"Frivolous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ear, A sentence of warning,—it might be of fear: "Don't stand in a draught, if you value your life." (Nothing more,—such advice might be given your wife Or your sweetheart, in times of bronchitis and cough, Without mystery, romance, or frivolous scoff.) But hark to the music: the dance has begun. The closely-draped windows wide open are flung; The notes of the piccolo, joyous and light, Like bubbles burst forth on the warm summer night. Round about go the dancers; ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... inherited that name—an old gentleman with the reputation of a fool, who, to spite his nephew, had married a girl belonging to a family of ill-repute. The old gentleman was either very magnanimous or very foolish. The girl must necessarily be frivolous and forward. Every one was ready to believe the worst ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... this affair commenced. He is a showy, handsome man, with a good deal of superficial instruction, and exceedingly vain of his personal advantages. I am quite sure that, having allowed him to be a fine-looking man, he would forgive me for saying that his character is frivolous, and that his principles, both moral and political, are governed entirely by that which best suits ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... well forward, that every body might see him, apparently examining his visiting-book. At times he would pull up at some distinguished person's door, where were two or three carriages before him, and getting out, would go in to the porter to ask some frivolous question. Another ruse was, to hammer at some titled mansion, and inquire for another titled person, by mistake. This occupied the morning; after which Doctor Plausible returned home. During the first month ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... clean and their vision was clear. Their view was not cut off or circumscribed by the frivolous and ofttimes vicious amusements that stand as a wall around life's outlook in the town. Their view and their hope were as wide as the wilderness and the sea, rugged and stern but mighty and majestic and limitless—God's unspoiled works—and God was ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... Captain Bessus, I come about a frivolous matter, caus'd by as idle a report: you know you were ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... not venture on so strong a measure; but a digest of the petition was sent to the Upper House, that the bishop might have an opportunity of reply. The Lords refused to receive or consider the case: they replied that it was too "frivolous an affair" for so grave an assembly, and that they could not discuss it. [Lords' Journals, Vol. I. p. 66.] A deputation of the Commons then waited privately upon the bishop, and being of course anxious to ascertain whether Philips had given a true version of what had passed, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... Promenade had already passed away. The high invisible powers who ruled the world of pleasure were moving at the behest of powers still higher than themselves; and the cloak-room attendants, in their frivolous tiny aprons, shared murmuringly behind plush portieres in the woe of the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... frivolous, for you suppose the life of a queen is one clear summer's day, to be devoted to nothing but singing and laughing. You are short-sighted, for you do not see that the flowers of this summer's day in which you rejoice, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... frivolous garrulity. Every craft in the East has a jargon of its own and the goldsmith (Zargar) is famed for speaking a language made unintelligible by the constant insertion of a letter or letters not belonging to the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... invested. 3d, For allowing cards and dice in his house during the Christmas holidays, and even playing himself, contrary to the dignity becoming the governor. 4th, For employing as his clerk one who was not a freeman of the city, nor qualified according to the forms of law. Some charges equally frivolous were made against Monjaraz, the deputy-governor, not worth mentioning; but these processes were not insisted in, and no fines ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... these mysteries were in the commencement, they afterwards lapsed into all the immoralities of pagan worship. But to give such a remote, and even such a noble, origin to the frivolous deism of modern Masonry is about as absurd as to say that men were at one time ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... may add that some little light can apparently be thrown on the origin of these differences, chiefly through sexual selection of a particular kind, but without here entering on copious details my reasoning would appear frivolous. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... of an universal organism, the assumption of a reciprocal influence of terrestrial bodies could not be foreign, nor did this cease to correspond with a higher view of nature, until astrologers overstepped the limits of human knowledge with frivolous ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... pardon, Pastor, but I have not observed in your son the slightest inclination toward leading a frivolous life. He is simply attracted to literature, and he isn't the first clergyman's son—remember merely Lessing and Herder—who has taken the road of literary study and creative art. Very likely be has manuscript plays in his desk even ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of what had taken place at Spithead, our delegates were sent to explain matters. On getting on board they were disgusted to find that fresh demands had been made on the Government by the crews of the North Sea fleet, of a nature so frivolous that they were not at all likely to be granted. Our men, it appeared, expressed their views in a very unguarded way, and in no courteous language. This enraged Parker—the unhappy man who had assumed the command of the fleet—and ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... To imprison Illowski meant danger; to kill him would deify him, for in the blood of martyrs blossom the seeds of mighty religions. Far better if he go to Paris—Paris, the cradle and the tomb of illusions. There this restless demagogue might find his dreams stilled in the scarlet negations and frivolous philosophies of the town; thus the germ-plasm of a new religion, of a new race, perhaps of a new world, be drowned in the drowsy green ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... frivolous," remarked Mr. Cruger to his wife. "I shall take pains to remind her that we Crugers marry quietly ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... opening now, and in some ways it is particularly suited to woman with her great patience and quiet manners. Once interested in the lives in the "upper stories," you will find them most absorbing; novels will pall upon you, fancy work seem frivolous, society duties a bore, and talk—loud enough to interfere with ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... glad, cradled on yonder high boughs; Thee, too, peaceably azure, in infinite measure extending Round the dusky-hued mount, over the forest so green,— Round about me, who now from my chamber's confinement escaping, And from vain frivolous talk, gladly seek refuge with thee. Through me to quicken me runs the balsamic stream of thy breezes, While the energetical light freshens the gaze as it thirsts. Bright o'er the blooming meadow the changeable colors are gleaming, But the strife, full of charms, in its ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... which proves abundantly that animals have no souls. The employment of a lover is that of a mountebank, of a soldier, of a quack, of a buffoon, of a prince, of a ninny, of a king, of an idler, of a monk, of a dupe, of a blackguard, of a liar, of a braggart, of a sycophant, of a numskull, of a frivolous fool, of a blockhead, of a know-nothing, of a knave. An employment from which Jesus abstained, in imitation of whom folks of great understanding likewise disdain it; it is a vocation in which a man of worth is required to spend above all things, his time, his life, his blood, his best ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... hey-day. Between them, they had dealt and were dealing—from curiously different sides and in as curiously different manners—the death-blow to the notion that the novel was an inferior if not actually discreditable kind, suitable for weak intellects only, and likely to weaken strong ones, frivolous when not positively immoral, giving a distaste for serious reading, implying in the writer an inability to do anything more serious, and generally presenting a ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... were opposed to secession and, if let alone, would force their leaders to reconsider their action. He might have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them alone and they'll come home"; it would have been like him and in tune with a frivolous side of his nature. He was quite as irresponsible when he complacently assured the North that the trouble would all blow over within ninety days. He also believed that any display of force would convert these hypothetical ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... then and there confer Without suspicion—then, even then, I longed, and was resolved to speak; But on my lips they died again, 250 The accents tremulous and weak, Until one hour.—There is a game, A frivolous and foolish play, Wherewith we while away the day; It is—I have forgot the name— And we to this, it seems, were set, By some strange chance, which I forget: I recked not if I won or lost, It was enough for me to be So near to hear, and oh! to see 260 The being ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the fisherman, in the old gay, frivolous tone, which I heard now for the first time during this conversation; "I can make her tenfold and abundant reparation—ah, you don't know—I say you don't understand these people. It's a disagreeable subject; let it go! But I'm very rich, you know," with an ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... dangerous consequence (as secretly striking at some established Doctrine, or laudable Practice of the Church of England, or indeed of the whole Catholic Church of Christ) or else of no consequence at all, but utterly frivolous and vain. But such Alterations as were tendered to us (by what persons, under what pretences, or to what purpose soever so tendered) as seemed to us in any degree requisite or expedient, we have willingly, and of our own accord assented unto: not enforced so ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... He sees the presumption and weakness, the vain transitory character of that phase of modern thought which Bishop Colenso represents, and confidently expects its speedy disappearance. But it does try the earnest, while it makes shipwreck of the frivolous, and exercises the faith and humility of all. Even a very poor scholar can see that his reasoning is most inconclusive, and his reading superficial ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at Smith helplessly. It sounded like a riddle, but it was obvious that Mr. Jarvis's motive in putting the question was not frivolous. He really ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... Calvinton said, had been spoiled by his life in New York. It had made him too gay, light-hearted, almost frivolous. It was possible that he might know a good deal about medicine, though doubtless that had been exaggerated; but it was certain that his temperament needed chastening before he could win the kind of confidence that Calvinton had given to the venerable Dr. Coffin, whose face was like a monument, and ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... which possible danger to the child might strive to enter in. This was what Rosamund had evidently made up her mind to do, was beginning to do. Dion compared her with many of the woman of London who have children and who, nevertheless, continue to lead haphazard, frivolous, utterly thoughtless lives, caring apparently little more for the moral welfare of their children than for the moral welfare of their Pekinese. Mrs. Clarke had a hatred of "things with wings growing out of their shoulders." Rosamund would probably never ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... I told you your son was well beloved in Padua. Do you hear, sir? To leave frivolous circumstances, I pray you tell Signior Lucentio that his father is come from Pisa, and is here at the door to ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Roger was thinking as she sat there on a low stool, one foot curled under her, that she looked absurdly young, hardly more than a little girl. He believed she could be frivolous, too, gay without being silly, as he put it. So few girls could ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... boy, the example of his elders teaches him to look upon frivolous distinction as a great end and aim of life, whilst that of his comrades leads him to neglect all study as dry, to despise all application as "slow." At home he hears some good-looking, grown-up cousin, or agreeable ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... his loyalty cried out that he was wronging her. Juliet—his Juliet of the steadfast eyes and low, sincere voice—was surely incapable of double dealing! Whatever her life in the past had been, however frivolous, however artificial, it had been given to him—perhaps to him alone—to know her as she was. A great wave of self-reproach went over him. How had ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... notable affairs. Everybody who counted for anything with the hosts were there, and after a little preliminary formality and awkwardness the function grew to animation. The shipping folk of Cardiff know champagne less as a beverage than as a symbol, and there was plenty of it. Serious men became frivolous; David Davis made a speech in Welsh; Minnie glowed and blossomed; Arthur was everybody's friend. The old Captain, seated at the bottom of the table with an iron-clad matron on one side and a bored reporter on the other, watched him with a groan. The man ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... listened with interest, and something of awe, as her beautiful cousin discoursed of braids and puffs, and told of the extraordinary effect that might sometimes be produced by a single small curl set at the proper curve of the neck. It sounded pretty frivolous, to be sure, but then, Rita looked so earnest and so lovely, and it was so new and delightful to be addressed by her as an equal,—and a beloved equal at that; Peggy's little head was in evident danger of being turned by the new ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... remarkable novel, and while it illustrates once more the author's unusual versatility, it also shows that he has not been tempted into careless writing by the vogue of his earlier books. . . . There is nothing weak or small or frivolous in the story. The author deals with tremendous passions working at the height of their energy. His characters are stern, rugged, determined men and women, governed by powerful prejudices and iron conventions, types of a military people, in whom the sense of ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... powerful fiction at once arrested attention, and claimed for its author the eminence as a novelist which his previous performances had secured for him as a writer of tales. Its whole atmosphere and the qualities of its characters demanded for a creditable success very unusual capacities. The frivolous costume and brisk action of the story of fashionable life are easily depicted by the practised sketcher, but a work like The Scarlet Letter comes slowly upon the canvas, where passions are commingled and overlaid with the deliberate ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... subject for private contemplation, for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, in which, all alike and all together, the serious and the frivolous could rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken as a matter of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun on the ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... back of the plane. Some of them, I supposed, connected with instruments, weather and otherwise, hidden up in the skeletal structure of the cracking plant. And there were signs of occupancy, a young woman's occupancy—clothes scattered around in a frivolous way, and some small objects of art, and a slightly more than life-size head in clay that I guessed the occupant must have been sculpting. I didn't give that last more than the most fleeting look, strictly unintentional to begin with, because although it wasn't finished I could tell whose head ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... almost unknown in Spain, and that it must necessarily be a difficult task to induce a people like the Spaniards, who read very little, to purchase a work like the New Testament, which, though of paramount importance to the soul, affords but slight prospect of amusement to the frivolous and carnally minded. I hoped that the present was the dawning of better and more enlightened times, and rejoiced in the idea that Testaments, though but few in number, were being sold in unfortunate benighted Spain, from Madrid to the furthermost parts of Galicia, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... a great place like Sydney and think there was not a soul who cared whether I was alive or dead, so I determined to go into what society was to be had and see if I could not pick up a friend or two among the multitude of the empty and frivolous. I am happy to say that I have had more success than I hoped for or deserved, and then as now, two or three houses where I can go and feel myself at home at all times. But my "home" in Sydney is the house of my good friend ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... garden of Le Notre (from which Niblo's garden has been copied in our own Empire city of New York), and playing at leap-frog with their uncle, the Count of Provence; gaudy courtiers, emlazoned with orders, glittered in the groves, and murmured frivolous talk in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of Miss Manning, who was a very frivolous, worldly minded woman, they were led, (tho' perhaps unintentionally) to regard all religious subjects as dry and tedious, and to be avoided as much as possible. Isabel determined to try and remedy this evil by the exercise of patient gentleness, and by striving to ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... in those public meetings that the Roman court puts on all its splendor. The very hall has a grave and imposing air about it that inspires serious thoughts in serious minds, and checks, for a moment, the frivolous vivacity of lighter ones. You cannot look at the walls without feeling a solemn sadness steal over you, as you think of the thousands of your fellow-creatures who have gazed on them with the same freshness ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... People generally do enjoy life when they are young. Hunting is all very well as an amusement, but to have no other object in life seems—what shall we say?—just a little frivolous, don't you think?" ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... course a man of great force of character and— and expression," she added. "I remember thinking at the time that his eloquent frankness of phrase might perhaps seem even severe to frivolous creatures like myself. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you'd view it differently and change your mind. The Boy Scouts have done so much good, and now this Camp Fire Girl is going to be such an improvement over the ordinary girl. She's going to revolutionize young women and make of them useful members of society—not frivolous butterflies—and it will be carried into the poorer classes and teach girls who have never had a chance, so that they may become good cooks and housekeepers and love beautiful things. And their costume is so pretty and sensible. ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... was anxious for my time to come to tell how good Jesus was to me. When I met my neighbors I would be heavy- hearted, because they talked of servants, house cleaning, the new fashions, and these seemed so vain, so frivolous. I liked to direct their minds to speak of the Scriptures, and of the ways of doing work for God. I soon found out I was not welcome, I was looked upon as an intruder, was often avoided, I could see the frowns and glances of impatience ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... said a frivolous voice, "and suggest hospitality too—and Buckler's hospitality is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... five students in all, who, week by week, melted and grew "beautifully less," until at last but one was left. This solitary individual, however, seemed to concentrate in his own person all the diligence, application, and punctuality of his frivolous fellows. At the conclusion of the last lecture of the course the professor approached him and praised him for these admirable qualities, and proceeded to inquire of him, "What is your name, my young friend?" ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... there was more than that. She was certainly a little superstitious, in a mocking, eighteenth-century sort of way, as Madame du Deffand might have been. She constantly said, and still more frequently wrote, "D.V." after any project, even of the most frivolous kind. The idea was that one should be polite all round, in case of any contingency. When she was in the Riviera, she was much interested to hear that the Prince of Monaco had built and endowed a handsome church at Monte Carlo. "Very clever of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... minute, Count," I interposed. "Accepting your illustration, surely we have one unquestionable virtue in England which is wanting in China. The Chinese authorities kill thousands of innocent people on the most frivolous pretexts. We in England are free from all guilt of that kind—we commit no such dreadful crime—we abhor reckless bloodshed with all ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... and his faithful Sancho Weller. I am sure that a man who, a hundred years hence should sit down to write the history of our time, would do wrong to put that great contemporary history of "Pickwick" aside as a frivolous work. It contains true character under false names; and, like "Roderick Random," an inferior work, and "Tom Jones" (one that is immeasurably superior), gives us a better idea of the state and ways of the people than one could gather from any ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fares in this respect the same as the husband of a frivolous woman: all others know more of what concerns him most ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... ankles. The officers, too, had many popular resorts, such as Therese's Bar and the Bodega for cocktails, the Novelty for dinner, and a host of entertainments to follow, ranging from the opera, which was first-class, for the serious, through the "Alcazar" and "Palais de Crystal" for the frivolous, to the picture palaces for ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... offer of advice as a personal insult, whereas in adversity they know not where to turn, but beg and pray for counsel from every passer-by. (4) No plan is then too futile, too absurd, or too fatuous for their adoption; the most frivolous causes will raise them to hope, or plunge them into despair - if anything happens during their fright which reminds them of some past good or ill, they think it portends a happy or unhappy issue, and therefore (though it may have proved abortive a hundred times before) style it ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... object; it made everything but itself irrelevant and tasteless. It remained, in a word, a conscious watchful presence, active on its own side, for ever to be reckoned with, in face of which the effort at detachment was scarcely less futile than frivolous. Kate had come to him; it was only once—and this not from any failure of their need, but from such impossibilities, for bravery alike and for subtlety, as there was at the last no blinking; yet she had ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... one was as happy as it was possible to be. The country had grown so accustomed to being frivolous that it never became serious again; and the King never made another law, because the people were so fond of Lady Whimsical that they did everything she told them, and therefore no laws were needed. The result of all this happiness was that nobody in the kingdom ever grew old; and the Lady ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... gay and frivolous, even Blake, who chattered sotto voce with Britton, that excellent rascal spending most of his time leaning against the spare tires in order to catch what she was saying for his benefit. All efforts to draw me into the general ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... prosperity which it brought to the individual; but if the comforts of men minister to the degradation of man, if Democracy levels down and does not level up, if our era of peace and plenty leaves us so feeble and frivolous, so childish, so impatient, so deaf to all that calls to us from the past, and entreats us in the future, that we faint and fail under the stress of our one short effort, then indeed is our Democracy our shame and curse. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... was fascination for the frivolous and deep appeal to the intellectual and spiritual. The Temple of the Occult had evidently been designed to appeal to both types. I wondered how, like Lucifer, it had fallen. The prime requisite, I could guess already, however, was—money. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... there was no committee set, or would sit; for both Mr. Reynolds and Sir Philip Stapleton, and my other friends, had fully acquainted Baron Rigby with the business, and desired him not to call upon me until they appeared; for the matter and charge intended against me was very frivolous, and only presented by a cholerick person to please a company of clowns, meaning the committee of Leicester. Baron Rigby said, if it were so he would not meddle with the matter, but exceedingly desired to see me. Not long after he met Sir Arthur, and acquainting him what friends appeared for ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... lessons, this once frivolous man, now an earnest inquirer, learned where the improvement must begin; and from the day that he confessed his sins against God and man, the disease abated. Some time afterwards he acknowledged one sin he had hitherto concealed, and then he speedily ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... only looking over my things; I was as idly and as frivolously employed as the most idle and most frivolous woman living. I went through my dresses, and my linen. What could be more innocent? Children go through ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... that they were frivolous, but like most other lads in the army, they had grown into the habit of teasing one another, which was often a relief to teaser ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually frivolous. ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... abuse The simple suter, and wish him to chuse His master, being one of great regard 885 In court, to compas anie sute not hard, In case his paines were recompenst with reason: So would he worke the silly man by treason To buy his masters frivolous good will, That had not power to doo him good or ill. 890 So pitifull a thing is suters state! Most miserable man, whom wicked fate Hath brought to court, to sue for had-ywist, That few have found, and manie one hath mist! Full little knowest thou that hast not tride, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... captured from the Germans after fifty-four days' fighting. It was taken literally from house to house, the French engineers sapping and mining the Germans out of every stronghold, destroying every single house, incidentally forever upsetting my own one-time idea that the French are a frivolous people. So determined were they to retake this town that they fought in the streets with artillery at a distance of twenty-one feet, probably the shortest range artillery duel in ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... playwright can be scoffed at as an alarmist who ventures to fear that a censorship of the drama will, in practice, be foolish. At the thought of such frivolous and fatuous blue-pencillings of his next drama (which is to be his master-piece, by the way) our playwright becomes profoundly depressed and every time he goes out to dinner or finds himself with a small, cornered audience at the club, ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Ah, my child, you will be better satisfied with your decision, as you grow older, and see how frivolous are the demands of fashion, and how little happiness can be obtained by lavish display. And I think this little adventure, though a severe lesson, will be far more profitable than the possession of that "love ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... always misapprehended. Even Bernie misapprehends me; he thinks I'm frivolous and light-minded, but I'm not. I'm really ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... intervention kill the plot? What light is thrown on the characters by scene i. of this act? Do you think it is intended to be shown that Gonzalo is prosy and tiresome, although good, or only that the lower and more frivolous characters find him so? Which is the likelier, that Shakespeare intended the dialogue about Gonzalo's ideal commonwealth to be a satire upon it, or favorable to Utopian schemes? Which comes out the better at last ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... computation drawn—not from the creation, not from the flood, not from Nabonassar, or ab urbe condita, not from the Hegira—but from themselves, from their own day of publication, as constituting the one great era in the history of man by the side of which all other eras were frivolous and impertinent? Thus, in a work of his given to me in 1812 and probably published in that year, I find him incidentally recording of himself that he was at that time 'arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace of mind almost independent ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... make her escape from the drawing-room she saw that Peter Dillon and Mrs. Wilson had both lost their frivolous manner and were deep ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... as if she had outgrown herself. The pathos which she had often expressed in singing solemn church music took possession of her, and left no room in her soul for any frivolous emotion. Proud of the lofty passion which drew her with such mighty power to her lover's arms, she cast aside the remorse, the anxiety, the deep sense of wrong which had overpowered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to be found of suspension and excommunication for the simple crime of offering shelter to an excommunicated neighbour; and thus offence begot offence, guilt spread like a contagion through the influence of natural humanity, and a single refusal of obedience to a frivolous citation might involve entire families in ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... particulars have, in one way or another, a bearing on his divine mission and work as the Son of God. The apocryphal gospels on the contrary, as, for example, the Gospel of the Infancy, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, abound in frivolous stories relating to our Lord's infancy and later life, which have no connection with the great ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... halfway up. The trunks of the quaking aspens shone silvery in the early sunlight, and their leaves were shimmering gold. And the stately pines kept whispering and murmuring; it almost seemed as if they were chiding the quaking aspens for being frivolous. On the other side of the road lay the river, bordered by willows and grassy flats. There were many small lakes, and the ducks and geese were noisily enjoying themselves among the rushes and water-grasses. Beyond the river rose the ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... hard battle of life, and the anxieties and sorrows that a family seldom fails to bring, will naturally give an increased depth and seriousness to character. There are, however, natures which, though they may be tainted by no grave vice, are so incurably frivolous that even this education will fail to influence them. As Emerson says, 'A fly is as untameable ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... in the sand." The priest ignored the other frivolous comment. "They never found him anywhere, and a slave from the Navahu people was made a sacrifice in his stead. The strange girl was a Te-hua medicine maid or magic learner of things from the wise men of Ah-ko. Her prayers were very many, and very long, and she made a shrine for prayer on the ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... one of these dieaway, attitudinizing, frivolous, married coquettes of the modern drawing-room, her heaven an opera box on the night of Meyerbeer's "Robert le Diable," the ten commandments an inconvenience, taking arsenic to improve the complexion, and her appearance a confused result ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... Revolution fell, and with the ascendant of Napoleon another school followed. War, public business, the general objects of the active faculties, and strong ambition of a people with Europe at its feet, partially superseded alike the frivolous taste of the monarchy, and the rabid ferocities of revolutionary authorship. The Bulletins of the "Grande Armee" told a daily tale of romance, to which the brains of a Parisian scribbler could find no rival, and men with the sound of falling thrones echoing in their ears, forgot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... way," he admitted, "this is disappointing. You are right. I have never felt the call of those other things. When I was a young man, I was frivolous simply when I felt inclined to turn from the big things of life for purposes of relaxation. When an alliance was suggested to me, I was content to accept it, but thank heavens I have been Oriental enough to ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mother—now I ask you, can you accept this heart, such as wasted years, and griefs too fondly nursed, have left it? Can you be, at least, my comforter? Can you aid me to regard life as a duty, and recover those aspirations which once soared from the paltry and miserable confines of our frivolous daily being? Helen, here I ask you, can you be all this, and under the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... a frivolous, indolent person, who had brought him a handsome dot, and left him the pretty black-eyed Mabel, never held equal position with the first. It was observed, however, with some surprise, that under the sway of the latter he was more punctilious and regular in religious observances than before,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... such disguises and representations as were witty and sudden; the more ridiculous, and to him the more pleasant. This vain and frivolous humour might seem unworthy and unbecoming in so great a prince, whose profundity of wisdom had well entitled him to the appellation of "our English Solomon," did we not call to remembrance that the greatest ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... said the terrors of death were upon him; but in a few days forgot all I had done for him, consummated his own disgrace, and raised my character on the ruins of his own. On some frivolous occasion he threw a basin of dirty water in my face as I passed through the steerage; this was too good an opportunity to gratify my darling passion. I had long watched for an occasion to quarrel with him; but as he had been ill during our passage from Gibraltar to Malta, I could not justify any ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... far from repressing piracy, he encouraged it; and a fleet of one hundred and twenty prahus, with his tacit consent, actually put to sea. When a crew of English seamen were enslaved and carried to Bruni, under the most frivolous pretexts he refused to intercede with the Sultan for these unfortunate men. And so this strange friendship cooled. It was no slight proof either of his courage or his humanity to despatch at this very time, as Mr. Brooke did, his yacht to Bruni, to attempt something in behalf of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... after being put off once on a very frivolous pretext, came to trial at the Montgomery circuit of the Supreme Court, held at Fonda, in November, 1841. When it was called Weed was not present, nor was counsel for him. Cooper consented to have the case go over for ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... too much afraid of the lady of the Willows to express so frivolous a desire in her august hearing; but Elisabeth was never afraid of anybody, and that, perhaps, was one of the reasons why her severe kinswoman ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... looking up from the ottoman at Miss Janet's feet, where she was seated; and then bursting into tears. "Oh! thoughtless and frivolous as I am, I shall never forget him. If you knew how I have wept and suffered, you would not wonder I longed for any change that ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Mr. Crofton would have thought of you; he is a very serious young man," said cousin Harriet, still ashamed of her laughter. "Martha will get the cherries for you, or one of the men. I should not like to have Mr. Crofton think you were frivolous, a young lady of your opportunities"—but Helena had escaped through the hall and out at the garden door at the mention of Martha's name. Miss Harriet Pyne sighed anxiously, and then smiled, in spite of ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "Sir," cried the last, emphatically, as I was turning over the leaves of the catalogue,—"sir, you are the only man I have met, in five-and-forty years that I have spent in these researches, who is worthy to be my customer. How—where, in this frivolous age, could you have acquired a knowledge so profound? And this august fraternity, whose doctrines, hinted at by the earliest philosophers, are still a mystery to the latest; tell me if there really exists upon the earth any ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Times" a Capuchin monk, wandering apart from the dancers in consonance with the austere proclaiming of his garb, was studying the frivolous gamboling of a school of fountain gold-fish in the conservatory. He looked up, scowling, to take a ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... Rabbi Joshua twelve questions; three related to matters of wisdom, three to matters of legend, three were frivolous, and three were of a worldly nature—viz, how to grow wise, how to become rich, and how to ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... their children began and continued to worry. Not occupied with work that demands our unceasing energy, we find ourselves occupied with trifles, worrying over our health, our investments, our luxuries, our lap-dogs and our frivolous occupations. Imagine the old-time pioneers of the forest, plain, prairie and desert worrying about sitting in a draught, or taking cold if they got wet, or wondering whether they could eat what would be set before them at the next meal. They were out in the open, compelled to take whatever ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... Josephine was very fond of finery and display,' observed Monsieur de Lessay, between two sips of coffee. 'I do not blame her for it; she had good qualities, though rather frivolous in character. She was a Tascher, and she conferred a great honour on Bonaparte by marrying him. To say a Tascher does not, of course, mean a great deal; but to say a Bonaparte simply means ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... hat jammed down anyhow, she wore this morning the most bewitching and frivolous of boudoir caps upon her bright head, and a shimmery, lacy empire something, that clung caressingly about her, and fell back becomingly from her round white arms. Miles and miles away from the Candy Wagon was Margaret Elizabeth, who had so recently ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... when they come to school and they will like to read them there. A child's keenest interest is in the things he knows. Later, perhaps in the high school or the grammar grades, he will be interested again in learning that the rhymes are not wholly frivolous and that there may be reasons why these rhymes should have survived for centuries in practically unchanged forms. Some of the facts that may be brought out at various times ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... "How frivolous you are, father! We must get them away with as little fuss as possible. I arranged with Mr Jeffreys that he would bring Mr Forrester here ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... seemed to her that her dearest wish was about to come true. Two easier opponents, she thought, could not possibly have been selected: Lily Andrews would never be elected—she was too fat and plain; and Evelyn Hopkins—light, frivolous, self-centered girl that she was—was decidedly unpopular. The outcome of the business seemed assured in Ruth's favor; she was so certain of her own election, that she did not even bother to vote for herself, but instead cast ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... had been occupied; at home he says one or two words to her about his water-color sketches, or remains silent and thoughtful, pondering over what he has just heard in Parliament. Our poor ladies are abandoned to the Society of those frivolous men who, for want of intellect, have no ambition, and of course no employment (dandies)." (Stendhal, "Rome, Naples, and Florence," 377. A narrative by ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... character—fearlessness, self-dependence, and swift decision. The Germans, before the war, used to speak with some contempt, perhaps with more than they felt, of the English love of sport, which they liked to think was frivolous and unworthy of a serious nation. Their forethought and organization, which was intensely, almost maniacally, serious, was defeated by what they despised; and the love of sport, or, to give it its noblest name, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... saw it. No