"Frivolity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the war cloud burst, covering all that part of the world, I was stopping for some weeks at the Hotel Nassau. It stands in the main street, opposite the park gate leading to the Casino. All the world went to Wiesbaden to be amused. However fashionable frivolity and vice may be elsewhere, here it was strictly de rigueur, and to pretend to decency and sobriety would be to stamp one's self a heathen and barbarian, all unversed in the glorious flower-wreathed Primrose Way of ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... ordinary brother will say that the occupations of the lodges are anything better than frivolous, very frivolous indeed. The distribution of charity needs to be no secret, and it is but a small part of the employment of the meeting. Mere frivolity can never occupy men come to age, and accordingly we see in every part of Europe where Freemasonry has been established the lodges have become seed-beds of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... are more serious, not only about life, but about books. No type or kind of woman is capable of that lounging, defensive stupidity which is the basis of the tired giant attitude, and all through the early 'nineties, during which the respectable frivolity of Great Britain left its most enduring marks upon our literature, there was a rebel undertow of earnest and aggressive writing and reading, supported chiefly by women and supplied very largely by women, which gave the lie to the prevailing trivial estimate of fiction. Among readers, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Gerard, solemn and businesslike. The minutes flew by, but excited no impatience in that perfect young man. Johnson did him no more than justice when he laughed to scorn the idea of his secretary leaving his post or neglecting his duty in pursuit of sport or out of youthful hilarity and frivolity. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... party; the only recipients, by-the-by, of "bakhshsh." The Sub-Lieutenant Mohammed Effendi mounted a donkey the moment he stepped out of the R.R. carriage; and, utterly disregarding so vexatious a frivolity as asking leave, rode off to his home at Torah. His example was followed by the Sergeant Mabrk Awaz. And yet both these men had the impudence to call upon me at the hotel, and to apply for especial Shahdahs, or "testimonials" of good ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... homes, made desolate by a breach of hearts. The city itself was crowded with opportunities for giving and receiving pain between mother and daughter. Christine had developed all the latent hardness of her mother's race with a sickly frivolity of her own. She made a great show of faith in her marriage venture. She boomed it in her occasional letters, which were full of scarce concealed bravado as graceful as snapping her fingers in ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... nor Mrs. Carter exactly said so, yet we gathered the idea that those were days of much dress and frivolity. It seems that ships came from everywhere with handsome fabrics and costly trifles; and that rich colonials strove so manfully and so womanfully to follow the capricious foreign fashions (by means of dressed dolls received from Paris and London) that usually they were not more ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power of being greatly useful. A man should not be able to look other than directly and forthright. A preoccupied attention is the only answer to the importunate frivolity of other people; an attention, and to an aim which makes their wants frivolous. This is a divine answer, and leaves no appeal and no hard thoughts. In Flaxman's drawing of the Eumenides of Aeschylus, Orestes supplicates Apollo, whilst the Furies sleep on the threshold. The face of the ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Marie Antoinette are among the historical personages who have most influenced the destinies of the world. His dulness, torpidity and indecision, and her frivolity, narrow-minded prejudices and suspiciousness, are among the causes of our present calamities. They are among the causes of a state of things which has inflicted on us, and threatens to inflict on all Europe, ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... in a fair fight, M. de Duc," replied the young Marquis, awed in spite of all his frivolity, his light-heartedness, by this ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The mother looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother's complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow; the mother set up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in what is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers of people. Little, if any, community of feeling subsisted between them and Estella, but the understanding was established that they were necessary to her, and that she ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of life, higher than holiness or usefulness, because it must include both. To us it is so unfamiliar that we do not know it from frivolity; we seek the excitement of some pleasing sensation, and, rising to its stimulus, we fall afterwards into the reaction of misery. Happiness is the poise, calm, strength, and spring of the life fully in harmony with all ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope
... within the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or three kids would come tumbling over the forms and jumping and bucking in the open space by the wheezy and venerable organ, spirits of thoughtless frivolity in ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... at Anagnia of an equestrian family. He was a man of loose morality, not without intellectual gifts, who by indulging in frivolity posed as a wit. In Nero's time he had acted in a harlequinade at the Juvenalian Games.[170] At first he pleaded compulsion, but afterwards he acted voluntarily, and his performances were rather clever than respectable. Rising to the command of a legion, he supported Verginius[171] and ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... be any other place, and we enter upon the events attending a young lady's entrance into society. This might all be very pretty and pleasant, except for the deadly seriousness of the author. It is entirely frivolous and unimportant, but frivolity may be made charming and full of suggestion. Points of etiquette and behavior engage the minds, hearts, and passions of the personages of the story. It is a sort of animated illustration of the little book called "Don't." For example, "Don't leave your overcoat and rubbers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... us that Guynemer was a believer who accomplished his religious exercises regularly, without ostentation and without weakness. "How many times he has stopped me at night," he writes, "as I passed near his bed! He wanted a quiet conscience, without reproach. His usual frivolity left him at the door of the chapel. He believed in the presence of God in this holy place and respected it.... His Christian sentiments were to be a sustaining power in his aerial battles, and he would fight with the more ardor if his conscience ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... it and withdrew—at first to gay society in Paris. Here he might naturally have sunk into the gutter with his companions, but for a great mental shock which became the main epoch and turning-point of his life, the crisis which diverted him from frivolity to seriousness. It was a purely intellectual emotion, not excited by anything in the visible or tangible world; nor could it be called conversion in the common acceptation of that term. He tells us that on the 10th ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... remark were a generalisation, it was certainly an audacious one, but Dick was thinking only of a personal application. Daisy's words, as he understood their meaning, were working on the better nature which lay below his frivolity. He began to suffer genuine shame and remorse at the idea that he had caused suffering—lasting pain—to this poor unsophisticated child who had loved him so readily. Moved by this honourable, if ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... was only a little bit drunk he inclined to frivolity and gaiety, and was given to playing the fiddle and dancing, but when he was very drunk, he was very solemn, and intensely religious. He gave himself to the singing of psalms, and if propped up would preach a sermon worthy of Doctor ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... actor identifies himself with the personages he represents. He renders all their sentiments. This role is the most powerful, but, before making it the object of his choice, there must be severe study; he must not run the risk of frivolity. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... heart dead within him, but he thought it none the less necessary to humor the Duchess, to laugh when she laughed, and shed tears when she wept; groaning in spirit, all the same, over the feminine frivolity which could find matter for a jest while setting about a matter so serious. What would he not have done to save the Count? While Chesnel dressed; Mme. de Maufrigneuse sipped the cup of coffee and cream which Brigitte brought her, and agreed with herself that provincial women cooks are superior ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... With the decay of the ancient concept of women as property there must come inevitably a reconsideration of the whole sex question, and out of that reconsideration there must come a revision of the mediaeval penalties which now punish the slightest frivolity in the female. The notion that honour in women is exclusively a physical matter, that a single aberrance may convert a woman of the highest merits into a woman of none at all, that the sole valuable thing a woman can bring to marriage is virginity—this notion is ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... every Christian woman. For her own sake, for the sake of all she loves, for the sake of her country, for the service of Christ and His Church, she is bound to uphold this standard at a high point—a point entirely above suspicion. This task is of importance incalculable. But, owing to the frivolity of some women, and the very loose ideas of many men, it is no easy task. Undoubtedly, the very great majority of women are born modest at heart. Their nature is by many degrees less coarse than ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the snap-shotter when, LORD BOB lamenting the "ingrained frivolity of the Radicals in this grave crisis," ARTHUR MARKHAM interposed with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... uselessness of being singular, and the folly of adopting a mode of life that makes you a laughing-stock. But this eighteen-year-old girl stood firm. She had resolved to live the Christ-life and devote her energies to lessening the pains of earth. Life was too short for frivolity; no one could afford to compromise with evil. She became the friend of children; the champion of the unfortunate; she sided with the weak; she was their friend and comforter. Her life became a cry in favor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... genius, eloquence, and versatility of Thiers. Mole belonged to an ancient and noble family, and his splendid chateau was filled with historical monuments. He had all the affability of manners which marked the man of high birth, without their frivolity. One of the first acts of his administration was the liberation of political prisoners, among whom was the famous Prince Polignac, the prime minister of Charles X. The old king himself died, about the same time, an exile in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... legates to Provence, who preached, discussed, and threatened, and met a freedom of thought and resistance to authority which Rome was not willing to brook. Bitter controversy was now substituted for the amiable frivolity of the tensons, and theological disputes superseded those on points of gallantry. The long struggle between the poetry of the troubadours and the preaching of the monks came to a crisis; the severe satires ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... South Wind and the Sun, Each so loves the other one, For all his jolly folly, And frivolity and fun, That our love for them they weigh As their fickle fancies may, And when at last we love them most, ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... efforts to maintain and educate the orphans. Even when the police official was spending his evenings at the theatre, the worthy actor generally filled his place in the family circle, and it seems had frequently to appease my mother, who, rightly or wrongly, complained of the frivolity of her husband. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... arisen from chivalry, still remained on the surface, but its language was that of cold, unmeaning flattery; and, from being the arbiters of honour, they became the mere ministers of amusement. They were again consigned to that frivolity, into which they relapse as easily as men do into ferocity. The respect they inspired, was felt individually or occasionally, but not for their sex. Any thing serious addressed to them, was introduced with an apology, or in the manner we now address children whom we desire to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... of frivolity, but she rose, looked at her wrist-watch and guessed she'd have a few minutes before dinner, to fool ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... old hand now, and didn't even know into what category she really fitted. Was it, after all, impossible that behind all this frivolity the desire to take up the struggle for existence on cleanly terms ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... one knew him well, effectually concealed them. Coleman, though too volatile to make a real friend of, was a very agreeable companion, and, if it were ever possible to get him to be serious for a minute, showed that beneath the frivolity of his manner lay a basis of clear good sense and right feeling, which only required calling forth to render him a much higher character than he appeared at present. For the rest, I was alternately bullied and patronised by Lawless (though ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... instant the above dialogue—from the frivolity of which the universally-learned readers of modern times will, we fear, recoil with contempt—was interrupted by a movement on the part of its hero which showed that his occupation was at an end. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... instead of re-establishing order at Naples by his presence, speedily returned to Palermo, to indulge in his favourite amusements. Nelson, and the ambassador's family, accompanied the court; and Troubridge remained, groaning over the villany and frivolity of those with whom he was compelled to deal. A party of officers applied to him for a passage to Palermo, to see the procession of St. Rosalia: he recommended them to exercise their troops, and not behave like children. It was grief enough ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... composition, now imminent, with the powers that be; but he should bestir himself to withstand the pressure exerted by Giles, by Medora herself, by Bond, by mischievous Clytie Summers, by the whole idle horde of studio loungers to force him into such an atmosphere of frivolity, license and dissipation as could not but inwrap one of those ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... grins, sort of sly and sheepish, like they wasn't used to indulgin' in such frivolity. They seemed to enjoy it, though, and the first thing I know I'm bein' put through a sort of highbrow third degree, the object being to show up what an empty loft I wear my ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... captain, 'it is so; own it: frivolity's the fruit of that training that's all for the flesh. But dip you into some o' my books on my shelves here, and learn to see living man half skeleton, like life and shadow, and never to living man need ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... continued, in a tone which seemed to imply that he deemed it necessary to apologize for the apparent frivolity of Brother Rabbit,—"en yit de time come w'en ole Brer Rabbit 'gun ter put dis en dat tergedder, en de notion strak 'im dat he better be home lookin' atter de intruss er he fambly, 'stidder trapesin' en trollopin' 'roun' ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... thing to take a servant—Alfy was really that, of course—to a Maitland party. Yet the child had just as good blood in her veins as many others who would attend, even if her lot in life were less fortunate. Besides, was it right to disturb her quiet habits by such frivolity? While the matter was pending, Alfaretta could only calm her perturbed mind by gathering every belated daisy she could find and testing her fortune upon its white petals. "Shall I be let to go? Shall I not?" Mostly, the daisies said: "I shall!" ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... or drove. He wanted to be irreproachable and, if that involved friendlessness, it could not be helped. Besides, he had no very high opinion of the English. So far as he could see, they cared for nothing but fox-hunting and Sunday observances; they oscillated between an undue frivolity and an undue gloom; if you spoke to them of friendly joyousness they stared; and they did not understand either the Laws of Thought or the wit of a German University. Since it was clear that with such people he could have ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... be safe, And gay without frivolity." If we do, I think they are pretty sure, whether young or old, to tie bunches of wild flowers to their crooks. But, after all, for a war shepherdess, garments such as my Downland Amoret had on were more appropriate. Anyway, the brave old ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... at the end of this description does not greatly lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in the Spectator would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays of the women with whom he was acquainted be ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... approaching her own secrets or character, into frank talk about himself. All unconsciously he began to lay bare to his listener the infirmities of his erring, open heart. Silently she looked down, and plumbed them all,—the frivolity, the recklessness, the half gay, half mournful sense of waste and ruin. There, blooming amongst the wrecks, she saw the fairest flowers of noble manhood profuse and fragrant still,—generosity and courage and disregard for self. Spendthrift and gambler on one side the medal; gentleman ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Samuel, lived in the household at Mount Vernon and evidently was a great cross, for we find Washington pleading as an excuse for her frivolity that "she was not brung up right, she has no disposition, and takes no care of her clothes, which are dabbed about in every corner, and the best are always in use. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... agreed that the War has given women great chances, and that women for the most part have taken them. Where they have not, but have preferred frivolity, it is not always their own fault, but the result of outside pressure. Such a paragraph, for example, as the following, by "Lady Di," in The Sunday Evening Telegram, is hardly a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... advice of a book entitled Education out of School Hours, was determined that every moment of the day should be filled with some occupation that led to culture. She carefully explained that the word "recreation" meant "re-creation"—a creating again, not a mere period of frivolity or lotus-eating, and advocated that all intervals of leisure should be devoted to intellectual interests. She frowned on girls who sauntered arm-in-arm round the garden, or sat giggling in the summer-house, and suggested suitable employments for their idle hands and brains. "Never waste a precious ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... necessarily of contrasts. It brings together types that stand out from their background, but are abruptly different from each other, like the clown among the fairies or the fool in the forest. And his audacious reconciliation is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness. A man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man who ventures to combine ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... will leave your mother and sisters to give you all domestic news. Tell Annette I have been looking for her in every stage since her letter last fall, and that I hope for her arrival daily. Nipper is well, and endeavors, by stern gravity, to repress the frivolity of Baxter. All unite in much love, and I ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the example of Alfieri, there was another motive at work—a determination to prove to the world that he was the master of his own temperament, and that, if he chose, he could cast away frivolity and cynicism, and clothe himself with austerity "as with a garment." He had been taken to task for "treating well-nigh with equal derision the most pure of virtues, and the most odious of vices" (Blackwood's Edin. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... princess, the three masked ladies, the quaint, pedantic king; one of those amiable kings men have never loved enough, whose serious occupation with the things of the mind seems, by contrast with the more usual forms of kingship, like frivolity or play. Some of the figures are grotesque merely, and all the male ones at least, a little fantastic. Certain objects reappearing from scene to scene—love-letters crammed with verses to the margin, and lovers' toys—hint obscurely at ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... took only a second glance to assure herself of what Judy had done and she frowned and compressed her lips. When the service was over, she made a little impromptu address to the students. College, she said, was a place for serious work and not for frivolity. Of course there were no objections to innocent fun, but absurdities would not be tolerated. All the time she was speaking she was looking straight at Judy, who, with chin resting on her hand and eyelids drooped, apparently read a hymn book. That afternoon Miss ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... they rose, and hastened shivering to the chapel. Never did they speak, but to their confessor; until, in his last hour, each was privileged to give to the prior his dying messages. Hither, from the active and gay world of philosophy and frivolity would suddenly retire from time to time some young officer, scholar, or courtier. Here, bound by irrevocable vows, he could weep over his sins, or gnash his teeth at the folly that had brought him, until he found peace at last in ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... and cataloguing all the words they use describing the faults of children. In all, this gave 914 faults, far more in number than their virtues. These were classified as native and of external origin, acute and chronic, egoistic and altruistic, greed, perverted honor, self-will, falsity, laziness, frivolity, distraction, precocity, timidity, envy and malevolence, ingratitude, quarrelsomeness, cruelty, superstition; and the latter fifteen were settled on as resultant groups, and the authors who ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... revolution in the spiritual condition of the enormous majority of the people of all lands. Its aim is to produce a change not only in the opinions, feelings, and principles of these vast populations, but to alter the whole course of their lives, so that instead of spending their time in frivolity and pleasure-seeking, if not in the grossest forms of vice, they shall spend it in the service of their generation and in the worship of God. So far it has mainly operated in professedly Christian countries, where the overwhelming majority of the people have ceased, publicly, at any ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... whim. I was disgusted with London and society after my return from the front. Those who have been through this terrible war learn to see most things at their true worth, and the frivolity, the snobbishness, and the shams of London society at such a time sickened and disgusted me. They tried to lionise me in drawing rooms and make me talk for their entertainment. They put my photograph in the illustrated papers, and interviewed me, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... I went to the "Frivolity," to see the latest rays of the lamp of burlesque. That scene, at any rate, was familiar. There, in all their spotless panoply of expressionless face, and irreproachable shirt-front, sat the golden lads of the Metropolis in their rows, images of bored ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... be any objection to it. But when one knows a person's opinion of frivolity, always to be thought frivolous by the person ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Sir Claude was really rather magnificent in other than American eyes. There was something of the Renascence Prince about his omnivorous culture and restless publicity—, he was not only a great amateur, but an ardent one. There was in him none of that antiquarian frivolity that we convey by ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of the most discerning eagerness for knowledge, but without any suitable male society, it is no wonder that the young man went astray. In comparison with other German courts, the Prussian might be regarded as very virtuous: but frivolity toward women and a lack of reserve in the discussion of the most dubious relations were pronounced even there. After a visit to the dissolute court of Dresden, Prince Frederick began to behave like other princes of his time, and generally found good comrades ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... solid learning cannot but make woman as well as man more humble; ... and it must be owned that if a little superficial knowledge has rendered some of our sex vain, it equally renders some of theirs insupportable." With all the sex's frivolity, she adds, women have not been found to spend their lives on mere entia rationis splitting hairs and weighing motes like the Schoolmen. She concludes that men deprive women of education lest they should oust them "from those public offices which they fill so miserably." She ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... some accusation Lord Cloverton has made against me. I tremble lest I may be unable to do so. Of what frivolity do I stand accused?" and she smiled at the Ambassador with an innocent expression on her face pleading ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... health; and in the autumn she had somewhat abruptly decided to go East to boarding-school at Farmington. During the brief months of her absence she had marvellously acquired maturity and aplomb, a worldliness of manner and a certain frivolity that seemed to put those who surrounded her on a lower plane. She was only seventeen, yet she seemed the woman of thirty whose role she played. First there were murmurs, then sustained applause. I scarcely recognized her: she had taken wings and soared far above ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... justification by love and its good works, he was in danger of being misunderstood by strangers, as though he held the bare knowledge and assent to be sufficient for justification, and such preaching would indeed have led to frivolity and disorderly conduct. But even apart from the question whether or not the brother of the Elector was disturbed by such scruples, Luther must have welcomed the opportunity, when the summons came to him, to ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... frightened glances were continually turned upon Sadie. There is surely some wrecker angel which can only gather her best treasures in moments of disaster. For here were all these worldlings going to their doom, and already frivolity and selfishness had passed away from them, and each was thinking and grieving only for the other. Sadie thought of her aunt, her aunt thought of Sadie, the men thought of the women, Belmont thought of his wife,—and then he thought of something else also, and he kicked his ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... parties which have kept their names and confused their principles, so that no man may distinguish them except as the Ins and Outs. An age of greedy privilege and sullen poverty, of blatant luxury and curious envy, of rising palaces and vanishing homes, of stupid frivolity and idiotic publicomania; in which four hundred gilded fribbles give monkey-dinners and Louis XV. revels, while four million ungilded gossips gape at them and read about them in the newspapers. An age when princes of finance buy protection from the representatives of a ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... only those sin against this commandment who grossly misuse and desecrate the holy day, as those who on account of their greed or frivolity neglect to hear God's Word or lie in taverns and are dead drunk like swine; but also that other crowd, who listen to God's Word as to any other trifle, and only from custom come to preaching, and go away again, and at the end of the year know as little ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... with dull disfavour. He would himself have given more than the sum mentioned to have compassed the same end, but for different reasons, and his own reasons were so grave that the youth's frivolity ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... no more hear of the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... plays. Indeed, he was careful to cultivate the society of young noblemen, and this he was able to do by virtue of his theatrical successes, and, more helpful still, by a levity of character which stuck to him despite his great earnestness in many directions. Perhaps his frivolity and his love of pleasure, including the delights of the gaming table, may have been half assumed; perhaps he was only playing one of his many parts. He certainly succeeded in the role; he enlivened ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... his wishes, I passed another year at a very fashionable school—a year of girlish frivolity, in which my last chance of acquiring knowledge as a means of future independence was wholly thrown away. Before the close of this year I received another letter from George, which somewhat surprised, but did not at all dishearten me. It ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... then came exciting times. Some members thought it of great importance not to offend new States by giving them no recognition on the flag. Others called it dishonorable to waste time over what one man called "a consummate piece of frivolity," when matters "of infinitely greater consequence" ought to be discussed. Another declared that the Senate sent the bill for the want of something better to do. Yet another honorable member did not think it worth while either ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... by, there's a new thing on at the Frivolity—awfully good," he said. "Miss Foster might like to see it. We could make up a little ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... is one thing; and for another the feeling of personal freedom is essential, and that feeling has only recently begun to develop in me. I used not to have it before; its place was successfully filled by my frivolity, carelessness, and lack ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... His fondness and petting were the same, but she perceived that he found in his sister a companionship of which she did not feel capable. But to Theodora herself, whenever she succeeded in engrossing Arthur, it seemed a victory of sisterly affection and sense over beauty and frivolity. ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... warnings of what was brewing. But Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary, who in frivolity seemed a contemporary embodiment of Nero, deemed cheap wit a sufficient reply to all remonstrances, and had to confess afterwards that he had utterly miscalculated the forces with which he had to deal. He was completely taken by surprise when, on ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... the characters of those with whom he lives or converses, must keep up the appearance of a kind of recklessness and frivolity, for the mind closes itself up like the hedgehog, at the least sensible touch of observation, and will not be afterwards drawn out. Men have been known in the middle of a discovery of their character, to be stopped short by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... sometimes, but never "talked" them, and seldom failed to introduce the names of one or more of the forty-three duchesses, countesses and marquises whose peace of mind he boasted of having wrecked for ever. Is it not strange that such frothy frivolity could have obtained dominion for more than fifty years over the most critical people in the world? But Montrond always declared that no man in France would ever take the trouble to read a book if once he had taken the trouble to read the preface. Even by the capricious and pedantic ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... things were changed; in their time there was energy; there were great crimes indeed, but the Church was active. The bad was very bad, but the good was very good, there were real broad questions then of right and wrong, not the coldness and frivolity, where all was so worthless that there was scarce a possibility of caring or seeing which part ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... towns in England. They are fond of their ornaments, merely because they are good, and not because they embellish their persons; and are more gratified to inspire the women with jealousy of these exterior advantages, than the men with love. All the frivolity which often (excuse me, Madam) renders the society of modest women so stupid in England, here seemed to throw still more leaden fetters on their charms. Not being an adept in gallantry, I found that I could only keep myself awake in their company ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the brim; it had a Standard which has transformed human existence to its very root; it has made inadequate what hitherto seemed to bring entire happiness; it has set limits to all petty natural culture; it has stamped as frivolity, not only all absorption in the mere pleasures of life, but has also reduced the whole prior circle of man to the mere world of sense. Such a valuation holds us fast and refuses to be weakened by us when all the dogmas and usages of the Church are detected ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... enhance his personal attractions increased, Donald's ever-growing anxiety led him to become more than ever impatient of such things and eager to hasten forward. He became provoked at his companion's frivolity, and regretted ever having consented to travel with him. When he finally discovered the prints of Indian moccasins about one of Cuyler's fires, the ashes of which were still hot, he grew so apprehensive of evil, and so impatient to get on, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... was a kindred spirit—a woman with whom conversation would be a pleasure; with whom it would be possible to discourse on terms of mental comradeship. He was partial to comely women, but he did not approve of frivolity except ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... your glad light eyes will be dim with tears, and the easy path you have striven to walk will be thickly strewn with thorn; and whether you deserve it or not, life will have for you a mournful earnestness, but notwithstanding all your frivolity and flippancy there is fine gold in your character, which the fire ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... self-denial. Upon book or newspaper she never cast a glance, but trusted wholly to the stars for her sublime knowledge. Her nights she usually spent in absorbed communion with these silent but eloquent teachers, and took her rest during the daytime. She spoke contemptuously of the frivolity and benighted ignorance of the modern Europeans, and gave as a proof their ignorance not only of astrology, but of the common and every-day phenomena produced by the magic art. She evidently desired her hearer to believe that she had at her command ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... of her very limited faith, that the serious concerns of life are of interest only to fools, and should, therefore (though the inference is not obvious), be entirely neglected by herself, and that frivolity and fashion are the twin deities before whom every self-respecting woman must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... your hands I commit the most precious jewel that was ever intrusted to the custody of a friend. You are the arbiter of my fate. More, much more than my life is in your disposal. If you should betray me, you will commit a crime, that laughs to scorn the frivolity of all former baseness. You will inflict upon me a torture, in comparison of which all the laborious punishments that tyrants have invented, are couches of luxury, are ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... little German was our arithmetic-master; a very good one, whose patience was often sorely tried by our stupidity or frivolity. On such occasions he rained epithets on us, which, from his imperfect knowledge of English, were often comical, and roused more amusement than shame. But for Eleanor he never had a harsh word. She was thoroughly fond of arithmetic, and "gave her mind ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... if he introduced some striking or amusing addition to the ordinary shows, the more popular he became for the time being. In the Roman world you must pay for your ambitions, and this was the most approved way of paying. We might moralise over the enormous frivolity which could waste day after day thousands and thousands of pounds upon such transitory pleasures, instead of conferring lasting benefits in the way of hospitals or schools. But it is not the object of this book to moralise. We may feel confident ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... spirit of the foreigner a kind of gross levity, an affectation of frivolity with respect to women, and a continual habit of vulgar vanity, which seems to run through all ranks and ages of the continental world. What can be more offensively trifling, than the conduct which Napoleon narrates of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... at last abandoning his silence, "you talk a great deal too much and you often err through excessive confidence and frivolity." ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... productive of suffering and unhappiness. The ancient Greeks required that the husband should be twenty years older than the wife; but this custom was no more reasonable than that of another nation which required that only old and young should marry, so that the sobriety of the old might restrain the frivolity of the young. ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... Change is what he needs very badly. Change! Oh, if everybody could have that when they need it! How it does make lives over! I know—how I do know! It's the deadly monotony that kills. Jean will bloom under the old farmhouse roof, away from all the fuss and frivolity she's so tired of." ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... most solid elements of poise is, without doubt, a well-defined ambition, that is to say, one that is divested of the drawbacks of frivolity and directly winged toward the goal of ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... attended. The eye, movements, and gestures of the great courtier were so composed, so regularly observant of all etiquette belonging to his situation, as to form a marked and strong contrast with the forward gaiety and frivolity by which he recommended himself to the favour of his "dear dad and gossip," King James. A singular fate attended this accomplished courtier, in being at once the reigning favourite of a father and son so very opposite in manners, that, to ingratiate himself with the youthful Prince, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... thing only is forbidden, to treat these substantial and living metaphors as if they were elegant curiosities, ornamental excrescences, to be passed over abruptly on the way to more exacting topics. The mystics, and the mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this frivolity. Recognising that there is a profound and intimate correspondence between all physical manifestations and the life of the soul, they flung the reins on the neck of metaphor in the hope that it might carry them over that mysterious frontier. Their failures ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... the habit of regularly swarming, like bees, under the form of the Ver Sacrum. On the north, again, were the Etruscan hill towns, with their lords, pirates by sea, and probably marauders by land; for the period of a more degenerate luxury and frivolity may be regarded as subsequent to their subjugation by the Romans; at any rate, when they first appear upon the scene they are a conquering race. The wars with the AEqui and Volsci have been ludicrously multiplied and exaggerated by Livy; but even without ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... it." Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn't sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master's was echoed all round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could say, "Come, Tim," except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of unnecessary speech. At last, Tim's next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather savage, said, "Let me alooan, will ye? Else I'll ma' ye sing a toon ye wonna like." A good-tempered waggoner's patience has limits, and Tim ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... you are personally concerned is your own frivolity; though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of your early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, in Oxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in nowise care for the history of your country, for its present dangers, or its present ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... ball and Sybil's interest in it were a great relief to Madeleine's mind, and she now turned her whole soul to frivolity. Never, since she was seventeen, had she thought or talked so much about a ball, as now about this ball to the Grand-Duchess. She wore out her own brain in the effort to amuse Sybil. She took her to call on the Princess; she would ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... that I had a gleam of hope when I took her on the Continent, thinking it just possible that by removing her from her old associations, I might win her back to a sense of duty. I would have borne her frivolity; I would have endured to be bound for life to a doll or a log, if only she ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... and frivolity, feasting and gossip are in strange contrast to the grey gown of the Jesuit priest hurrying from the monastery opposite, to shrive some sinner, or to administer "Extreme Unction" to some dying saint. Within the convent walls pious sisters, followers of Mademoiselle Mance and Madame ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... how it is that women possess tenacity of will in precise proportion to the frivolity of their lives? All these butterflies have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... know you do not wish to tell me the real reason, and will drop it, but I shall not be deceived. I haven't studied my kind for this long without knowing at least the a-b-c of human nature. You use your cap and bells and an air of frivolity to conceal your true character from the world, as other men cloak themselves in an ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... drawing-rooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's chaplets"[497] of the book-shops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan,[498] who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... despised—even hated! It is a sad truth, that there is something in the solemn aspect of ancient architecture which, in rebuking frivolity and chastening gayety, has become at this time literally repulsive to a large majority of the population of Europe. Examine the direction which is taken by all the influences of fortune and of fancy, wherever they concern themselves with art, and it will be found that the real, earnest ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sorrows of a class of men, Who, though they bow to fashion and frivolity, No fancied claims or woes fictitious pen, But wrongs ell-wide, and of ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the farmer ape the fashion, and the frivolity of the butterflies of town life, or permit his family to do it? It is the sheerest possible folly in him to do so. Yet, it is a folly into which many are imperceptibly gliding, and which, if not reformed, will ultimately lead to great ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... uttered almost with a womanly tenderness, not without its influence upon the company. Some phrase spoken of Frivolity's mouth had touched this group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts. They bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars—the Lady Sarah boldly charging a small clay pipe—they ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... laughed loudly and talked with an audacious freedom that was often the cause of his expulsion from respectable company. A glass or two of wine seemed quite to turn his brain; he was alert then for any frivolity, and he was not always content with so restricted a libation, when the consequences were even more ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of vice, and they move:—in England! Pulpit-preaching has no effect. For gross maladies, gross remedies. You may judge of what you are by the quality of the cure. Puritanism, I won't attempt to paint—it would barely be decent; but compare it with the spectacle of English frivolity, and you'll admit it to be the best show you make. It may still be the saving of you—on the level of the orderly ox: I 've not observed that it aims at higher. And talking of the pulpit, Barmby is off to the East, has accepted a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... strength of intellect. His weaker nature became more and more subject to one endowed with gifts far superior to his own. In every hour of perplexity, in every serious moment, when the better nature of the king gained a transient ascendency, he turned from the frivolity of the gay and thoughtless beings fluttering around him to Mary Mancini for ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... die before she is settled in life, crosses my mind when I am in a serious mood. That she will marry well, there is little doubt, for she possesses beauty in a rare degree, and has been reared as an English girl should be, not to frivolity and foppery. She was trained by her mother, who save for the mad act she was persuaded into by me, was all goodness and refinement, for the first twelve years of her life, and since then by an admirable ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... one who afterwards became one of the most dashing officers in the Federal cavalry service during the war for the Union. It tells of the vicissitudes of a life restless but resolute, and which bears the stamp of heroism and success. There are stories of school-days full of the activity and frivolity of youth, of failure and fortune, and a graphic sketch of the turning point in Glazier's career, which came with the rebellion. From the day he entered the ranks of the Harris Light Cavalry his course was steadily onward and upward, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... and duties and aspirations and hopes as far removed in importance from mere temporal matters as the heaven is higher than the earth. Oh, what high treason to the deity whom the preacher invokes, what stupidity, what frivolity, what insincerity, what incapacity of realizing what is truly great, when he descends from the lofty themes of salvation and moral accountability, to dwell on the platitudes of aesthetic culture, the beauties ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... overheard, "Edwin P. Brewster is turning handsprings in his grave over the way he is going it," Monty resolved to redeem himself in the eyes of his critics. He would show them that his brain was not wholly given over to frivolity. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... evident enjoyment. Tex regarded him with a frown: "For a Siwash you're plumb mirthful an' joyous minded. In fact I ain't noticed any one so wrapped up in glee for quite a spell. Suppose you just loosen up an' let me in on the frivolity, an' at the same time kind of let it appear where you put in the day. I mistrusted my packin' a pair of purple ones wouldn't give you the whoopin' cough, so I just sauntered over an' took a look at the cayuses. Yourn's be'n rode ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... oracular lips of the commander that became immortal on the frontier and made the petitioners nearly frantic. For a week the trio was the butt of all the wits at Fort Warrener. And yet the entire commissioned force felt that they were being kept at the grindstone because of the frivolity of these few youngsters, and they did not like it. All the same the cavalrymen stuck up for their colonel, and the infantrymen respected him, and the matinees were business-like and profitable. They were rarely unpleasant in any feature; ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... in Paris, I cannot help feeling a good deal of sympathy for them, notwithstanding their childish vanity, their mendacity, and their frivolity. I sincerely trust, therefore, if they do seriously resist their besiegers, that the assurances of the Government that there are ample supplies of food and of ammunition, are not part of the system of official lying which was pursued by their predecessors; ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... he lived with his mother in 1778 and 1779, was a disappointment, for he despised the French nation. His deep, simple, German nature revolted from Parisian frivolity, in which he found only sensuality and coarseness, disguised under a thin veneering of social grace. He abhorred French music in these bitter terms: "The French are and always will be downright donkeys. They cannot sing, they scream." It was just at this time that Gluck and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... her, I was in a state of some perplexity, for I could not follow the bent of her thoughts, nor appreciate the feelings that moved her. I was, however, considerably touched, and upbraided myself for not having hitherto done justice to the depth and sincerity of nature which underlay her external frivolity. I expressed this self-condemnation to Denny Swinton, but he met it very coldly, and would not be drawn into any discussion of the subject. Denny was not wont to conceal his opinions, and had never pretended to be enthusiastic about my engagement. This attitude of his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... greatly prefer the sort of frivolity that is thrown to the surface like froth to the sort of frivolity that festers under the surface like slime. To pelt an enemy with a foolish pun or two will never do him any grave injustice; the firework is obviously a firework and not a deadly fire. It may be playing to the gallery, but even ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... manifest to our eyes, set a perpetual example of a right life. We bid them be the ornaments of our State. Too often they do not attain to our ideal. They give, it may be, a half-hearted devotion to soldiering, or pursue pleasure merely—tales of their frivolity raising now and again the anger of a public swift to envy them their temptations. But against this admirable Prince no such charges can be made. Never (as yet, at least) has he cared to 'play at soldiers.' By no means has he shocked the Puritans. Though it is no secret that he prefers ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... where he was soon joined by Elmer. The disgraced preacher and the reformed convict had struck up a fast friendship. They sat with their backs towards the Jasper B., and Cleggett supposed from their attitude that they were sternly condemnatory of the frivolity and festivity ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... Colonel Lennox since that fatal day which seemed to have divided them for ever. At first she felt uneasy and embarrassed, but there was so much good sense and good feeling in the tone of his conversation—it was so far removed either from pedantry or frivolity, that all disagreeable ideas soon gave way to the pleasure she had in conversing with one whose turn of mind seemed so similar to her own; and it was not till she had parted from him at the gate of Beech Park she had time to wonder how she could possibly have ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... suits a lazy man," said Sol, and he walked away jauntily. Under his apparent frivolity he concealed his joy at the find, which he knew to be of such vast importance. He approached the dusky group, and his really tender heart was stirred with pity for the rescued captives. Long Jim and Silent Tom held the smaller two on their ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Stonebridge House, where his friendship had been my one comfort and hope; of our early days in London, when it seemed as if, with one another for company, nothing could come amiss, and no hardship could be quite intolerable; of his illness and absence, and my gradual yielding to frivolity and extravagance; then of his return and confidence in me. Would that he had never told me that wretched secret! If he had only known to whom he was telling it, to what a pitiful, weak, vain nature he was confiding it, he would have bitten ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... neighbor. But loving our own selfish ease, we excuse ourselves, and so judge ourselves unworthy of the happiness we should enjoy in doing the kind action. He comes in some deep conviction, calling us to a new life. We feel that we ought to leave our frivolity, and live for God and eternity—live for what is real and permanent. But we stifle these convictions, and go back to our old lives, and so judge that we are not worthy to become the friends and fellow-workers ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... and difficult to furnish with even this little handful of guests; but it was a proper and necessary attention to the colonel; conversation not too dull, nor yet too bright for ease, but passing gracefully from one agreeable topic to another without earnestness, a restless virtue, or frivolity, which also goes against serenity. Now it touched upon the prospects of young A. B. in the demise of his uncle; now upon the probable seriousness of C. D. in his attentions to E. F.; now upon G.'s amusing mishaps during a late tour in Switzerland, which ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Ruth's frivolity and worldliness at Fallkill traveled to Philadelphia in due time, and occasioned no little undertalk among ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... of those squat, heathen, Satsuma vases, inlaid with distorted figures and symbols and toned in all luridness of color, into which has been tossed a poor sort of flower plucked from any bush the owner happened to pass, which has been salted down in frivolity—or perhaps something stronger. I'll keep the lid on to-night, for you ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... for my not employing frankly that shade of indication, a finer shade still than the dash.... But what on earth are we talking about?" And the Chairman of the Corps Committee pulled himself up in deprecation of our frivolity, which I recognized by acknowledging that we might indeed hear more about the work done and doing at the front by Richard Norton and his energetic and devoted co-workers. Then I plunged recklessly ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... predecessors, had wasted eight months of most precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred gentlemen "marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred," during that dreadful winter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... just when we did," said Lucile, peeping around a corner of the cabin. "I see old lady Banks in the distance. 'Pray, and may I inquire the cause of all this frivolity?'" and she imitated the old lady so perfectly that they went off into ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... as a PUN. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.—It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his desire to be a hermit, might feel that love was better than wisdom. And if Yathodaya had been other than she was—who can tell?—perhaps after all the king might have succeeded; but it was not to be so. For to Yathodaya, too, life was a very solemn thing, not to be thrown away in laughter and frivolity, but to be used as a great gift worthy of all care. To the prince in his trouble there came a kindred soul, and though from the palace all the teachers of religion, all who would influence the prince against the desires of ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... and the charming Madame de Boufflers had drawn him into a correspondence, marked by almost passionate enthusiasm on her part, and as fair an imitation of enthusiasm as Hume was capable of, on his. In the extraordinary mixture of learning, wit, humanity, frivolity, and profligacy which then characterised the highest French society, a new sensation was worth anything, and it mattered little whether the cause thereof was a philosopher or a poodle; so Hume had a great success in the Parisian world. Great nobles feted ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... the Roman composers were—workers for hire and of inferior social position—were obliged even perhaps against their own better judgment and their own better taste to accommodate themselves more or less to the prevailing frivolity and rudeness. It was quite possible, nevertheless, that there might arise among them individuals of lively and vigorous talent, who were able at least to repress the foreign and factitious element in poetry, and, when they had found their fitting sphere, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... commoner who styles himself a marquis; he arrogates to himself a quality he does not possess. He thinks himself more worthy than his neighbour. One can forgive such foolishness in women; their frailty and their frivolity render them excusable; the poor creatures pass from a lover to a director in good faith: but one cannot pardon the rogues who direct them, who abuse their ignorance, who establish the throne of their pride on the credulity of the sex. They resolve themselves into ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... down to chess and then Fyne's everlasting gravity became faintly tinged by an attenuated gleam of something inward which resembled sly satisfaction. Of the divine frivolity of laughter he was only capable over a chessboard. Certain positions of the game struck him as humorous, which nothing ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... imported into England by the young men who, under pretence of learning the Italian polish, travelled to Italy. From the days of Gabriel Harvey and Lord Oxford, about the middle of Elizabeth's reign, this foul tide had begun to set toward England, gaining an additional coarseness and frivolity in passing through the French Court (then an utter Gehenna) in its course hitherward; till, to judge by Marston's 'Satires,' certain members of the higher classes had, by the beginning of James's reign, learnt nearly all which the Italians had to teach ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... was little hope of sleeping in Market Town, and to-morrow was the hiring fair; it was deplorable to think how much time had been wasted by the frivolity of Alexander. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... if we had once made the effort to find meaning of any sort in it; nor can it be considered the most profitable use of school time, thus to 'like folly show' to unknit juvenile brains the abstract and high thought of mature and great minds, who uttered them with no foolishness or frivolity in their intentions! We see reasons to expect substantial advantages from Mr. Willson's books; and we believe teachers will appreciate and use them. We could wish they had not gone so far to mechanicalize the pupil's ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the same place again and the same thing would happen. I'm not blaming her. God knows I don't blame her. I blame myself for being a blind ass. I hope she'll be happy, poor little girl. I want her to be. With all her irresponsibleness and her outside naughtiness and frivolity, her carelessness of men's feelings, her nonsense, and her teasing, pretty ways, I know that she is good at heart, sound, and sane and sweet. I want ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... the marriage of winsome, wilful Kate to strong and good David. Complications arise by which David marries her younger sister Marcia instead and it is only after a period of trials and heartaches that Marcia wins her husband's love when he comes to understand her worthiness and Kate's heartless frivolity and duplicity. The Chicago Tribune pronounces Marcia "One of the most lovable heroines that ever lived her life in ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... transcends the nursery tale from which he came, and carries to us all the implications of suffering and love that surround the aging of parents and the growth of children. Cleopatra is a wanton, but no analysis can explain the subtleties with which the idealism and animalism, the sacrifice and frivolity—and how much else—of human passion are bound together in the few hundred lines which she speaks. It is impossible to affirm that each of the great characters is thoroughly consistent or offers a strictly accurate motivation. Rather, they are magnificent portraits—like the ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... sunset! Her husband thinks much to that effect, as he turns to blow the smoke on order into the face that is so close to his, as they lean arm-in-arm on the parapet the sun has left his warmth on, and means to take his eyes off in half an hour. They really look quite a young couple, and the frivolity of their conduct adds to the effect. Nobody would believe in her grown-up daughter, to see that ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... never be a true artist. Directly she rises to any height she goes off and gets married, ten to one to some idiot, who interferes in all her arrangements, and so her career is spoiled. I did think Mademoiselle Laurentia was above such frivolity. I imagined that, at last, I had discovered a true artist, one to whom her art was everything. No, I am again mistaken, and Mademoiselle Laurentia—why, she is not even going to marry a duke, there might be some sense in that, but only a ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... in spite of her frivolity, had somehow managed the children far better than Maud was now able to do. At the present time, so Mr. Tapster admitted to himself with something very like an inward groan, his two sons possessed every vice of which masculine infancy is capable. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... parasitism. She must achieve conscious independence whether in or out of the family. Unquestionably there came with the Revolution a vision of a new woman—a woman from whom all of the willfulness and frivolity and helplessness of the "Lady" of the old regime should be stripped, while all her qualities of gentleness and charm should be preserved. The old-world lady was to be merged into a woman strong, capable, severely beautiful, a creature who had all of the virtues ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... back, Frivolity and Show. It is a day of Spring; I want to see my roses blow, And hear the blackbird sing. I wish to prune my apple-trees, And nail my peaches straight; Keep to the causeway, if you please— I've shut ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Jenny's old admiration for Robin Featherstone, which had been already shaken, vanished that day. The Spirit of God, who had touched her heart through the preacher, led her to see that folly, vanity, and frivolity were utterly out of concord with Him. And then came a feeling of regret for the unkind flippancy with which she had treated Tom Fenton. Jenny knew that Tom was a Christian man; it had been one reason why she despised him, ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... middle-aged sergeants forsook their families and businesses at the very outset of the War, without a moment's hesitation, is a signal proof of their character. No men were ever greater lovers of peace. Some philosophers have seen or tried to see in the War a judgment on the luxury and frivolity of pre-War England, on her neglect of defence, and her absorption in opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... of Klopstock, terrible as the fiends of Milton.... The distractions of a busy and contentious life break up our passions. A woman, on the contrary, broods over her passions; they are a fixed point on which her idleness or the frivolity of her duties holds her attention fast.... Impenetrable in dissimulation, cruel in vengeance, tenacious in their designs, without scruples about the means of success, animated by a deep and secret hatred against the despotism of man—it seems as if ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... and he longed to take his poor little sister Netta away from the contamination of such society. But she came downstairs after luncheon was over, gay and bright in dress and person, and ready for any amount of frivolity. Her countenance clouded over, when she heard how soon the party was to be broken up; but when Howel assured her he should be only a week absent, and that he would take her to town ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... manner in which it is obscured and perverted: cursed effects of fashionable education! of which both sexes are the advocates, and yours eminently the victims. If I could foresee that Theo. would become a mere fashionable woman, with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind, adorned with whatever grace and allurement, I would earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence. But I yet hope, by her, to convince the world what neither sex appear ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... realities. Everything else is mimetic, phantasmal, tinkling. Deeply do the masters of the drama move us; but the Gospel cleaves, inworks, regenerates. In the theatre, the leading characters go off in death and despair, or with empty conceits and a forced frivolity; in the Gospel, tranquilly, grandly, they are dismissed to a serener life and a nobler probation. Who has not pitied the ravings of Lear and the agonies of Othello? The Gospel pities, but, by a magnificence of plot altogether ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... should have fancied careless of its subject, and even ignorant of its existence, but to whom I was personally bound to give some answer as to the book and its worth. It was making many unsettled and unhappy; it was (even worse) pandering to the cynicism and frivolity of many who were already too cynical and frivolous; and, much as I shrank from descending into the arena of religious controversy, I felt bound to say a few plain words on it, at least to my ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley |
