Parent; you will perhaps find it difficult "to train up the Child in the way it should go" in an Age of Levity Folly and Vice. Doubtless you will consider your self more interrested than ever in the Struggles of your Country for Liberty, as you hope your Infant will outlive you, and share in the Event. Your native Town which I am perswaded is dear ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... self, indeed. That delicate-minded, intellectual old maid, Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on what she called Mary's levity of behaviour with men, but more especially with honest Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the old lady was sitting darning (she was always darning; she used to begin darning the things before they were a week out of the draper's shop), would ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... demanded Sylvia, with a frown. She was feeling tremendously grown-up in these days, and did not permit overmuch levity on the part of ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... to feminine diffidence. She treated the opportunity with the seriousness expected, for though the Institute was not proof against light and diverting contributions, as the whistling performance indicated, levity of spirit would have been ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... that better class residential quarter, where the houses, four in number, of Mrs. John Day, of Billy Unguin, of Allan Dy, and the local blacksmith were located, an extremely decorous cortege emerged. Here there was neither bustle nor levity. These were the chief folk of Rocky Springs, and their position, as examples to their brethren of lesser degree, weighed heavily ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... plays were indeed "plays for Puritans." All his criticisms quiver with a refined and almost tortured contempt for the indulgencies of ballet and burlesque, for the tights and the double entente. He can endure lawlessness but not levity. He is not repelled by the divorces and the adulteries as he is by the "splits." And he has always been foremost among the fierce modern critics who ask indignantly, "Why do you object to a thing full of sincere ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... when Polycarp died, it was at its height. Everywhere was it supported by the reigning emperors. 'The political and truly Roman instincts of Trajan were not more friendly to it than the archaeological tastes, the cosmopolitan interests, and the theological levity of Hadrian. From their immediate successors, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, it received even more solid and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... what they saw them do without the devil taking any notice of them or talking to them. Others, who lay but small stress on all that, do what they heard said was the custom in the days of their antiquity, let happen what would. But they do it with so little earnestness that it appears to be levity rather than religion. With the same fervor they follow any other rule, so that they always remain without any law, unless it be where the energy and incessant constancy of the missionaries has made them forget their ancient ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... who admired him for what he thought his independence and magnanimity. "He was," says Burns, "the only man I ever knew who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of lawless love with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship did me ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. Everything seems out of nature in this chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions succeed, and sometimes mix with each other ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... [Footnote: The heavy taxes laid to meet the expenses of the wars created great discontent, which during the struggle with Spain led to a series of conspiracies or revolts against the government, known as the Wars of the Fronde (1648-1652). "Notwithstanding its peculiar character of levity and burlesque, the Fronde must be regarded as a memorable struggle of the aristocracy, supported by the judicial and municipal bodies, to control the despotism of the crown.... It failed;... nor was any farther effort made to resuscitate the dormant liberties ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... springs from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... any considerable amount. My inquiries have been unremitted in this particular. Were, however, a landing of the enemy to take place, I cannot say what might happen to a people dissatisfied with their situation and naturally of great levity; the new doctrines would give activity. We are preparing for whatever may happen and no labour or exertion ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... doorway as if contemplating an armed invasion, thought better of it, and took his uniform away into the sunlight of the open square, where it was joined by other uniforms, and became by contrast a miracle of unbraced levity. Paul stood the Polar silence for a few moments, until one of the readers arose and, taking his book—a Murray—in his hand, walked slowly across the room to a companion, mutely pointed to a passage in the book, remained silent until the other had dumbly perused it, and then walked back again ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... possible, still more beneficially by protecting virtue, discountenancing vice, and purifying a court whose shameless profligacy had for many generations been the scandal of Christendom. It is probable, indeed, that much of her early levity was prompted by a desire to drive from her mind disappointments and mortifications of which few suspected the existence, but which were only the more keenly felt because she was compelled to keep them to herself; but it is certain that during the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... because he suspected a certain levity and thinness in his genius that Campion was so contemptuous of his English verse. His songs he dismissed as "superfluous blossoms of his deeper studies." It is as though he thought, like Bacon, that anything written for immortality should ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... To tax one with levity. Tener a menos hablar a uno: Not to deign to speak to one. Tenerse de pie: To stand on foot. Tenir de (en) negro: To dye black. Tomar a pecho: To take to heart. Tomar hacia la derecha: To turn to the right. Trabajar a destajo: To do work by the job. Trabarse de palabras: To quarrel. ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... to walk up and down as he went on with a marked access of warmth. "But even the understanding we arrived at," he pursued, "I regret to say that my wife did n't see fit to adhere to in good faith. She treated it with what I must call levity." He faced round on his guest suddenly. "I mentioned a cat to you," ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... three big children; but such was the buoyancy of her Irish nature and the irrepressible cheeriness of her heart, that she was in good truth the youngest person in the house, so that her own daughters were sometimes quite shocked at her levity of behaviour, and treated her with gentle, motherly restraint. She was tall and thin, like her husband, and he, at least, considered her every whit as beautiful as she had been a score of years before. Her hair was dark and curly; she had deep-set grey eyes, and a pretty ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... philandering with an Indian "grass widow" was, in any case, an extremely unlovely passage in Sterne's life. On the best and most charitable view of it, the flirtation, pursued in the way it was, and to the lengths to which it was carried, must be held to convict the elderly lover of the most deplorable levity, vanity, indiscretion, and sickly sentimentalism. It was, to say the least of it, most unbecoming in a man of Sterne's age and profession; and when it is added that Yorick's attentions to Eliza were paid in so open a fashion as to be brought by gossip to the ears of his neglected wife, then living ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... sympathy was very obstinate, but justice set the responsibility down to her account, not to his; analysing her temperament, without excusing it, she found a spirit of adventure and experiment—or should she say of restlessness and levity?—which Marchmont did not minister to nor yet assuage. The only pleasure that lay in this discovery came from the fact that it was so opposed to the general idea about her. For it was her lot to be exalted into a type of the splendid calm patrician maiden. In that sort of vein her friends ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... "He might ride the saddle of mutton!" she said, with a levity that, under the circumstances, did her credit. "You'd better take the harness off, and you'll have to get her to Recess ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... have any conscientious scruples on Fanny's account; she had driven him to Elise with her frivolity, her eternal smiling. Of course he knew that she cared for him, that he had power over her, that there had never been and never would be any other man for Fanny; but he couldn't go on with Fanny's levity for ever. He wanted something more; something sound and solid; something that Elise gave him and no other woman. Any man would ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... in an historical and geographical account by a native prince, as an extensive country, containing woods and rivers, and fields fit for cultivation; but now desolated, as the inhabitants say, by the "misconduct of the king, who, having increased in levity and licentiousness to such a frightful degree, as even to marry his own daughter, God Almighty caused Saboon, the prince of Wa-da-i, to march against him, and destroy him, laying waste, at the same time, all his country, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... began again, and the spirits knocked at the letter 'O.' I was puzzled, but waited for the end. The next letter knocked down was 'E.' I laughed, and remarked that the spirits were going to make a poet of me. Admonished for my levity, I was informed that the frame of mind proper for the occasion ought to have been superinduced by a perusal of the Bible immediately before the seance. The spelling, however, went on, and sure enough I came out a poet. But matters ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the spurious kinds arising from anger, or ignorance of the peril, or levity, or a reckless confidence. These are all very easy. His distinction was that he knew all the danger to himself, was anxious to save pain to others, was buoyed up by no rash hope that the world was to be permanently bettered ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... intellect. It is to minds of this stamp—so truly the antipodes of all that is youthful, spontaneous, and child-like, (in a word: frivolous,) that we must look for those solid works which, in the Millennium that is coming, will perfectly supplant what may be termed, without levity, the "Cock and Bull" system of juvenile entertainment. Worldly people may consider this stuff graceful and touching, sweet and loveable; but it is nevertheless clearly mischievous, else pious and proper persons wouldn't have said so, ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... generally appreciated up to his deserts. His figure, to begin with, was almost ludicrously small. Then, in his anxiety to get rid of the Scottish accent, he had contracted an elocution intended to be English, but which struck every one as most affected and offensive. His manners were marked by levity, and his conversation to many seemed flippant. His literary musings also acted unfavourably on the solicitors, the leading patrons of young counsellors. Reduced by dearth of business almost to despair, he had at one time serious thoughts of flinging ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... once banished the glum looks which Grosvenor's ill- timed levity of demeanour had called up, and restored matters to the favourable condition that had been momentarily endangered. A brief consultation was held, and at its conclusion Malachi, the chief Elder, hurried away to seek an audience of the Queen with the object of endeavouring to secure her consent to ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... inquired where she went or what she did, but late or early always received her with the same quiet welcome, the same sly, good-humoured smile. I firmly believe that with all her levity, whatever scandal might say, she was a good wife to him. He trusted her implicitly; and I think she felt his confidence deserved to be respected. Such was not the opinion of the world, I am well aware; but we all know the charitable construction it is so eager to put on a fair face with a loud ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Life of the Chinese," ii. p. 203) asserts that "there are most indubitable reasons for believing that infanticide is tolerated by the Government, and that the subject is treated with indifference and with shocking levity by the mass." ... But Bishop Moule "has good reason to conclude that the prevalence of the crime has been largely exaggerated." (Journal, ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... was not a mere bias, but a constant, unflagging sentiment, an everyday manifestation. She was as warm in the cause of religion on one day as upon another, in small things as in great—as zealous in the repression of all unbecoming and ungodly levity, as in the eradication of positive vice. Life was too solemn a thing with her to admit of thoughtless amusements—it was entirely a state of probation, not to be enjoyed in itself, or for itself, but purgatorial, remedial, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
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