cultured person cares to be made a center of public interest, unless on grounds of respect. To come walking in in this fashion, buoyed balloon-like by the body of this loved one, and before the members of a frivolous, gaping house party—ah, even I could imagine the mingled horror and derision, the hysterics among the women, perhaps. Nor would it stop there. Rumors—and heaven only knows what distortions such rumors might undergo, ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... votes on the admissibility of testimony were governed by, the usual rules prevailing in the courts, but it was deemed by others that every question not manifestly frivolous, or not pertinent, should be permitted answer without objection, regardless of such rules—that the Senate sitting for the trial of an Impeachment of the President of the United States—the occasion a great State Trial—should ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... rest—the virtuous patriot Meletus. I am an evil-doer, a corrupter of youth, who pays no reverence to the gods who the city reveres, but to strange daemons. Not I, but Meletus is the evil-doer, who rashly makes accusations so frivolous, pretending much concern for matters about which he has never troubled himself. Answer me, Meletus. You think it of the utmost importance that our youth should be ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the thought which led them to take Darwin's Origin of Species on their first Southern Journey. Such is the object of your sledging book, but you often want the book which you read for half an hour before you go to sleep at Winter Quarters to take you into the frivolous fripperies of modern social life which you may not know and may never wish to know, but which it is often pleasant to read about, and never so much so as when its charms are so remote as to ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... them in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplishment (as some persons have been led to imagine), the trifling amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours: it has been the study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in lines of ten syllables with ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... permit herself to think, that these were not persons who would have commended themselves to Mr. Trevor as objects of his bounty. Mr. Churchill, with his large family, was very different. But to endow two frivolous and expensive women with a portion of his fortune was a thing to which he never would have consented. With a certain shiver she recognised this; and then she made a rush past the objection and turned her back upon ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... frivolous for Cardington," he said, taking off his cap and mopping his brow. "I'm glad to meet you, sir. This is a spooky place, the ideal place for a man to hang himself in. I spent four years in the Hall and never came up here before. I knew and loved your ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... mountains. Even the wintry sky borrowed, for an hour, the spectral aspect of the earth, and the familiar shapes of cloud, as of hill, stood out with all the majesty of uncovered laws—stripped of the mere frivolous effect of light or shade. It was like the first day—or ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... So she was a mere frivolous, inconsequential butterfly, after all. Why try longer to lend the Helping Hand—why not cut things short and be satisfied with the Social Triumph and let it go at that? "I was meaning to ask you to dine with me some evening next week at a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... insinuation which was a calumny, all the echoes of the party of the Importants took it up, and Madame de Montbazon herself found pleasure in repeating it during several following days, so that the incident became the entertainment of the Court. A frivolous curiosity has very faithfully preserved the text of the two letters thus ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... death. Fly, therefore, from idleness, as the certain parent both of guilt and of ruin. And under idleness I include, not mere inaction only, but all that circle of trifling occupations in which too many saunter away their youth; perpetually engaged in frivolous society or public amusements, in the labours of dress or the ostentation of their persons. Is this the foundation which you lay for future usefulness and esteem? By such accomplishments do you hope to recommend yourselves to the thinking part of the world, and to answer the expectations of your ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... contempt for her. Now he knew why he had been chilled by her presence. She belonged to that order of prigs which will not read novels, preferring instead to read "serious" books. Such a woman would treat "Tom Jones" as a frivolous book, less illuminating than some tedious biography or history book. She might even deny that it had any illumination at all.... He could not prevent a sneer from his retort to her statement that she seldom ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... the stuff of tragedy, and others as the stuff of comedy, and of having found a greater cruelty in the sorrows which light natures undergo, as unfit and disproportionate for them. Disaster, I tacitly decided, was the fit lot of serious natures; when it befell the frivolous it was more than they ought to have been made to bear; it was not of their quality. Then by the mental zigzagging which all thinking is I thought of myself and whether I was of this make or that. If it was more ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... twofold. Then came the question of gallantry and love affairs. Under this head, also, Bragelonne had much more to hear than to tell. He listened attentively and fancied that he discovered through three or four rather frivolous adventures, that the count, like himself, had a secret to hide in the depths of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... known to him for all that: but so it is with these men, who assume an acquaintance on nothing, whose embraces we are obliged to endure when we meet them, and who are so familiar with us as to thou and thee us. He began by asking me a hundred frivolous questions, raising his voice higher than the actors. Everyone was cursing him; and in order to check him I said, "I should like to listen to the play." "Hast thou not seen it, Marquis? Oh, on my soul, I think it very funny, and I am no fool in these matters. I know ...
— The Bores • Moliere
... "Oh, you're still frivolous and thoughtless, both of you," asserted Greg, with a shake of his bushy head. "You can't seem to realize the fact that in these degenerate days there are no longer opportunities for men to rise from the lower ranks to positions of competence, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... town had taken on a lighter, more frivolous aspect. Prettily dressed women were mincing along the pavements, their parasols bobbing up and down like variegated mushrooms. They bowed, smiled coquettishly at the men. The men swept off their hats and smirked. All of them were lovers after the manner of lovers in the South. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... conversation eased me completely: frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener. A card of mine lay on the table; this being perceived, brought my name under discussion. Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... am told. "A great change has taken place. The motor car has destroyed the art of reading, and, as for the good old books—nobody reads them any more." On the other hand, I hear, "People do read, but they read only frivolous books which follow one another like the hot-cakes made at noon in the windows of Mr. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... shopman to me, if she would put her hand to it, is now only in my way. She walks all the morning sauntering about the shop with her arms through her pocket-holes or stands gaping at the door-sill, and looking at every person that passes by. She is continually asking me a thousand frivolous questions about every customer that comes in and goes out; and all the while that I am entering any thing in my day-book, she is lolling over the counter, and staring at it, as if I was only scribbling or drawing figures for her amusement. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... previously agreed that after I addressed to him some particular frivolous remark, he should seize the first occasion near a shrubbery to go on more ahead, and alarm his mamma by turning round a corner. Our stratagem succeeded. She immediately hastened to follow them. As soon as she had turned the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... only means of prompt and effectual extrication, are pointed out with irresistible vehemence and shrewd intelligence. The author declares, and truly enough, that there are resources in this land, did we only draw on them, which would close this war with the closing of this year. The futile and frivolous objections which have been urged against this great scheme of warfare for the present, and of national progress in future, are most ably refuted; while through all runs the same vein of satire, wit, scholarship and manly sincerity. It is, in a word, a good book, and one fully suited ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Smith's private hotel, wields the same blighting influence on our spirits, accustomed to the soft solicitations of the negro waiter or the comfortable indifference of the free-born American. We never indulge in ordinary democratic or frivolous conversation when Dawson is serving us at dinner. We 'talk up' to him so far as we are able, and before we utter any remark we inquire mentally whether he is likely to think it good form. Accordingly, I maintain throughout dinner a lofty height of aristocratic ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of suitable views and pretensions: but nothing to my mind can be more miserable than the situation of a poor girl, who, after spending not only the interest, but the solid capital of her small fortune in dress, and frivolous extravagance, fails in her matrimonial expectations (as many do merely from not beginning to speculate in time). She finds herself at five or six-and-thirty a burden to her friends, destitute of the means of rendering herself independent (for the girls I ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... correspondence concerning this small work, and many reviews of it—some of them nearly as long as the book itself—have been printed. But scarcely any of the comment has been adverse. Some people have objected to a frivolity of tone; but as the tone is not, in my opinion, at all frivolous, this objection did not impress me; and had no weightier reproach been put forward I might almost have been persuaded that the volume was flawless! A more serious stricture has, however, been offered—not in the press, but by sundry obviously sincere correspondents—and ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... of life, rich and poor, wise and frivolous, selfish and unselfish—are refusing to bear children. The superficial observer rails against this, because he sees only the effect. He sees women living in fashionable hotels, if they are rich enough to afford it; if they are poor they establish a cheap imitation of this phase of semi-communal ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad
... constitution than from the discipline of the place,—unless perchance, from missing you here, I do less justice to the place for keeping you away. Meanwhile you yourself rightly remark that there are too many there whose occupation it is to spoil divine and human things alike by their frivolous quibblings, that they may not seem to be doing absolutely nothing for those many endowments by which they are supported so much to the public detriment. All this you will understand better for yourself. Those ancient annals of the Chinese from the Flood downwards ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... advantageous condition for the progress of reason, but especially when it is the result of the exhaustion of peoples and their satiety of fighting. Frivolous ideas disappear; political bodies, like organisms, have the care of self-preservation impressed upon them by pain; the human mind, hitherto exercised on agreeable objects, falls back with more energy on useful objects; a more successful appeal can ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... leaving nothing but negation till the end of time. It is worse than a tomb. A monstrous stillness! Even the footfalls of the searchers can not disturb it, for they are separate and superficial. In its presence they are almost frivolous. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... not afraid of thunder and lightning," growled the professor. "My classes are not to be broken up on any frivolous pretences. Mr. Lowington assured me I had full powers over all during study hours; and I tell you to be seated, and ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... effected. But it did not, and probably nothing would have been gained if it had. Franklin truly said to Hartley: "All acts that suppose your future government of the colonies can be no longer significant;" and he described the acts as "two frivolous bills, which the present ministry, in their consternation, have thought fit to propose, with a view to support their public credit a little longer at home, and to amuse and divide, if possible, our people ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... "You are frivolous, Mr. Lennox," he said, "and this is not a time for light talk. I don't know what you mean, but it seems to me you don't appreciate the dire nature of your peril. I liked you and your comrades when I met you in Quebec and I do not wish to see you perish at the ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... days, and which, eventually, made its author the very prince of hoaxsters, if such a term can be admitted, was that of Berners Street. Never, perhaps, was so much trouble expended, or so much attention devoted, to so frivolous an object. In Berners Street there lived an elderly lady, who, for no reason that can be ascertained, had excited the animosity of the young Theodore Hook, who was then just of age. Six weeks were ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... constitutional argument, in which he proved that a state had absolute control of the subject, and could fix the term of all its officers for life if it so preferred, and that congress had no right to interfere. Many other equally frivolous points were made against our admission, which were debated until the eleventh day of May, 1858, when the federal doors were opened and Minnesota became a state. The act admitting the state cut down the congressional representation to two. The three gentlemen who had been elected to these ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... "Well, it was rather frivolous," he says. "As indeed I was myself—a happy, carefree youth! The boys called me Foolish—Foolish Fink!" He throws out his chest like he just realized how he had been honored at ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... catechumen be found at the table, she shall not be suffered to join with the full believers in their prayers, nor shall the latter sit with her to eat the morsel'' (fiomon, used specially of the sanctified bread). "Nor shall they sit with frivolous and joking women, if they can help it, for they are sanctified to God, and their food and drink have been hallowed by the prayers and holy words used over them. . . . If a rich woman sits down with them ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as German girls may be expected to behave when they are frivolous and wayward. She squandered her fortune, she avenged the first Mme. Brunner by making her husband as miserable a man as you could find in the compass of the free city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the millionaires, it is said, are ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... nonsense, her countenance rapidly assumed an almost death-like expression. She would sit and gaze and breathe, but it was plain that there was not a single idea stirring in her mind. She could not even be called good; goodness is not an attribute of birds. In consequence either of her frivolous youth or of the air of Paris, which she had breathed from her childhood's days, there was rooted in her a kind of universal scepticism, which usually found expression in the words, "Tout ca c'est des betises." She spoke an incorrect, but purely Parisian jargon, did not talk scandal, ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... terrible. The "confusions of a wasted youth" strew thick confusions of a dreary age. Where youth garners up only such power as beauty or strength may bestow, where youth is but the revel of physical or frivolous delight, where youth aspires only with paltry and ignoble ambitions, where youth presses the wine of life into the cup of variety, there indeed Age comes, a thrice unwelcome guest. Put him off. Thrust him back. Weep for the early days: you have found no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dancing, as it did to the outraged Puritans. In fact, the story of Morton and Merrymount is one of the few glistening threads in the somber weaving of those early days. But the New England soil was not prepared at that time to support any such exotic, and Myles Standish was sent to disperse the frivolous band, and to order Morton back to England, which he did, after a scrimmage which Morton relates with great vivacity and doubtful veracity ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... where all the senses are flattered, is now opened to win an Epictetus from his hut. The art of multiplying the enjoyments of society is discovered in the morning lounge, the evening dinner, and the midnight coterie. In frivolous fatigues, and vigils without meditation, perish the unvalued hours which, true genius knows, are always too brief for art, and too rare to catch its inspirations. Hence so many of our contemporaries, whose ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... talking of getting up something to pass the time;" says he, regarding Mrs. Chichester with a frowning brow—a contortion that fills that frivolous young woman's breast ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... that city's face. New York would be discontented and eager; London would be stolidly glum and healthy, with a little surliness; Berlin would be supercilious, overbearing; Rome would be gravely resentful; and so on; but Paris would be gay, incredulous, frivolous, pretty and impudent. The reality may be gone, or may have changed, but the look is in her face still when the light of a May morning shines ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... into my mind you'd find that it would. I'm full of fretful anger against him for half-a-dozen little frivolous things. Didn't he throw his cigar on the path? Didn't he lie in bed on Sunday instead of going ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... great prophet, one of the first after the twenty-two Buddhas. He is greater than any one of all the Dalai-Lamas, for he constitutes part of the spirituality of our Lord. It is he who has instructed you; he who brought back into the bosom of God the frivolous and wicked souls; he who made you worthy of the beneficence of the Creator, who has ordained that each being should know good and evil. His name and his acts have been chronicled in our sacred writings, and ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... undoubtedly is, as the critic to whom I alluded has said, "through the simple aptness of his terms and his contempt for frivolous ornamentation." ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... on the one hand and their re-forming on the other affirm the presence of water-vapour in the Martian atmosphere, of whatever else that air consists" (p. 162). Yet absolutely the only proof he gives that the caps are frozen water is the almost frivolous colour-argument above ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Lydia tragically, "that is frivolous! These are grave matters, and I thought—oh, I thought certainly—that I was deserving your good opinion in this charitable work if ever I deserved such a ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... why, I am truly ignorant," writes Washington to Mr. Speaker Robinson, "but my strongest representations of matters relative to the frontiers are disregarded as idle and frivolous; my propositions and measures as partial and selfish; and all my sincerest endeavors for the service of my country are perverted to the worst purposes. My orders are dark and uncertain; to-day ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... moved radiant and luminous in the azure of her mind. But time crept on and a woman's penetrating comprehension came to her, and the dreams of youth shifted off into the realities of maturity, and she saw that many who came to pray were careless, frivolous people, and that the vergers did their work without more reverence than did the stablemen who cared for her father's horses. And once when twilight was veiling the choir, and all the worshipers had departed, she saw a curate strike a match on the cloister-wall, to light his pipe, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... at least, Simeon was free from economic responsibilities, free from social cares and intrusion. Bores with sad stories of unappreciated lives and fond hopes unrealized, never broke in upon his peace. He was not pressed for time. No frivolous dame of tarnished fame sought to share with him his perilous perch. The people on a slow schedule, ten minutes late, never irritated his temper. His correspondence never got ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the count, "let us both lay aside the mask we have assumed. You no more deceive me with that false calmness than I impose upon you with my frivolous solicitude. You can understand, can you not, that to have acted as I have done, to have broken that glass, to have intruded on the solitude of a friend—you can understand that, to have done all this, I must have been actuated by real uneasiness, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not clear to all. I can bear witness with what eagerness you have already attacked the subject. But I confess I like to expound my Hebdomads to myself, and would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing. Wherefore do not you take objection to the obscurity that waits on brevity; for obscurity is the sure treasure-house of secret doctrine and has the further advantage that it speaks a language understood ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... age she perceived the inequalities between the sexes, and refused to submit to the injustice of an unfair distribution of human qualities. After due deliberation, she suddenly announced to her friends: "I notice that the most frivolous things are charged up to the account of women, and that men have reserved to themselves the right to all the essential qualities; from this moment I will be a man." From that time—she was twenty years of age—until ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... any importance from the front. It is a fete day, but there are few holiday makers. The presence of the Prussians at the gates, and the sound of the cannon, have at last sobered this frivolous people. Frenchmen, indeed, cannot live without exaggeration, and for the last twenty-four hours they have taken to walking about as if they were guests at their own funerals. It is hardly in their line to play the justum et tenacem of Horace. Always acting, they are now acting the part ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the way towards a development without dangers. There is no doubt the arbitrary suppression of the sexual instinct must be acknowledged as the source of nervous injury while indulgence may lead to disease and misery. But in any case frivolous habits and easy divorce contribute much to the unbalanced life which ruins the unstable individual. Not less difficult and not less connected with the mental hygiene is the alcohol problem. For normal adult men mild doses have through their power to relieve the inhibitions undeniable ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... it with extraordinary equanimity, not appearing to attach any great importance to the matter, and attributing the defeat of his troops to the inferiority of their weapons. He observed that the excuse given by the Russians, that the Afghans intended to attack them, was a frivolous pretext, and declared all that his men had done was very properly to make preparations ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... although I did not say anything about it to you, Mrs. Dr. dear, I could not help thinking that it was a great pity they picked that particular evening. It was truly blood-curdling to hear them sitting there in that abode of the dead, shouting that frivolous song at ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... generation, and are in more miseries than any other people under heaven, are not seen, but by comparatively a handful of the American people? There are indeed, more ways to kill a dog besides choaking it to death with butter. Further. The Spartans or Lacedemonians, had some frivolous pretext for enslaving the Helots, for they (Helots) while being free inhabitants of Sparta, stirred up an intestine commotion, and were by the Spartans subdued, and made prisoners of war. Consequently they and their children were condemned ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet |
