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More "Frivolous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excess, various seats, lounges, warmers, scattered about rather indiscriminately, all low, rounded, indolent, or voluptuous in shape, composed the furniture of this celebrated chamber in which the gravest questions and the most frivolous were wont to be treated alike with the same seriousness. On the wall was a handsome portrait of the duchess; on the chimneypiece a bust of the duke, the work of Felicia Ruys, which at the recent Salon had received the honours ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... seven days and stood possessed of the highest beatific wisdom of God, in the ecstatic joy of the Kingdom."[16] Boehme looked upon this "Sabbatic" experience as his spiritual call, and from this time on he increased his endeavours to live a pure life of godliness and virtue, refusing to listen to frivolous talk, reproving his fellows and even his shopmaster when they indulged in light and wanton conversation, until finally the master discharged him with the remark that he did not care to keep "a ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Pickwick 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 more pompous ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Countess Aurora von Koenigsmarck. George Sand's grandfather was Maurice de Saxe. He may have been an adventurer and a condottiere, but France owes to him Fontenoy, that brilliant page of her history. All this takes us back to the eighteenth century with its brilliant, gallant, frivolous, artistic and profligate episodes. Maurice de Saxe adored the theatre, either for itself or for the sake of the women connected with it. On his campaign, he took with him a theatrical company which gave a representation the evening before a battle. In this company was a young artiste named Mlle. ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... bachelor, the flaneur, the epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she, the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the frivolous and unconventional rich—people had wondered for years how there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved her ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... at him earnestly for some seconds, and then asked a very unexpected and frivolous question, because she simply ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... interposed its dark foliage over the lower roof of the west wing, and gave a little appearance of shelter, and a few Lombardy poplars and light-leaved young birches made a thin and interrupted screen to the east; but the house stood clear of these light and frivolous young attendants in a nakedness which made the spectator shiver. The wood in the long avenue had been thinned in almost the same ruthless way, but here and there were shady corners, where old trees, not worth much in the market, ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... instance 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 ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the way into the dining-room. Evidently this was no frivolous house, where giddy butterflies came and went; such gaudy insects would have been chilled by the solemn decorum of the place. David followed into the dining-room in a dreamy kind of way, and with the feeling that comes to us all at times, the sensation of having done ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... have no relation to each other. You mistake the occasion for the cause, the means for the motive. Your alphabet is in fault. Such a set of vain, frivolous, dishonest, mean, hypocritical, and insufferably vulgar letters would be turned out of any respectable, well-bred spelling-book. Vanity, frivolity, dishonesty, meanness, hypocrisy, and vulgarity can be exhibited in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... missed many things—her mother, her church, her small gayeties. She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeister might allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyed friends of hers. But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be a frivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort, and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while her second was safely out of ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... times rose on the Berlin Court such as had never been seen before! "No salvation possible, says my Dearest? Hah! And an innocent Court-Mask or Dancing Soiree is criminal in the sight of God and of the Queen? And we are children of wrath wholly, and a frivolous generation; and the Queen will see ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... them of Demosthenes living in a cellar, with head half shaved to prevent his appearing in public, and there will be admiration; was it any wonder that he became an orator? But let a man be as bent on becoming a saint; let him give up one hour's frivolous talk in order to commune with his Father in secret; then we suspect that such an one is becoming righteous overmuch. Mind, no one complains of a man being anxious to be wise overmuch, or rich overmuch, healthy overmuch; he may burn the midnight oil and study, watch the markets ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... erected during the night for the Prince de Conde opposite to the convent of the Recollets, had amazed and startled the whole nobility. All present spoke in a low voice and the talk was the same mixture as at Blois, of frivolous and serious, light and earnest matters. The habit of expecting troubles, sudden revolutions, calls to arms, rebellions, and great events, which marked the long period during which the house of Valois was slowly being ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... followed, and caressed, as long as he could remember. Now the incense of flattery floating continually in the air which he breathed had done its work. He was not actually spoiled but he had grown arrogant; vain of his person and of his wealth. He was vain, but not yet frivolous; he was insolent, but not yet heartless. At his age, impressions come from without, rather than from within. Nobili was extremely impressionable; he also, as has been seen, wanted resolution to resist temptation. As yet, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... that it took anything from their real weight and solidity. Coarse minds think all that is subtle, futile: that because it is not gross and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is therefore light and frivolous, and of no importance in the real affairs of life; thus making their own confined understandings the measure of truth, and supposing that whatever they do not distinctly perceive, is nothing. Seneca, who was not one of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ulciscitur Galliam. And while the rancour and the thirst for vengeance are still, in France, what they were in 1871, the whole of power, riches, and fashion in Germany crowding to Paris, give it a sort of transient popularity, and suffers itself to be led by what is among us most frivolous, most immoral, and even less French, in the old and legitimate sense of that word. It is very curious to observe how the strangers flock to Paris in order to enjoy the spectacle of themselves, reckoning ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... only applies to frivolous and silly women, but you are wrong. It applied even to goddesses! Historians inform us that the haughty Juno, discovering that her husband, Jupiter, was going the way of all flesh and nearly every ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental, and frivolous,—perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much of his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his benefit, dear, and you must ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and marched away to Dornburg, where he was of no use, "his obstinacy, difficult to explain, nearly compromised both Davoust and the success of the battle;" See also Thiers (tome vii. p. 172), who attributes Bernadotte's conduct to a profound aversion for Davoust conceived on the most frivolous grounds. Bernadotte had frequently given cause of complaint to Napoleon in the two campaigns of 1806 and 1806. In the movement on Vienna Napoleon considered he showed want of activity and of zeal. These complaints seem to have ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... master at the same time that he is respectful: and the master, in return, condescends to his inferior without forgetting their relative positions. This runs through society in general, and as no one can well be polite without some good-nature (for politeness, frivolous as it may appear, is a strong check upon those feelings of selfishness, too apt to be indulged in), it leads to a general feeling of good will towards others. This has naturally been practised ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... ain't it? Games for a heavy-podded old sinner like him, who's about as frivolous in his habits as one of them stone lions in front of the new city lib'ry! But here I was on my way with a yellow-backed twenty in one hand; so it's up to me to produce. I pikes straight down the avenue to a joint where they've got three floors filled with nothin' but ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Biblical knowledge and as though with him exegesis had said its last word. During this period the grammatical and rational study of the word of God fell Into more and more neglect, and its real meaning became Increasingly obscured. The place of a serious and sincere exegesis was taken by frivolous combinations, subtle comparisons, and mystical interpretations carried out according to preconceived notions and based on the slightest accident of form in the text. Rashi had many ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... tax for supporting the imprisoned poor was more willingly complied with, though not less iniquitous in its principle; numbers of inoffensive and industrious people were taken from their homes on account of their religion, or other frivolous pretexts, and not having the wherewithal to maintain themselves in confinement, instead of being kept by the republic, were supported by their fellow-prisoners, in consequence of a decree to that purpose. Families who inherited nothing from their noble ancestors but their names, were ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... a dinner dance at the country club, and Blount, who was a week-end guest of the Beverleys, was ill-natured enough to be resentful. What right had a gay and frivolous world to come and thrust its light-hearted happiness upon him when Patricia had said "No"? It was like bullying a cripple, he told himself morosely, and when he had read the single telegram which had ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it, but their objections turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most frivolous cavils; the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is at issue with reason. To such opposition Harvey for some time did not think it necessary to reply; but some of his friends ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... be tired with such levities: the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion of General Stupefaction" had been recently ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as if to dismiss the matter. It may have seemed to him frivolous to dwell upon such a ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... She says, that even if Denon had not been such a person as she describes him, "still, he suited me, I suited him. There was between us that sympathy, in spite of the disparity of years and talents, which, whether in trifles or essentials,—between the frivolous or the profound,—makes the true basis of those ties, so sweet to bind, so bitter to break!" It is well for Sir Charles Morgan's peace of mind, that he is acquainted, as he must be, with his wife's frivolity and egotism. How, indeed, he could have allowed her to come before ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... displayed traits almost absolutely opposite; the elder, Manuel, was of a frivolous, slothful, indolent disposition, and would neither study nor go to school. He was fond of romping about the fields and engaging in bold, dangerous escapades. The characteristic trait of Juan, the younger brother, was a morbid sentimentalism that would ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... to shake hands with me. As for you, Mary, I won't even ask you to speak to me or look at me. I know you hate me as you do a snake. Miss Josie Larson, I take off my hat to you, as being wise in your generation. Tell me something, though, if you don't think it is too frivolous. Did you put too much pepper on my ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... became more determined than ever, and his thought-form deepened in colour and changed into the second of the two shapes, resembling a cork-screw even more closely than before. Forms similar to these are constantly created by ordinary idle and frivolous curiosity, but as there is no intellect involved in that case the colour is no longer yellow, but usually closely resembles that of decaying meat, somewhat like that shown in Fig. 29 as expressing a drunken man's ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... to his face, "you have the most generous and best of hearts. I suspected that you loved Maria, and I would be glad to tell you at once that she loves you, so that we might hereafter be but one family—but frankly I can not. Although the dear child is a little frivolous, her woman's instinct must suspect your feeling for her, but she has never spoken of it to mamma or to me. Have confidence; I do not see anything that augurs ill for you in that. She is so young and so innocent that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... priest understands his parishioner—a thing which admits of no possible shadow of doubt—it is equally certain that the Englishman does not, as is shown by the following frivolous tale, always a favourite ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... 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 ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with cognizant men and with the frivolous. Women were capable of appreciating her, too: as Aminta did, despite some hinted qualifications addressed shyly to her husband. But these were the very matters exciting his particular esteem. He was of Lady Charlotte's mind, in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the American official, was fortunately in the keeping of the Honorable [Footnote: Here the title is Siamese.] Mr. Bush, and was written by the king's own hand, as was well known to all whom it concerned. These charges, with others of a more frivolous nature,—such as disobeying, thwarting, scolding his Majesty, treating him with disrespect, as by standing while he was seated, thinking evil of him, slandering him, and calling him wicked,—the king ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... form of self-preservation, is an unstable foundation for a home. It costs too much to maintain a home if you measure it by the personal advantages of parents. What hope is there for useful and happy family life if the newly wedded youth have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to frivolous pleasures, and guided by ideals of success in terms of garish display? Yet what definite program for any other training does society provide? Do the schools and colleges, Sunday schools and churches teach youth a better way? How else shall they be trained ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... and Bennie was temporarily installed in the Detention Home. There the superintendent and his plump and kindly wife had fallen head over heels in love with him, and had dressed him in a smart little Norfolk suit and a frivolous plaid silk tie. There were delays in the case, and postponement after postponement, so that Bennie appeared in the court room every Tuesday for four weeks. The reporters, and the probation officers and policemen became very chummy with Bennie, and showered him with bright new pennies and certain ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... horns—dancing was an inexhaustible pleasure. At her dancing-parties, of which she gave three or four a season, her husband would show himself below for a few moments for civility's sake, and then retire to a remote den on an upper floor, well shut out from the sounds of his wife's frivolous measures, but accessible to a few habitues of age and ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... with butterflies. Those gay and irrepressible creatures, the fashionable and frivolous element in the insect world, gad about from flower to flower over great distances at once, and think much more of sunning themselves and of attracting their fellows than of attention to business. And the reason is obvious, if one considers ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... preference. They were watching the languishing young woman, who in turn kept glancing at them. Ernestine, having finished what she was saying, made her way to where Miss Levering sat, not, it would appear, for any purpose so frivolous as saying good evening, but to deposit what were left of the handbills and the precious portfolio in the care of one well known by now to have a ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... to a studio tea in the upper sixties just off West End Avenue, the proprietors of the studio being a tousled, bearded, blond anarchist of a painter and his exceedingly pretty, smart, frivolous-looking wife—who had more sense than she was willing to let appear. They had lived in Paris for years, but the fact that he had a German-sounding name had driven them back to New York. It was through Gertrude that Rose had got acquainted with them—she having wrung from Abe Shuman ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... refine, temper, and adjust his literary manner, so his society and circumstances were exactly of the kind to repress, or at least not to encourage, exuberance or boisterousness in his literary matter. There are I believe who call him trivial, even frivolous; and if this be done sincerely by any careful readers of "The Red Fisherman" and the "Letter of Advice" I fear I must peremptorily disable their judgment. But this appearance of levity is in great part due exactly to the perfect modulation and ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the town wore such gay and frivolous attire, they had to pay for it surely," Mrs. Pitt added. "Last night I was reading that in the records of Canterbury for the year 1556, the Mayor was required to provide for his wife every year, before Christmas, a scarlet gown and a bonnet ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... members of that college, and often enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of other colleges. Hence it happens that you rarely find yourself in a shop, or other place of public resort, with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion, if young and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as an indirect expression of his own connection with this splendid college; the title of Dean being exclusively attached to the headship of Christ Church. The Dean, as may be supposed, partakes in this superior dignity of his "House;" he is officially brought into ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... so strangely unprosperous had I been, the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to—Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... trouble to her to be out of her Parents house, in a strange dwelling place: Nay, this oft-times surges so high, that the good man hath his hands full of work to comfort her, and to talk these foolish fancies out of her noddle; and verily, unless he can bridle her frivolous humour with some pleasant discourses, and dry up her tears with no small number of kisses; oh then he'l be sadly put to't. And if this all falls out well, before six weeks are at an end, there'l appear another dark cloud again, to eclipse this ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... The frivolous objections some women made to our appeals were as exasperating as ridiculous. To reply to them politely at all times, required a divine patience. On one occasion, after addressing the Legislature, some of the ladies in congratulating me, inquired in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... this is Hell, nor am I out of it: Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss? O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, Which strike a ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... have made this gentleman a little more humble, and now I will carry him the rest of his journey. But he is too frivolous an animal to present to wise Minos. I wish Mercury were here; he would damn him for his dulness. I have a good mind to carry him to the Danaides, and leave him to pour water into their vessels which, like his ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... 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 seemed to him doubly frivolous. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... and the rule." Collector BAILEY'S "fetch" sits in front. Mr. FECHTER is fastidious. He omits the prefatory remarks to "assume a virtue," but urges his mother to seek relief in Chicago. Considering her frivolous conduct and the acrid colloquy consequent upon the comparison of photographs, this is filial as well ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... the pampered daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean strength—strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there—the only certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one word could have expressed her it would ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... 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 the whispers of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Wring them out of your Board! I shall give you a Sleepy Hollow couch with bide-a-wee cushions, and deep, cuddly armchairs and a lamp or two with shades as mellow as autumn woods! And some perfectly frivolous pictures which aren't in the least inspiring or uplifting,—and every single girl's room shall have a pink pincushion!" Then at their blankness, she softened. "Oh, very well,—you shall have your tubs and your linoleum, if you'll let me humanize the rest of the house,—will you?" She ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... Court, Chief Justice White said: "In view of the complete power of Congress over foreign commerce and its authority to prohibit the introduction of foreign articles recognized and enforced by many previous decisions of this court, the contentions are so devoid of merit as to cause them to be frivolous."[484] In Brolan v. United States[485] the Court again stressed the absolute nature of Congress's power over foreign commerce, saying: "In the argument reference is made to decisions of this court dealing with the subject of the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... disposition. He himself came to examine her, respecting her removal from her house at Ashbridge to Dunnington castle a long while before. The princess had quite forgotten this trivial circumstance, and lord Arundel, after the investigation, kneeling down, apologized for having troubled her in such a frivolous matter. "You sift me narrowly," replied the princess, "but of this I am assured, that God has appointed a limit to your proceedings; and so God forgive ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... come to talk upon subjects to those who have studied them, they betray an unpardonable ignorance, and lay themselves open to answers that confuse them. Be careful then, that you do not get the appellation of indolent, and, if possible, avoid the character of frivolous. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... that," said Sandy decidedly. "Of course," she pursued, "the Gregorys get along without a maid, and use a fireless cooker, and drink cereal coffee, but admit, darling, that you'd rather have me useless and frivolous as I am!—than Gertrude or Florence or Winifred Gregory! Why, when Floss was married, Dad, Gertrude played the piano, for music, and for refreshments they had raspberry ice-cream and ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... hand the possibility of securing, in all sympathy and tenderness, the laying of that step on which man rises towards his perfection; on the other hand the blight of all sympathy, to be dragged down to earth, and forced to become frivolous and common-place; to lose all zest and earnestness in life, to have heart and life degraded by mean and perpetually-recurring sources of disagreement; these are the two alternatives, and it is the worst of these alternatives which the young ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... of our being, drape ourselves in our heaven-woven robes of love, open our hearts to the poor and wretched, instruct the ignorant, reclaim the vicious, bear each other's burdens, frown on vice, give up our petty vanities, cease our frivolous excuses that, we have no influence, when every one of us has an immortal in charge, use our strength to forbid oppression, whether of individuals or nationalities. Then might the day seen by the prophets, sung by poets, and believed in by devout hearts, dawn upon this planet ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... would spend an hour any time in talking freely with a shrewd workman of his own, or with some queer, sagacious old woman amongst his cottagers, when he would have grudged a moment to a commonplace fine gentleman or to the most fashionable and elegant, if frivolous, lady. His preferences on these points he carried to an extreme, forgetting that there may be amiable and even admirable characters amongst those who cannot be original. Yet he made exceptions to his own rule. There was a certain order of mind, plain, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... I feel as if a week of quiet silence would be the means of opening more deeply the still flowing fountains of divine life. I would cut off all relations but that of my soul with the Spirit—all others seem intrusions, worldly, frivolous. The inpouring of the Spirit is checked by so much attention to other than divine things. In the bustle and noisy confusion its voice ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... one of no importance, the chief decides it at once; if frivolous, he may give the complainant a scolding, and put a stop to the case in the middle of the complaint, or he may allow it to go on without paying any attention to it whatever. Family quarrels are often treated in this way, and then a man may be seen stating his case with ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... capacity, she acquired a very complete and comprehensive education. When but eleven years old, she composed a charming little story, and before she had reached womanhood, undertook a translation of the Iliad. She showed no inclination for the frivolous amusements of a frivolous society. Her view of life and its responsibilities was a serious one, and she addressed all her energies to the work of self-improvement and self-culture. She read and re-read the ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... apart and he was going into the Church, and the Church could always maintain her children by hook or by crook in those days: no great hopes, because his family had no interest with the great to get him a benefice, and the young man's own habits were frivolous, and, indeed, such as our cloth merchant would not have put up with in any one but a clerk that was to be. His trivialities were reading and penmanship, and he was so wrapped up in them that often he could hardly be got away to ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... He is manageable, sober too, when his mind is charged. As to the French people, they are the most mixed of any European nation; so they are packed with contrasts: they are full of sentiment, they are sharply logical; free-thinkers, devotees; affectionate, ferocious; frivolous, tenacious; the passion of the season operating like sun or moon on these qualities; and they can reach to ideality out of sensualism. Below your level, they're above it: a paradox is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said: 'What damn nonsense! It's "sermons in books, stones in the running brooks!"' Do go on, Scott, dear, I don't mean to be frivolous; it is fine of you to wish ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... too full of coming loaves to do more than inquire generally as to their comfort. Looking over the mignonette, Mr. Joseph Foxley espied her presently talking to the parrot and tending the monkey. This was more than the frivolous Mr. Joseph could stand. He took his brother and made a tour of the house accordingly, discovering in turn as I have said the drawing-room, the kitchen, the court-yard, the garden and orchard and lastly the bar! That proved the most comfortable, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... dinner and a little lark at the Red Paint or Bonini's or some other Bohemian joint like them.... You know what I mean, no rough stuff ... but a good feed, and two kinds of wine, and a cigarette with the small black. Just gay and frivolous.... Of course I can get any number of girls to run around and help eat up all the nourishment I care to provide. But, good Lord! that isn't it! I'm looking for somebody with human intelligence. Not ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... there is to be done," he said, gloomily. "It's no good making suggestions, if you have some frivolous ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Prevail'd on one suppos'd his sire to burn me. But Minos to this chasm last of the ten, For that I practis'd alchemy on earth, Has doom'd me. Him no subterfuge eludes." Then to the bard I spake: "Was ever race Light as Sienna's? Sure not France herself Can show a tribe so frivolous and vain." The other leprous spirit heard my words, And thus return'd: "Be Stricca from this charge Exempted, he who knew so temp'rately To lay out fortune's gifts; and Niccolo Who first the spice's costly luxury Discover'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... observations already made in this book, and in those which follow, will be of a nature to destroy the opinion which frivolous men maintain, namely that marriage is a sinecure. According to our view, a husband who gives way to ennui is a heretic, and more than that, he is a man who lives quite out of sympathy with the marriage state, of whose importance he has no conception. In ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... rejected. My external goods were not abundant nor numerous, but the consciousness of rectitude was mine; and, in competition with this, the luxury of the heart and of the senses, the gratifications of boundless ambition and inexhaustible wealth, were contemptible and frivolous. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... minds, bodily labour is rest; to those who labour with the body, deep sleep is rest; to the downcast, the weary, and the sorrowful, joy and peace are rest. Nay, further, I think that to the gay, the frivolous, the reckless, when sated with pleasures that cannot last, even sorrow proves to be rest of a kind, although, perchance, it were better that I should call it relief than rest. There is, indeed, but one class of men to whom rest is denied—there ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... impetuosity of the baronet, who, he perceived, was extremely nice and scrupulous in the punctilios of honour; and said it was a pity that two gentlemen should forfeit each other's friendship, much less expose their lives, for such a frivolous cause. "My dear count," cried the Westphalian, "I am charmed to find your sentiments so conformable to my own. In an honourable cause, I despise all danger; my courage, thank Heaven! has been manifested ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Buttercup—and well called—for you're the rosiest, the roundest, and the reddest beauty in all Spithead. BUT. Red, am I? and round—and rosy! Maybe, for I have dissembled well! But hark ye, my merry friend—hast ever thought that beneath a gay and frivolous exterior there may lurk a canker-worm which is slowly but surely eating its way into one's ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... comes in from the Right. She is a middle-aged woman, of faded prettiness and frivolous manner. Every line and bit of character has been massaged out of her face. There is a sudden, embarrassed, and gloomy silence on the ...
— Her Own Way - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... will give calmness. What else is there, brethren! for a man fronting that vague future, from whose weltering sea such black, sharp-toothed rocks protrude? Shall we bow before some stern Fate, as its lord, and try to be as stern as It? Shall we think of some frivolous Chance, as tossing its unguided waves, and try to be as frivolous as It? Shall we try to be content with an animal limitation to the present, and heighten the bright colour of the little to-day by the black background ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the queen (of France.) Yes, madam, I will assure you, quoth I, from the witness of mine own ears. She smiled, and replied, Indeed, I heard he was used ill. So he was, answered I, but not in his entertainment; for that was as splendid as that country could afford it; but in their frivolous delays, and in the unreasonable conditions which they propounded and pressed, upon the advantage they had of his princely person." 2. Bishop Burnet, in his History of the House of Hamilton, (p. 154.) has preserved a letter of the king's to the Scottish ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... I told you before that as a nation I do not admire the Irish; and as to the great world and its frivolous ceremonies, I cannot away with them; they fatigue me. I thank Heaven I was not so unfortunate as to be born a lady of quality. I am now reading Rousseau's "Emile," and love his paradoxes. He chooses a common capacity to educate, and gives as a reason that a genius ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of the details of his opulence—Pemberton could spare him none of them—evidently fed the boy's appreciation of all his friend had given up to come back to him; but in addition to the greater reciprocity established by that heroism he had always his little brooding theory, in which there was a frivolous gaiety too, that their long probation was drawing to a close. Morgan's conviction that the Moreens couldn't go on much longer kept pace with the unexpended impetus with which, from month to month, they did go on. Three weeks after Pemberton had rejoined ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... 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 ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... himself brings to his study, that he continues to reflect upon what he has read, perhaps long after he has laid the book aside. And he does this, not because he wishes to write a criticism about it or even another book; but simply because reflection is a pleasant pastime to him. Frivolous spendthrift! Thou art a reader after my own heart; for thou wilt be patient enough to accompany an author any distance, even though he himself cannot yet see the goal at which he is aiming,—even ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Catherine Howard. He suffered imprisonment more than once for being implicated in quarrels and brawls, did a good deal of fighting in Scotland and France, and was the last victim of Henry's insensate jealousy, being beheaded on a frivolous charge of conspiring against the succession of Edward VI. The death of Henry saved Norfolk from the same fate. S. shares with Sir Thomas Wyatt (q.v.) the honour of being the true successor of Chaucer ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Moreover, in some departments of the comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in combination, really had a freedom and breadth of manner which excels the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the altered Shakspeare as taking precedency of the genuine Shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. The public were never allowed a choice; the great majority of an audience even now cannot be expected to carry the real Shakspeare in their mind, so as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration. Their comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... De Lemos had persisted in declining to surrender the posts at the Chickasaw Bluffs and Natchez, on pretexts which were utterly frivolous. [Footnote: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II., pp. 20, 70, 78, 79; report of Timothy Pickering, January 22, 1798, etc.] At this time the Spanish Court was completely subservient to France, which was ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... author quoted, but in mental constitution, modes of thought, and motives to action. Their tastes were elegant, ornate, and refined. They found pleasure in pursuits which the American deems trivial, frivolous, and unworthy ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... all love, (in the narrow sense in which the word is understood by novel-readers,) you feel, when you look back, are Veal. The young lad and the young girl, whom at a picnic party you have discerned stealing off under frivolous pretexts from the main body of guests, and sitting on the grass by the river-side, enraptured in the prosecution of a conversation which is intellectually of the emptiest, and fancying that they two make all the world, and investing that spot with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... he?" protested the Child reproachfully. He was always troubled when Uncle Andy displayed anything like a frivolous strain. ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... call Antiquity from the old Schools of Greece To testifie the arms of Chastity? 440 Hence had the huntress Dian her dred bow Fair silver-shafted Queen for ever chaste, Wherwith she tam'd the brinded lioness And spotted mountain pard, but set at nought The frivolous bolt of Cupid, gods and men Fear'd her stern frown, and she was queen oth' Woods. What was that snaky-headed Gorgon sheild That wise Minerva wore, unconquer'd Virgin, Wherwith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone? But rigid looks of Chast austerity, 450 And noble grace ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... said Mrs. Taine, quite casually,—when, under the influence of the mildly stimulating beverage, the talk had assumed a more frivolous vein,—"Who is your talented neighbor that so charms Mr. King with the music of ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... foreigner—just as land which will give a poor crop, if planted with sets from potatoes that have been grown for three or four years on this same soil, will yet yield excellently if similar sets be brought from twenty miles off. For the potato, so far as I have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant, easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, which if ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... An allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the Chians (in Greek)—'crapping Chian.' There is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the Athenians invented for exacting contributions ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... should display a strong inclination towards affectation and flirtation; be extremely showy or else careless in her attire, frivolous in her tastes and eager for admiration, he may rightly conclude that very little home happiness is to be expected from ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... night Leonora received him with a smile that frightened him. She was affecting a mood of hectic cheerfulness, trying to drown her worries by sheer force, overwhelming her lover with a flood of light, frivolous chatter; but suddenly, at the limit of her endurance, she gave way, and in the middle of a caress, burst into tears and sank to a divan, sobbing as if her heart ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ago rose about them like a flood, and have kept them swimming with sturdy stroke the years through, their eyes level with the troubled surface—no horizon in sight, no passing fleets, no comrades but those who struggle in the flood like themselves. If they be frivolous, lightheaded, men without purpose or achievement, we may conjecture, if we do not know, that they were born so, or spoiled by fortune, or befuddled by self-indulgence. It is no great matter what we think ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... expostulation with persons who had made some jesting statement in his hearing which he received with immense gravity. I am ashamed to confess that I used to play upon this trait of his after a fashion which I think annoyed him a little, and which he must have regarded as exceedingly frivolous. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... opposites. There are some, and I am afraid that in a congregation as large as this there must be some representatives of the class, who seem to turn this apostolic precept right round about, and whatsoever things are illusory and vain, whatsoever things are mean, and frivolous, and contemptible, whatsoever things are unjust, and whatsoever things are impure, and whatsoever things are ugly, and whatsoever things are branded with a stigma by all men they think on these things. Like the flies that are attracted to a piece of putrid meat, there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a delightful time," when spoken at the termination of a formal tea by a frivolous woman takes altogether different inflection than the same words spoken between lovers who have enjoyed themselves. Mimic the two characters in repeating this ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... jealousy at first; but, as he was desirous to be satisfied of the reality of the fact, he kept a strict watch over his wife's actions. The Duke of York and her ladyship had, for some time, been upon such terms of intimacy, as not to pass their time in frivolous amusements; however, the husband's return obliged them to maintain some decorum: he therefore never went to her house, but in form, that is to say, always accompanied by some friend or other, to give his amours at least ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... home. In the case of both boys and girls, the decreased amount of time spent in the home not only prevents proper training by the parents, but it stresses outside interests which are too often opposed to domestic ideals. Many parents either allow or encourage their children to acquire frivolous habits. As the result of all of these factors, both young men and young women frequently marry without having been properly prepared for ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... Haldimand. As he was a ready and powerful speaker, as well as a vigorous writer, it was felt that he would soon become intolerable if his career were not effectively checked. He was accordingly tried before the Assembly on a frivolous charge of having, in a private conversation held at the house of a Mr. Glennan, in York, spoken disrespectfully of some of the members. The proceedings were the veriest travesty of the forms of justice. The accused was found guilty, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... her bedroom, having laid Melchard's letter on her table, she had intended returning at once to pleasant and frivolous conversation with Dick Bellamy. For to-night she was nervous—a little unstrung, it may be, by the pain she had given to his brother; and Dick, with his quiescent vitality, his odd phrases and uncompromising directness ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... town-house clock. The last of the gallants, gradually discovering that he was alone, would look around him musingly, and, taking in the situation, slowly wend his way home. On no other night of the week was frivolous talk about the softer sex indulged in, the Auld Lichts being creatures of habit who never thought of smiling on a Monday. Long before they reached their teens they were earning their keep as herds in the surrounding glens or filling "pirns" for their parents; ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... placing the weaker in the middle, or to begin with the weakest and proceed to the strongest. For my part I think this should depend on the nature and exigencies of the cause, yet with this reservation, that the discourse might not dwindle from the powerful into what is nugatory and frivolous. ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... how happy we are here!" said Sister Ada to Joan. "I often pity the people who live in the world. Their time is filled with such poor, mean things, and their thoughts must be so frivolous. Now our time is all taken up with holy duties, and we have no room for frivolous thoughts. The world is shut out: it cannot creep in here. We ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... enough of defiance and jealousy on the part of other colleges. Hence it happens that you rarely find yourself in a shop, or other place of public resort, with a Christ-Church man, but he takes occasion, if young and frivolous, to talk loudly of the Dean, as an indirect expression of his own connection with this splendid college; the title of Dean being exclusively attached to the headship of Christ Church. The Dean, as may be supposed, partakes in this superior dignity of his "House;" he ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Bill is never real gay, But built on a sour-face plan; Bill wouldn't laugh, whatever you'd say; Looks like a love-poisoned man. "Grin, ye hyenas," he'll say as he smokes; "I ain't a frivolous guy—" "Thinkin' of all of the pain you caused folks While learnin' to play?" ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... night set a halo about Rose in the man's mind. He had known for years that he had not loved miladi as a man could love, but he also questioned whether such a light, frivolous nature could have appreciated the strong, earnest affection. Her great effort to keep herself young had led to a meretricious childishness. She had a vain, narrow soul, and this had dwarfed it still more. Many a night he had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... the princesses how much he had condescended in allowing their confessors to associate with their court, such frequent intercourse with seculars, especially with ladies, being undesirable for religious, and giving occasion to idle and frivolous remarks. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... for nothing," she went on. "Ah! we are contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures. We can bore ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do. Not one of us that understands that she has a part to play in life. In old days in France, women were beneficent lights; they lived to comfort those that mourned, ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... buildings were spread out, defined by wide streets, where humanity and its traffic sped, busy as ants. In a green plot, the sombre facade of the court-house surmounted by an eyeless stone statue of Justice, frowned on the frivolous throng below; and along the verge of the common, marble fingers pointed up to the heaven of blue that bent above "God's Acre"; while now and then, bulbous towers, and glittering steeple vanes, caught the sunshine on their polished ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... yet encouraged himself to underrate the true importance of the feeling which Emily had awakened in him. There was an end to all self-deception now. After what Francine had said to him, this shallow and frivolous man no longer resisted the all-absorbing influence of love. He shrank under the one terrible question that forced itself on his mind:—Had that jealous girl ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... had every stimulus to appear at her best on this particular evening, for the audience, frivolous, volatile, taking its character from the loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman of Europe. As the last of the Georges declared himself in good-humor, so every toady grinned ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... who could help her. All the knowledge that she had imbibed taught her that there was no God either to hear prayer, or succour the wronged. Her name would become a laughing-stock and a hissing, to be put on a par with Clodia's or that of any other frivolous woman, unless she not merely gave up the man she loved, but also threw herself into the arms of the man she utterly hated. The craving for any respite was intense. She was young; but for the moment, at least, life had lost every glamour. If death was an endless sleep, why not welcome it as a ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... in hand that he was not as other men, and then gives thanks to God for this: But the conclusion was most vilely false, and therefore the praise for it could not but be foolish, vain, and frivolous. Whence I infer, that if to use such language in prayer is dangerous, then to affect the use thereof is yet more dangerous: Prayer must be made with humble hearts, and sensible words, and of that we have treated before, wherefore high, flaunting, swelling words of vanity becomes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... death-agony of the Jewish kingdom has come to an end. The frivolous levity, which fed itself on illusions and would not be sobered by facts, has been finally crushed out of the wretched people. The dreary succession of incompetent kings—now a puppet set up by Egypt, now another puppet set up by Babylon, has ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... frivolous occupation! catching each other!—nay, only trying to catch each other! Poor fools and blind! let us cease, I say—' But he had no one to say it to, for the whole audience had gone off in different directions, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... would be in a bad way if we ALL of us spent our time in chanting dirges for Italy. I should think the neighbourhood of our host of this evening and his wife would make anybody frivolous, in self-defence. Oh, yes, I know what you're going to say; you are perfectly right, but they are both so deliciously funny with their patriotism.—Are you going in already? It is so ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage. It may be frequently remarked of the studious and speculative, that they are proud of trifles, and that their amusements seem frivolous and childish. Whether it be that men, conscious of great reputation, think themselves above the reach of censure, and safe in the admission of negligent indulgences, or that mankind expect from elevated genius a uniformity of greatness, and watch its degradation ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... lunch-rooms. She ventured down a side-street, toward a furnace-glow of sunset. West End Avenue was imposing to her in its solid brick and graystone houses, and pavements milky in the waning light. Then came a block of expensive apartments. She was finding the city of golden rewards. Frivolous curtains hung at windows; in a huge apartment-house hall she glimpsed a negro attendant in a green uniform with a monkey-cap and close-set rows of brass buttons; she had a hint of palms—or what looked like palms; of marble and mahogany ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... soft creeping o'er the flowery field, And shadow'd waters; in whose bushy side The Mountain-Bees their fragrant treasure hide Murmuring; and sings the lonely Thrush conceal'd!— Then, Ceremony, in thy gilded halls, Where forc'd and frivolous the themes arise, With bow and smile unmeaning, O! how palls At thee, and thine, my sense!—how oft it sighs For leisure, wood-lanes, dells, and water-falls; And feels th' untemper'd ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Papadopoulos is dead. He died three months ago of angina pectoris, and Lola was with him at the end. Eleanor Faversham has married a Colonial bishop. Campion, too, has married—and married the last woman in the world to whom one would have thought of mating him—a frivolous butterfly of a creature who drags him to dinner-parties and Ascot and suppers at the Savoy, and holds Barbara's Building and all it connotes in vixenish detestation. He roars out the agony of his philanthropic spirit to Lola and myself, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... who had been exchanged for Lord Cornwallis and released from the Tower, was added to the company. Adams had a holy horror of Frenchmen in general, and of Count Vergennes in particular. He shared that common but mistaken view of Frenchmen which regards them as shallow, frivolous, and insincere; and he was indignant at the position taken by Vergennes on the question of the fisheries. In this, John Adams felt as all New Englanders felt, and he realized the importance of the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... short time; that she suffered a fatal relapse, and that she died a lingering and a painful death. Mr. Welwyn (who, in after years, had a habit of vaingloriously describing his marriage as "a love-match on both sides") was really fond of his wife in his own frivolous, feeble way, and suffered as acutely as such a man could suffer, during the latter days of her illness, and at the terrible time when the doctors, one and all, confessed that her life was a thing to be ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... as 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 ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ground when he taxes him with indulging too frequently in polemics, urging him to 'come out of the arena' and to cease girding at Froude and Kingsley, whose writings Freeman loved to abuse. Freeman, on the other hand, grumbles at Green for going outside the province of history to write on more frivolous subjects, and scolds him for introducing fanciful ideas into his narrative of events. The classic instance of this was when Green, after describing the capture by the French of the famous Chateau Gaillard in Normandy, had the audacity to say, 'from its broken walls ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... pictured to her troubled spirit an enviable smoothness; and his having achieved that smooth way she considered a sign of strength; and she wished to lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His reputation for indifference to the frivolous charms of girls clothed him with a noble coldness, and gave him the distinction of a far-seen solitary iceberg in Southern waters. The popular notion of hereditary titled aristocracy resembles her sentiment for a man that would not flatter and could not be flattered by her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... nineteenth century, for a prejudice in favour of "extra-superfine" formerly existed, as the coarser textures, now prevalent, were confined exclusively to common sailors, hackney-coachmen, and bum-bailiffs. These frivolous distinctions are happily exploded, and the true gentleman may now show in Saxony, or figure in Flushing—the one being suggestive of his property, and the other indicative of his taste. These remarks apply exclusively to woollens, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... beheld the populace of Paris in too "rose-colored" a light; it is not so much of "an amiable rabble" as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that, bound up in the moral law, Are laws of health and physical control, Unheeded in the family and school; How fashion, stupid pride, and love of show, The greed of gain, or the pursuit of pleasure, Empty and frivolous, make men and women False to their natures, cruel to each other And to the unborn offspring they devote To misery through ill-assorted unions, Or habits reckless of maternal dues; How marriage, sacredest of mortal steps, Is entered on from ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... without envying. She perceived, for the first time, on this occasion, that if Eve were indeed a Hajji, it was not a Hajji of a common school; and, while her modesty and self- abasement led her bitterly to regret the hours irretrievably wasted in the frivolous levities so common to those of her sex with whom she had been most accustomed to mingle, her sincere regret did not lessen her admiration for one she ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... to be refused for? Because he did not defend his betrothed? Allowing that was not very handsome on his part, still, he's a civilian, has not had a university education, and as a solid business man, it was for him to look with contempt on the frivolous prank of some unknown little officer. And what sort of insult was it, after ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... As stated above (A. 2), an oath is not good except for one who makes good use of it. Now two conditions are required for the good use of an oath. First, that one swear, not for frivolous, but for urgent reasons, and with discretion; and this requires judgment or discretion on the part of the person who swears. Secondly, as regards the point to be confirmed by oath, that it be neither false, nor unlawful, and this requires both truth, so that one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... is too much!" cried Michel Ardan's adversary. "I do not know why I should continue so frivolous a discussion! Please yourself about this insane expedition! We need ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... street, next to the toy-shop, where are base-balls, marbles and so on, -and then he comes back with a jerk, to four ones are four. So with us also. We are seeking the meaning of our task, but the mind takes advantage of a moment of slackened attention, and flits off from one frivolous detail to another, till we suddenly come back to consciousness after traversing leagues of space. We must learn to conquer this, and to go back within ourselves into the beam of perceiving consciousness itself, which is a beam of the Oversoul. ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... Frivolous Mrs. Tuttle turned and encountered a pair of eyes steely in their determination. Re-adjusting the gold cage more comfortably on its camp-stool and murmuring a blessing on the hooked-beak occupant, the azure lady tripped off in the wake of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... her counsel, then would be in such a pretty confusion, occasioned, you must know, by acting before so much company, that not only I, but the whole court, was prejudiced in her favor; and all that the next heir to her husband had to urge was thought so groundless and frivolous, that when it came to her counsel to reply, there was not half so much said as every one besides in the court thought he could have urged to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... I've wasted my career on frivolous trifles like science, you needn't think I've wholly neglected the true inwardness of life, as exemplified in 'The Hunting of the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to a pecuniary settlement. So 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... did no one else the depth of pity and the enormous capacity for affection in the heart of his child, and had from her earliest youth striven to inculcate self-reliance and thoughtfulness. "Most women are frivolous and empty-headed fools," he would assert hotly, "with no strength of mind, and no notion of playing the game;" and yet, by one of those inexplicable contradictions with which men of his type so frequently give the lie to their expressed opinions, he had married a ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the main an effective effort has been made to bring to trial and punishment all violators of the law, but at the same time care has been taken that frivolous and technical offenses should not be used to swell the fees of officers or to harass well-disposed citizens. Especial attention is called to the facts connected with the prosecution of violations of the election laws and of offenses against United States officers. The ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... said: "In view of the complete power of Congress over foreign commerce and its authority to prohibit the introduction of foreign articles recognized and enforced by many previous decisions of this court, the contentions are so devoid of merit as to cause them to be frivolous."[484] In Brolan v. United States[485] the Court again stressed the absolute nature of Congress's power over foreign commerce, saying: "In the argument reference is made to decisions of this court dealing with the subject of the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, but the very postulate ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... criticising all the public expenditures, and even reducing the gross sum in cases of extravagance. But the same contumacious spirit, which several times expelled Mr. Christie, member for Gaspe, on purely vexatious and frivolous charges, and constantly impeached judges without the least legal justification, simply to satisfy personal spite or political malice, would probably have been exhibited towards all officials had the majority in the assembly been given the right of voting each salary separately. The assembly ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... past eleven when he returned, but even the spectacle of his wife laboriously darning her old dress failed to reduce his good-humour in the slightest degree. In a frivolous mood he even took a feather from the dismembered hat on the table and stuck it in his hair. He took the stump of a strong cigar from his lips and, exhaling a final cloud of smoke, tossed ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... he toucheth as doth include folly, in the matter or manner thereof. Then he further determineth it, by adjoining a peculiar quality thereof, unprofitableness, or impertinency; [Greek] (which are not pertinent), or conducible to any good purpose: whence may be collected that it is a frivolous and idle sort of facetiousness which ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... her voice a little, and intimating by the slight movement of her head towards him, that their conversation was to become a tete-a-tete. "Well," she continued, "I suppose that life is that with all of us, only you see with us poor frivolous people, a search means nearly always the same thing—a search for amusement or distraction, whichever you ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in favour of German Universities and against French Universities goes back to the early days of the Reformation. Already in "Hamlet" we find the serious young man going to Wittenberg and the frivolous young man going to Paris in quest of worldly amusement. That pro-German and anti-French prejudice has continued until our own day. In vain have I for twenty years attempted in the Universities of Scotland to send our graduates to French Universities. In vain did I contend ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... his opinion, much less a Queen Faery; and he stayed in the Hill and walked through all the passages to see that every thing was in order. The Butterfly, poor thing! was dead, and the Black Ant of course was too busy burying him to attend to such frivolous matters. The Grasshopper, however, came the whole length of the Garden, and each skip was precisely as long as the last. It took just one hundred and sixty-seven skips to reach the Lilac Bush. His uniform looked finely, and the Walking-Sticks ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... virginal. Doctor Crosson mopped his brow at the atrocity of his thoughts this morning. The springtime air was to blame. The windows were open for the first time. The breeze that lolled through the church had no right there. It was irreverent and frivolous. It was amused at the people. It rippled with laughter at the preacher's heavy effort to start a jealousy between the pangs of the flesh and the pangs of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... must be tired with such levities: the spirit of the age is no longer frivolous; and I dare say as the march of gravity proceeds, we shall get rid of galas altogether." The queen said this with an air of inconceivable wisdom, for the "Society for the Diffusion of General Stupefaction" had been recently established among the fairies, and its ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is also true. A little show of bravura, possibly in a passage which has not cost the pianist more than ten minutes of frivolous practice, will turn many of the unthinking auditors into a roaring mob. This is, of course, very distressing to the sincere artist who strives to establish ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... me the pencil," said Lizzie, "I lost mine yesterday," and the new members became unduly frivolous. ...
— Betty Leicester - A Story For Girls • Sarah Orne Jewett
... absence of this Mount indicates a more or less frivolous way of looking at life, while an exaggeration of it denotes an exaggeration of all the ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... daughter of a frivolous mother. Her dislike for the rugged life of Girl Scouts is eventually changed to appreciation, when the rescue of little Lucia, a woodland waif, becomes a problem for the girls ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... source of learning in the great departmental school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first daughter first put their heads together ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... sister-in-law to be a wordly-minded, frivolous woman, with many trivial ambitions; but in this instance he had misgivings that she might be right. What did he, John Merrick, know of select society? A poor man, of humble origin, he had wandered into the infantile, embryo West years ago and there amassed a fortune. When ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... cause, and that of this, the nation complained of being the judge, no evil can ensue. But this argument concedes the right of examining the communications in question, which is denied. Allow it and you will have frivolous as well as grave complaints to answer, and must not only heal the wounds of a just national pride, but apply a remedy to those of a morbid susceptibility. To show that my fear of the progressive nature of these ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... this only applies to frivolous and silly women, but you are wrong. It applied even to goddesses! Historians inform us that the haughty Juno, discovering that her husband, Jupiter, was going the way of all flesh and nearly every husband, borrowed ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... title of emir was no longer suitable to the Ottoman greatness; and Bajazet condescended to accept a patent of sultan from the caliphs who served in Egypt under the yoke of the Mamalukes: [59] a last and frivolous homage that was yielded by force to opinion; by the Turkish conquerors to the house of Abbas and the successors of the Arabian prophet. The ambition of the sultan was inflamed by the obligation of deserving this ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... government. Already during her mother's lifetime, the health of this unhappy princess, who has passed into history under the title of Juana the Mad, gave rise to serious anxiety. Deserted by the handsome and frivolous Philip at a time when she most required his presence, she sank into a state of profound melancholy. She waited, in vain, for the return of the husband whom her unreasoning jealousy and amorous importunities had driven ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... riding past the pavilions of the lesser men, strikes with the sharp end of his lance, in a challenge to mortal combat, the shield of the formidable Templar. It was, indeed, a splendid moment! What matter that no Templar was allowed by the rules of his Order to take part in so secular and frivolous an affair as a tournament? It is the privilege of great masters to make things so, and it is a churlish thing to gainsay it. Was it not Wendell Holmes who described the prosaic man, who enters a drawing-room with a couple of facts, like ill-conditioned bull-dogs at his heels, ready ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sense of humor tempered Miss Carrington's seriousness, and Geoffrey Ormond joined in her merry laugh. In spite of his love of ease and frivolous badinage, he was, as I was to learn some day, considerably less of a good-natured fool than it occasionally pleased him to appear ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... inexperienced they may be), that they take every 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 ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... sheer meanness of spirit, impulsive alike in good and ill, unbridled in temper and tongue, reckless in insult and wit, Henry's delight was in the display of an empty and prodigal magnificence, his one notion of government was a dream of arbitrary power. But frivolous as the king's mood was, he clung with a weak man's obstinacy to a distinct line of policy; and this was the policy not of Hubert or Langton but of John. He cherished the hope of recovering his heritage across the sea. He believed in the absolute power ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... seem taller than it really was, and when, in the metal mirror which lay on her dressing table, she beheld herself for the first time in the glorious likeness of a queen, a new expression dawned on her features. It seemed as if a portion of her lord's pride were reflected there. The frivolous waiting-woman sank involuntarily on her knees, as her eyes, full of smiling admiration, met the radiant glance of Nitetis,—of the woman who was beloved by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... performances, which the favorable reception of this will induce the Writer to publish. His purpose is neither selfish nor temporary, but aims at the illustration of some important branches of the moral constitution of man. Whether this tale will be classed with the ordinary or frivolous sources of amusement, or be ranked with the few productions whose usefulness secures to them a lasting reputation, the reader must be ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... village and Boston, the stage has been superseded by the locomotive, the old "square-riggers," commanded by Cape Cod men, no longer sail the seas. Along the main road the houses have changed hands. Didama Rogers peers no more from her parlor window; that parlor is now profaned by the frivolous and irreverent summer boarder. But the old residents love to talk of the days that are gone and if you happen to catch Mr. Isaac Higgins, now postmaster and a dignified member of the board of selectmen, in a reminiscent mood ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Euripides wrote. Every one who knew the story of Orestes' return at all, knew of the hair and the footprint. Aristophanes in the Clouds (534 ff.) uses them proverbially, when he speaks of his comedy "recognising its brother's tress." It would have been frivolous to invent new ones. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the signs are older than Aeschylus; neither they nor the word [Greek: homopteros] particularly suit Aeschylus' purpose. (Cf. Dr. Verrall's introduction to the Libation-Bearers.) ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... Bill, "the Professor" does not appear to advantage. Being entirely unable to compete with him in a war of words, he is usually forced to betake himself to dancing; which, compared with oratory, is frivolous. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... way and never could—but it seemed so cruel and heartless to send him away to the front without any hope of comfort. I cried like a baby; and yet—oh, I am afraid that there must be something incurably frivolous about me, because, right in the middle of it all, with me crying and Fred looking so wild and tragic, the thought popped into my head that it would be an unendurable thing to see that nose across from me at the breakfast table every ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no doubt in the early periods of the Republic, when they were all navigators and fishermen. The usual salutation at Cairo is, How do you sweat? a dry hot skin being a sure indication of a destructive ephemeral fever. I think some author has observed, in contrasting the haughty Spaniard with the frivolous Frenchman, that the proud steady gait and inflexible solemnity of the former were expressed in his mode of salutation, Come esta? How do you stand? whilst the Comment vous portez vous? How do you carry yourself? was equally expressive ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... 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 be made to the rights of humanity; and princes, ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... brought others of their kind to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more they outnumbered us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should not govern them. And they lured our young people to imitate them—frivolous, sinful, riotous folk ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... following circumstance. Nuno de Guzman, who had held the government of Panuco for two years, conducted himself in a furious and tyrannical manner, arbitrarily extending the bounds of his jurisdiction on the most frivolous pretences, and putting to death all who dared to oppose his commands. Among these, Pedro Gonzalez de Truxillo, having asserted truly that his district was dependent on Mexico, Guzman immediately ordered him to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... public with this young girl whom he had so stupidly insulted, and in whose face he never should be able to look again. Decidedly, he did not understand women, since he could not even tell a virtuous girl from a frivolous coquette! Why had he not been able to see that the good-natured, simple familiarity of Reine Vincart had nothing in common with the enticing allurements of those who, to use Claudet's words, had "thrown their ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... moustache, and a bronzed cheek—rather grave in his manner, but still perfectly good-natured, and when he smiled showing a most handsome set of regular teeth. Clara seemed less pleased (I thought) at his coming than the others, and took pleasure in tormenting him by a thousand pettish and frivolous ways, which I was sorry for, as I thought he did not like it; and used to look half chidingly at her from time to time, but without any effect, for she just went on as before, and generally ended by taking my arm and saying, "Come away, Harry; you always are kind, and never look ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... sophisticated people of Elgin; countryfolk, on a market day, would wait a quarter of an hour for the young man and think nothing of it; and I imagine Bofield found his account in the elevator, though he did complain sometimes that such persons went up and down on frivolous pretexts or to amuse the baby. As a matter of fact, Elgin had begun as the centre of "trading" for the farmers of Fox County, and had soon over-supplied that limit in demand; so that when other interests added themselves to the activity of the town ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... obedience to Velasquez. The arrival of Benito Martinez, chaplain to the governor of Cuba, contributed to place our affairs in an unfavourable light; and as Puertocarrero made a remonstrance to the bishop, he caused him to be thrown into prison, on a frivolous charge of having taken away with him a woman from Medellin to the Indies. The bishop made a represention of our affairs to his majesty, stating every thing in the most favourable light for Velasquez, and as much as he possibly could against ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... 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 her death, seventy years later, she maintained the character ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... 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 now. To be sure, I am bound ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... not hurt at the hardness of your judgment, because you don't understand what I am saying. You know very well I am not frivolous, and that I have learned long ago the seriousness of life. But at the same time I value the entree into the best society of Berlin for what it is worth. Now the opportunity has come, and I shall ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... efficient best of the poorest ideas of any man on the plains. His attitude was a perpetual sidling apology. It has been said that Alfred killed his men diffidently, without enthusiasm, as though loth to take the responsibility, and this in the pioneer days on the plains was either frivolous affectation, or else—Alfred. With women he was lost. Men would have staked their last ounce of dust at odds that he had never in his life made a definite assertion of fact to one of the opposite sex. When it became absolutely necessary to change a woman's ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... dependence too much for her. The feminist aglow with equality and imbued with too vivid a feeling of sex antagonism may marry and bear children, but she rarely becomes a fireside companion of the type the average man idealizes. Then the vain, the frivolous, the sexually uncontrolled,—these too make poor choice for him who has set his heart on a wife who will cook his meals, darn his stockings and care for the children. To be non-domestic is a privilege or a right we cannot deny to women, nor is there condemnation in the term,—it is merely ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... immortal soul whose eternal future may quite well be conditioned on the way in which you fulfil your trust. It would be well as a preliminary to marriage to take a little of the time ordinarily given to its frivolous accompaniments and seriously meditate upon the words of our Lord which seem wholly appropriate to the circumstance: "Whoso shall cause to stumble one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... It must be owned, and no one was more ready to confess it than himself, that his literary attainments were by no means of a high order. "We don't spin tops" is a favorite saying amongst artillery officers, indicating that they do not shirk their duty by frivolous pursuits; but it must be confessed that Servadac, being naturally idle, was very much given to "spinning tops." His good abilities, however, and his ready intelligence had carried him successfully through the curriculum of his early career. He was a good draughtsman, an excellent rider—having ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... to the care 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 ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... Dixon and Edith Gervase naturally viewed the Vaughans' comical position with all the high spirits of their age, but the elder ladies could not look at matters in this frivolous light. ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... the impalpable throng that people the state galleries is Marie Antoinette, and her spirit shows us many faces. It is charming, haughty, considerate, headstrong, frivolous, thoughtful, degraded, dignified, in quick succession. We see her arrive at the Palace amid the tumultuous adoration of the crowd, and leave amidst its execrations. Sometimes she is richly apparelled, as befits a queen; anon she sports the motley trappings ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... deities of other countries; nay, the Jews were in a particular manner ridiculed for being a credulous race; so that whatever reports of a miraculous nature came out of that country were looked upon by the Heathen world as false and frivolous. When they heard of Christianity, they heard of it as a quarrel amongst this people about some articles of their own superstition. Despising, therefore, as they did, the whole system, it was not probable that they would enter, with any degree of seriousness ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... epicurean, he who lived for his pleasures, taking them with a calculated moderation that he might preserve the power to enjoy; she, the etiolated, the subtle, the earnest follower of art, she who seemed always a little too earnest and conventional for that group of the frivolous and unconventional rich—people had wondered for years how there could be anything between them. These two alone understood that the bond was of the mind, not of the flesh or the spirit. She but thought, and he thought with her; she but lifted her eyebrow or moved her hand, and the motion ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the second-story railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I never was no hand to deny myself the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... injured in their fortunes and their influence, have been so long an oppressed caste—excluded from power, and even from sympathy—that they have acquired the faults of slaves—have become timid and frivolous, or bitter. ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... providence checking or chastising sin); from such occurrences it is common to snatch occasion and matter of calumny. Those who are disposed this way are ready peremptorily to charge them upon whomsoever they dislike or dissent from, although without any apparent cause, or upon most frivolous and senseless pretenses; yea, often when reason showeth quite the contrary, and they who are so charged are in just esteem of all men the least obnoxious to such accusations. So, usually, the best friends of mankind, those who most heartily wish the peace and ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... day, with nobody about but a lost dog, and the houses, it could be supposed, deserted, or their inmates secluded in an abandonment to misery. And, taking another glance at him, I thought it probable, from the frank regard of the blue and frivolous eye which met mine, that he would have recognized timidity in a lady at a distance, and would have passed her without seeing her. Uncertain whether his guess in stopping me was lucky, he began pulling nervously at a bleached moustache. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... then we touched at a gay little landing-place as different from that of serious, serene Greenport as the ex-sailor's own church would be from a the dansant. I suppose when other sea-going men of old made money and grew just a little, little bit frivolous, they thought no more of whales, but moved across that bright stretch of water and spent their riches building pretty houses for their children to enjoy. "Shelter Island" is a charming name for a place to rest in after a strenuous ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... the charges preferred. They were very numerous, and dated back almost to the very day that he had joined the ship. There were twelve in all. I shall not trouble the reader with the whole of them, as many were very frivolous. ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... commendable actions as making porters of his royal captives it is not becoming in us meaner mortals to set up a contrary opinion. Indeed nothing can be more certain than that the art of dancing was not regarded by the ancients generally in the light of a frivolous accomplishment, nor its practice a thing wherewith to shoo away a tedious hour. In their minds it evidently had a certain dignity and elevation, so much so that they associated it with their ideas (tolerably correct ones, on the whole) ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... that principle of our nature of which we are here speaking, are strongly excited to do better. To feed vanity, is to commend vanities; and they who prize and commend beauty, or fashion, or dress, or frivolous accomplishments, may be guilty of this folly; but not the parent or the person who commends in a child those things which are really commendable, and after which it is his greatest glory ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... "You frivolous thing!" laughed Betty, squinting at the unbecoming neck for a moment. "It's too high behind, that's all. Rip off the collar and I'll cut it down. And I have an extra blue tie that you can have—it needs a tie. But I thought you'd manage to ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... which to explain it. They would constitute the mechanism of reproduction; and if nature were no finer than that in its structure, science could not go deeper than that in its discoveries. And although it is frivolous to suppose that nature ends in this way at the limits of our casual apprehension, and has no hidden roots, yet philosophically that would be as good a stopping place as any other. Ultimately we should have to be satisfied with ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... and excited, and objected to the second saddling out in the space of the yard, when he was keen to get away. It seemed unreasonable to Bobs, and he ran round and generally behaved in a frivolous manner, while Norah struggled with the girth. When it was done, she took her head, somewhat dishevelled, from under the saddle flap. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... affirm, that nothing else can possibly render any supposed revelation incredible. Yet still the observation is, I think, true beyond doubt; that objections against Christianity, as distinguished from objections against its evidence, are frivolous[65]." ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... cannot admit that it weakened the observations themselves; that it took anything from their real weight and solidity. Coarse minds think all that is subtle, futile: that because it is not gross and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is therefore light and frivolous, and of no importance in the real affairs of life; thus making their own confined understandings the measure of truth, and supposing that whatever they do not distinctly perceive, is nothing. Seneca, who was not one of ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... men, who were very frivolous, like most of the islanders, laughed aloud, and even the elders smiled. The chief now rose with his staff in his grasp, and, pointing first to me and then to the sky, was, I imagined, propounding a different interpretation of the omen from that advanced by the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... respectful admiration. To have a strange young man to dine off-hand struck her as novel. She had a general conviction that it would seem to Lewis closely allied to light conduct, and that only foreigners or frivolous people let down to this extent the bars of family life. Now that Mrs. Taylor had set her the example, she was less certain of the moral turpitude of such an act, but she concluded also that her husband would be in the way at table. What she ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... be his quiddits now, his quillets,] Quiddits are subtilties; quillets are nice and frivolous distinctions.] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... wrong must expect from you neither compromise nor show of friendship; that you are the open and declared enemy of unclean speech, filthy jesting, secret sins, with their hints and implied fascinations, brainless pursuits, frivolous conversation, and low down levels of existence, and, with the exception of those whose enmity it is a distinction to have, people will come to realize that your position is neither that of the religious crank nor of self-righteous conceit—that it is the expression ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... of the falls flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and contribute their tiny warble to the diapason of the waterfall. It rewards one well for penetrating the deep gash which has been made into the earth. It seemed so very far away from all buzzing, frivolous, or vexing things, in the cool, dark abyss into which only the noon-day sun penetrates. All beautiful things which love damp; all exquisite, tender ferns and mosses; all shade- loving parasites flourish there in perennial beauty. And high above in the sunshine, the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... 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, ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... not laugh. Tell them of Demosthenes living in a cellar, with head half shaved to prevent his appearing in public, and there will be admiration; was it any wonder that he became an orator? But let a man be as bent on becoming a saint; let him give up one hour's frivolous talk in order to commune with his Father in secret; then we suspect that such an one is becoming righteous overmuch. Mind, no one complains of a man being anxious to be wise overmuch, or rich overmuch, healthy overmuch; he may burn the ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... Reformation of the Knave of Hearts". It is not improbable that some may object to me that a knave is an unworthy hero for an epic poem—that a hero ought to be all that is great and good. The objection is frivolous. The greatest work of this kind that the world has ever produced has "the Devil" for its hero; and supported as my author is by so great a precedent, I contend that his hero is a very decent hero, and especially as he has the advantage of Milton's, by reforming, ...
— English Satires • Various
... affectation nor inadvertence. I have carefully avoided the introduction of personal reflections of any kind. Much the greater part of the topics which have been used to blacken this nobleman are either unjust or frivolous. At best, they have a tendency to give the resentment of this bitter calamity a wrong direction, and to turn a public grievance into a mean personal, or a dangerous national, quarrel. Where there is a regular scheme of operations carried on, it is the system, and ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... to be placed under arrest, and confined on board of a vessel lying in the harbour. This high-handed measure was followed by the arrest and imprisonment of several other cavaliers, probably on grounds equally frivolous. *9 ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... those short twenty days, the students could have no reason to criticise his knowledges or his person. If he was insulted for some cause which deserved insult, there may be reasons in our considering the act of the students, but if we show undue leniency toward the frivolous students who would insult a new teacher without cause, it would affect the dignity of this school. The spirit of education is not only in imparting technical knowledges, but also in encouraging honest, ennobling and samurai-like virtues, while eliminating the evil tendency to vulgarity ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... I will see that a copy is sent to your Majesty at once. It is, of course, work of a very light and frivolous kind—but it is popular and it does no harm." Then, as by an after-thought, the official countenance grew grave. "Was her Majesty also intending to ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... am the chief of the arsenal,[392] employed 350 At present in repairing certain galleys But roughly used by the Genoese last year. This morning comes the noble Barbaro[393] Full of reproof, because our artisans Had left some frivolous order of his house, To execute the state's decree: I dared To justify the men—he raised his hand;— Behold my blood! the first time ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... see that God was around them, about their path and about their bed, and spying out all their ways; and in the light of His presence, they dare not be frivolous, dare not be ignorant, dare not be mean, dare not be spiteful, dare not ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... one of the liberal arts, to the degree that most of your countrymen do when they travel in Italy. If you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you, but I insist upon your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light, brings him into a great deal of bad company, and takes up a great deal of time which might be much ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean strength—strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there—the only certain element in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Mary disregarded the frivolous interruption, and went on speaking to the girl, and now there was something pleasantly cajoling ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... young Langdon, who was left in a condition neither dignified nor picturesque—a martyr to friendship and a victim to his own rather frivolous idea ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... are not all of frivolous matters. I have taken advantage of some of the opportunities Philadelphia offers to improve my mind and broaden my vision. I've been to lectures and plays and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... into their arms and kissed me. Here it would have been as every where else; but, unfortunately, my introduction to these young women was in the very worst of characters. I had been taken in arms—in arms against their own brothers, cousins, sweethearts, and on pretexts too frivolous to mention. If asked the question, it would be found that I should not myself deny the fact of being at war with their whole order. What was the meaning of that? What was it to which war pledged a man? It pledged him, in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... resolved to go to this ministerial reunion. Had I not been at Mr. King's literary gathering, which lifted me, as it were, out of a frivolous, fashionable life into the purely intellectual, and now, should I refuse to bathe my soul in the purer element of high Christian fervor? No, a ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... considerations. It was not the man who must be considered, but the King. It was not her own feelings which she must regard, but the well-being of Spain, the good of Europe, and the interests of humanity. Would it not be better that the throne of Spain should be filled by a virtuous Englishwoman than by some frivolous Continental princess? Would it not be better that the Queen of Spain should emulate the domestic graces of a Victoria than the corrupt follies of an Isabella? Should she now, out of selfish private grief, deprive Spain of such an inestimable boon? Would Spain forgive her? Would England? Nay, would ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... northern side. In compliment to their sovereign, this place was named Jamestown, and the river was called James. Having disembarked, and opened the sealed packets brought from England, the members of the council proceeded to the election of a president, and Mr. Wingfield was chosen. But, under frivolous pretexts, they excluded from his seat among them, John Smith, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, whose courage and talents had excited their envy. During the passage, he had been imprisoned on the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... had not heard from her; now I believe she's dead. I thought I would see that girl there. Now, then, Grantley Mellen, are you satisfied? You have driven your wife away, you could believe her guilty, and pet that frivolous thing in her place!" ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... its presence as the following: "The melting of the caps 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 ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... been who have occupied themselves only with frivolous subjects, as little advantageous to the best interests of religion as fruitful in inspiring scorn for such a government! But that would lead ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... astonishment, which he considered undignified, was fairly startled out of himself, and asked if the 'bridge had been built by men or devils', which was his vague way of alluding to any supernatural power. But Alphonse did not care about it. Its solid grandeur jarred upon the frivolous little Frenchman, who said that it was all 'tres magnifique, mais triste — ah, triste!' and went on to suggest that it would be improved if ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... 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 ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... which, by their professed creeds, can leave no doubt that they must roast in the fires of hell in an anguish unutterably fiercer, and for eternity, and yet they go about as smilingly, engage in the battle for money, in the race for fame, in all the vain shows and frivolous pleasures of life, as eagerly and as gayly as others. How often do we see the literal truth of this exemplified! It is clear they do not believe in the dogma to whose technical terms they ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... ordering of my own future conduct. But I had scarcely settled myself comfortably when I was joined by Grace Hartley, who strove to conceal a somewhat embarrassed manner, and the obvious fact that she had something on her mind, behind an attempt at light and frivolous conversation. I endured this as long as I could; but at length the girl's preoccupation became so marked that I interrupted ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... her any assistance in entertaining their numerous guests, yet always insisted that the house should be full for the shooting season. And being poor for a titled pair, they could not afford to entertain even a shoeblack, much less a crowd of hungry sportsmen and a horde of frivolous women, who required to be amused expensively. It was really ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... obsequies of an important country gentleman: it cost L500, equivalent now to a sum sufficient for the public funeral of some great statesman. It is easy to condemn our ancestors; but their modes of extravagance were less frivolous ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... costumes walking about—ultra-aesthetics, artistic-aesthetics, aesthetics that made up their minds to be daring, and suddenly gave way in some important point—put a frivolous bonnet on the top of a grave and flowing garment that Albert Durer might have designed for a mantle. There were fashionable costumes that Mrs. Mason or Madame Eliot might have turned out that morning. The motley crowd mingled, forming into groups, sometimes dazzling you by the array ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... friendship 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 ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the most dignified magazines in the world. Dignified people do not squander money. The magazine in question paid G. G. from sixty to seventy dollars apiece for his stories and was much too dignified to inform him that plenty of other magazines—very frivolous and not in the least dignified—would have been ashamed to pay so little for anything but the poems, which all magazines use to fill up blank spaces. So, even in his own ambitious and courageous mind, a "married living" seemed ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... on Sundays. Leonora, I suppose you will know what to do with it?" "Yes, mother, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the beautiful present, and I promise you that I shall use it only in a noble and worthy manner," said Leonora, gravely. "My mother's bridal dress shall not be worn for frivolous purposes, but it shall serve me to attain the highest and ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... Lemos had persisted in declining to surrender the posts at the Chickasaw Bluffs and Natchez, on pretexts which were utterly frivolous. [Footnote: American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II., pp. 20, 70, 78, 79; report of Timothy Pickering, January 22, 1798, etc.] At this time the Spanish Court was completely subservient to France, which was hostile to the United States; and the Spaniards would ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the heart its anxiety. Any one who observes himself will find that some places are more conducive to calm, to meditation, to religious thought, to worship, than others. In a room, a building, where there has been a great deal of worldly thought, of frivolous conversation, of mere rush of ordinary worldly life, it is far harder to quiet the mind and to concentrate the thought, than in a place where religious thought has been carried on year after year, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... happiness—yes, for I may call it so, when it comes to me through you—is surely more than a triumph for self-love? No one has been willing to introduce me into that set. Perhaps just now I may seem to you to be frivolous, petty, shallow, like a Parisienne, but remember, my friend, that I am ready to give up all for you; and that if I long more than ever for an entrance into the Faubourg Saint-Germain, it is because ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... averse to falsehood and dissimulation, and altogether by no means frivolous. Rather, on the contrary, the inward earnestness, with which I had early begun to consider myself and the world, was seen, even in my exterior; and I was frequently called to account, often in a friendly way, and often in raillery, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits and profitably employed would enable any man of ordinary capacity to master a complete science. One hour a day would in ten years make an ignorant man a well-informed man. It would earn enough to pay for ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... who differ most widely from ourselves, provided we have sufficient evidence that their scruples result from conscientious feelings. While, therefore, in our differences from others, we are careful not to be actuated by mere frivolous pretences, we must be equally solicitous not to be deterred from showing a firm consistence of conduct, lest we should incur the charge of ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... and my half-formed desperate resolve to break my vow of solitude and fill the house with the frivolous, as I sat listening to the cheerful talk of the little parson this evening. He was so cheerful, yet it was hard to see any cause for it in the life he was leading, a life led by the great majority of the German clergy, fat livings being as rare here as anywhere else. He told us with pleasant frankness ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... negative in repose, and faintly humorous when speaking. He was rich and supposed to be lazy; he knew his world and had lived it in and for it systematically. Some one had said that he took all the frivolous things of life seriously and all the serious things frivolously. He could advise on the choice of a hotel or a motor-car with intense earnestness, and he had healed more than one matrimonial breach that ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... particularly farm people, have regarded play and recreation for adults as more or less frivolous or unnecessary, while for children play has been used as an award for good conduct or hard work, but it has by no means been deemed a necessary phase of the child's life. If Johnnie does all his chores or if Mary washes the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... all amusements as frivolous, but then he had been to College, so his superior mind was only what ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
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