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More "Levity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her not, nor threaten her with anger, She is all gentleness, yet firm to truth, And blest with ev'ry pleasing virtue, free From levity, her sex's character. She scorns to chace the turning of the wind, Varying from ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... levity, Margaret, makes it necessary for me to defer my remarks on natural phenomena until some ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... about "war clearing the air;" and the crowd—the rank and file—chatter as though war were a pageant quite divorced from wounds and death, or a mere harmless hurly-burly where certain battalions receive thrashings of a trifling nature. It is saddening to notice the levity with which the most awful of topics is treated, and especially is it sad to see how completely the women and children are thrust out of mind by belligerent persons. We who have gazed on the monster of War, we who have looked in the whites—or rather the reds—of his loathsome ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... a pause in the proceedings, and on a protest from the crown attorney the judge put an end to the cross-examination with the solemn reminder that a man was being tried for his life, and that the present proceedings were a lamentable reflection on the levity of human nature—in Askatoon. Turning with friendly scrutiny ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... beloved writers whom we hold to be humourists because they have made us laugh. It may be conceded that, as a people, we have an abiding and somewhat disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth when it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and we habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration, accepting, ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of gravity, Donald," she stated, "and you keep treating it with levity. Sandy, do you really own Tapwater? He's the colt who won the Monmouth Futurity, ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... three things mean, how or why they co-exist; whether they can be reconciled or perhaps are reconciled already; the three sounds I heard then by an accident all at once make up the French mystery. For the brass band in the Casino gardens behind me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune from a Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard also the bugles on the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties and men always arming in the gate of France; and I heard also, fainter than these sounds ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... and dropping the tone of levity which he had employed, he opened the letter Sam had forged, and suddenly handing ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... time for levity? But You are single in the ruin, and therefore may talk lightly of it. With Me 'tis ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... rose and began to walk up and down as he went on with a marked access of warmth. "But even the understanding we arrived at," he pursued, "I regret to say that my wife did n't see fit to adhere to in good faith. She treated it with what I must call levity." He faced round on his guest suddenly. "I mentioned a cat to you," ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... come back from Sunday School,' said Kenneth, looking across at me with a twinkle in his eye, 'and so she is doubly shocked with our levity. I assure you, Mrs. Parker, her religious scruples are such that I don't think she would pick a flower in the garden if you were to ask her ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... walked in silence, listening to the rattle of the three in front. At best he was but a poor hand at the kind of repartee demanded of their swains by these young women; and to-day his slender talent failed him altogether, crushed by the general tone of vulgar levity. Looking over at the horizon, which swam in a kind of gold-dust haze below the sinking sun, he smiled thinly to himself ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... perfection in his particular art. Besides, this wholesome institution, which had been established anciently throughout Egypt, extinguished all irregular ambition, and taught every man to sit down contented with his condition, without aspiring to one more elevated, from interest, vain-glory, or levity. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... pains me at heart; and with all my levity, both the good folks most sometimes partake of that pain; nor will it be over, as long as you are in a state of uncertainty; and especially as I was not able to prevail for that protection for you which would have prevented the unhappy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... under any circumstances, Mr. Temple would reject him. In what light would he appear to Henrietta were he to dare to reveal the truth? Would she not look upon him as the unresisting libertine of the hour, engaging in levity her heart as he had already trifled with another's? For that absorbing and overwhelming passion, pure, primitive, and profound, to which she now responded with an enthusiasm as fresh, as ardent, and as immaculate, she would only recognise the fleeting ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... sensuality, Danton by his practical good sense. Nothing availed to save from the all-devouring guillotine. Those who did survive seem almost to have survived by chance, delivered by some caprice of fortune or by the criminal levity of "les tricoteuses," vile women who degraded the very ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... embarrassed her. But for this inconsiderable check, all through meal-time she had a good appetite, and she kept them laughing at table, until Gib (who had returned before them from Crossmichael and his separative worship) reproved the whole of them for their levity. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Belford.— His conditional promise to Tomlinson in the lady's favour. His pleas and arguments on their present situation, and on his darling and hitherto-baffled views. His whimsical contest with his conscience. His latest adieu to it. His strange levity, which he calls gravity, on the death ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... opinion that the boot will be on the other leg," thought Nick, smiling faintly at the scoundrel's grim levity. ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... honours, clothes, and luxuries, the sole mark of multitudinous ambitions and desires. I doubt if you could find a man in Europe so bold as to attempt this piece of tact and government. And seemingly Tembinok' himself had trouble in the beginning. I hear of him shooting at a wife for some levity on board a schooner. Another, on some more serious offence, he slew outright; he exposed her body in an open box, and (to make the warning more memorable) suffered it to putrefy before the palace gate. Doubtless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dominate our method of action at special times and to be absent at others. It is better occasionally to travel in one way or another to some beloved place (or to some place wonderful and desired for its associations), haunted by our mission, yet falling into every ordinary levity, than to go about a common voyage in a chastened and devout spirit. I fear this is bad theology, and I propound it subject to authority. But, surely, if a man should say, "I will go to Redditch to buy needles cheap," ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... of Lerici. We know not how this may affect others, but over us it is a coincidence which has long tyrannised with an absorbing inveteracy of impression (strengthened rather than diminished by the contrast between the levity of the utterance and its fatal fulfilment)—thus to behold, heralding itself in warning mockery through the very lips of its predestined victim, the Doom upon whose breath his locks were lifting along the coasts of ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... [He looks about, gives a hop, and with an immediate return to levity.] But it's supper-time.—Now for a bite of cold grasshopper! [The PHEASANT-HEN suddenly flies over the brushwood tangle, dropping ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... prelude to his verses to Rankine, written towards the close of the year, and his poem, A Poet's Welcome. They must at least be all read together, if we are to have any clear conception of the nature of Burns. It is not enough to select his Epistle to Rankine, and speak of its unbecoming levity. This was the time when Burns was first subjected to ecclesiastical discipline; and some of his biographers have tried to trace the origin of that wonderful series of satires, written shortly afterwards, to the vengeful feelings engendered in the poet by this degradation. But Burns's ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... fancies the little Coldness and Pride he saw in Atlante's Face, which was not usual, proceeded from some Discovery of Passion, which his Eyes had made, or now and then a Sigh, that unawares broke forth; and accuses himself of a Levity below his Quality, and the Dignity of his Wit and Gravity; and therefore assumes a more rigid and formal Behaviour than he was wont, which rendred him yet more disagreeable than before; and 'twas with greater Pain ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... he has a sufficient motive for his belief, this does not seem to imply any merit on his part, since he is no longer free to believe or not to believe: whereas if he has not a sufficient motive for believing, this is a mark of levity, according to Ecclus. 19:4: "He that is hasty to give credit, is light of heart," so that, seemingly, he gains no merit thereby. Therefore to believe is by no ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... rest on the firmer ground of the Socinians: and if we may credit a doubtful story, and the popular opinion, his anxious inquiries at last subsided in philosophic indifference. So conspicuous, however, were the candour of his nature and the innocence of his heart, that this apparent levity did not affect the reputation of Chillingworth. His frequent changes proceeded from too nice an inquisition into truth. His doubts grew out of himself; he assisted them with all the strength of his reason: he was then too hard ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... 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 adjustment of his various notes. He never shrieks or guffaws: there is no horse-play in him, just as there is no tearing a passion to tatters. His slight mannerisms, more than once referred to, rarely exceed ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... great excursion of Alsace. Who cares a straw for the saint and her story now? But all tourists must be grateful to the Bishop of Strasburg, who keeps a comfortable little inn at the top of the mountain, and, beyond the prohibition of meat on fast-days, smoking, noise and levity of manner on all days, makes you very comfortable for next ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... needn't shoot themselves with it after it was locked up and the cartridges carefully hidden," I replied, with levity. We were both so heated that we had practically forgotten that flat burglary was supposed to ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Intelligence, he said, was already received, that the Germans had passed the Rhine, and occupied some of the strongest and most opulent cities of Gaul. The ambition of the Persian king kept the East in perpetual alarms; Egypt, Africa, and Illyricum, were exposed to foreign and domestic arms, and the levity of Syria would prefer even a female sceptre to the sanctity of the Roman laws. The consul, then addressing himself to Tacitus, the first of the senators, [4] required his opinion on the important subject of a proper candidate for ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a very common question, usually put and answered with more or less levity. We seldom hear of any one answering very favourably as to the usage he experiences from the world. More generally, the questioned seems to feel that his treatment is not, and never has been, quite what it ought to be. It has sometimes occurred to me, that a great oversight ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... first very heartily at Billy's instructions, which, he declared, were so bristling with capitals that he could fairly see them drop from her lips. Then, when he found how really very much in earnest she was, and how hurt she was at his levity, he managed to pull his face into something like sobriety while she talked to him, though he did persist in dropping kisses on her cheeks, her chin, her finger-tips, her hair, and the little pink lobes of her ears—"just by way of punctuation" ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... youth! An absurd period, excusable only on the score of its brevity. A parlous condition! A traitorous guide, froward, inspired of all manner of levity, pursuant of hopeless phantasms, dupe of roseate and pernicious myths (love-at-first-sight, and the like), butt of the High Gods' stinging laughter, deserving of nothing kinder than mockery from the aged ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... had at first seemed to be. Perhaps it was simply a manoeuvre for getting rid of himself; and he remembered his doubt whether a certain light in her eyes when she inquired concerning his sincerity were innocent earnestness or the reverse. As the possibility of levity crossed his brain, his face warmed; it pained him to think that a woman so interesting could condescend to a trick of even so mild a complexion as that. He wanted to think her the soul of all that was tender, and noble, and kind. The pleasure of setting himself to win a minister's ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... bodies.—Ver. 240. The women of Cyprus were notorious for the levity of their character. We learn from Herodotus that they had recourse to prostitution to raise ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... regret, that you are apt to indulge in immoderate potations, and when under their influence to lose due command of yourself, and commit follies which your sober reason must condemn. At such times I scarcely recognise you. You speak with unbecoming levity, and even allow oaths to ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... scene, imitated every motion, until at last a scarcely suppressed smile appeared upon the countenance of most of the audience. This occurred, too, in one of the most solemn passages in the discourse; and so horrible did the levity appear to the good minister, that he launched forth into violent rebuke, every word being enforced ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie
... from me to deceive you, Cap," responded the cabby with irritating levity. "I done ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... with a slam, and with an abrupt, half-vexed "good- by," left the room. For a brief time Gregory lay repenting of his disastrous levity, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... found herself looking into a pair of grave, earnest blue eyes, and there was no sign of levity or derision in ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... she made no further remarks. Her sister had been shocked at her thoughtless levity, and had threatened to inform Aunt Bell, of whom she stood in awe; and so Bertha ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... which the Conference had recourse in their fitful struggles with Bolshevism were so many surprises to every one concerned, and were at times redolent of comedy. But what was levity and ignorance on the part of the delegates meant death, and worse than death, to tens of thousands of their protegees. In Russia their agents zealously egged on the order-loving population to rise up against the Bolsheviki ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... witnesses of the whole scene from beginning to end. The situation of Ossaroo would have bean sufficiently ludicrous for Caspar to have laughed at it, but for the danger in which the shikaree was placed. This was so evident, that instead of indulging in anything akin to levity, Caspar looked on with feelings of deep anxiety, Karl being equally apprehensive about the result. Neither could do anything to aid or rescue him, as they were unarmed—both having dropped their ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... suppressed the safeguards theretofore required in any prosecution, especially the risk incurred by prosecutors of being punished for slander. Instead of these were established the dismal processes of Denunciation and Inquisition. The frightful levity of these latter methods is shown by Soldan. Blood was ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... thought to frogs or fish or carnal appetite, they would hop up and down, balancing, swaying, spreading their wings, and hopping again round about each other, as if bewitched. A few moments of this crazy performance, and then they would stalk sedately along the shore, as if ashamed of their ungainly levity; but at any moment the ecstasy might seize them and they would hop again, as if they simply could not help it. This occurred generally towards evening, when the birds had fed full and were ready for play or for stretching their broad wings in preparation for the ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... he read out a list which included, to Godfrey's surprise, the names of every one of his acquaintances there. "Therefore we have been forced to come to the conclusion that your story, incredible as it appeared, is a true one. That you, a youth and a foreigner, should have had the incredible levity to act in the way you describe, and to assume the disguise of a person absolutely unknown to you, upon the persuasion of a woman also absolutely unknown to you, well-nigh passes belief. Had you been older you would at once have been sent to the frontier; but ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Mrs. Millar, bristling up in her daughter's defence, the assailant being that daughter. "You unkind or unfeeling when there was any call for kindness—whoever heard of such a thing? I should as soon suspect Dora of harshness or levity in the same circumstances. Don't you remember my bad eyes last winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You dropped the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... years, and was the mother of three big children; but such was the buoyancy of her Irish nature and the irrepressible cheeriness of her heart, that she was in good truth the youngest person in the house, so that her own daughters were sometimes quite shocked at her levity of behaviour, and treated her with gentle, motherly restraint. She was tall and thin, like her husband, and he, at least, considered her every whit as beautiful as she had been a score of years before. Her hair was dark and curly; she had deep-set grey eyes, and a pretty fresh complexion. When ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... found interesting even in a most inaccurate and dishonest French version. It is, indeed, the work of a mind fitted both for minute researches and for large speculations. It is written also in an admirable spirit, equally remote from levity and bigotry, serious and earnest, yet tolerant and impartial. It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that we now see this book take its place among the English classics. Of the translation we need only say that it is such as ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... make them a Bishop, who, like a foolish boy, goeth about blessing and preaching with such childish terms as make the people laugh at his foolish counterfeit." In some quarters regulations were in force to preclude such levity. At Exeter, for example, one of the Canons was appointed to look after the Boy-Bishop, who was to have for his supper a penny roll, a small cup of mild cider, two or three pennyworths of meat, and ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... slid out of reach without another word, leaving me to shudder alike at his levity and his peril; nor could I follow him very far by the wan light of the April stars; but I saw his forearms resting a moment in the spout that ran around the tower, between bricks and slates, on the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... the grave eyes and saw something of tenderness, something of reverence there that was new to her. She had stepped into an unknown world and was awed. As she sat there all mockery and levity faded from her face, and in its place there crept a look of deep admiration and deep respect for this man, and ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... had little place in his heart, and the siren, Mrs. Billington, held it in temporary thraldom; but constancy was to a man of such a calibre impossible. Nevertheless, when the duke saw his wife surrounded by admirers, whom her levity of manner encouraged, he became jealous, and they parted, for the last time as it proved, on bad terms. One evening, seeing him engaged in play, the duchess approached the window of the room in which he sat, and tapped at it. He was highly incensed ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... the doorway as if contemplating an armed invasion, thought better of it, and took his uniform away into the sunlight of the open square, where it was joined by other uniforms, and became by contrast a miracle of unbraced levity. Paul stood the Polar silence for a few moments, until one of the readers arose and, taking his book—a Murray—in his hand, walked slowly across the room to a companion, mutely pointed to a passage in the book, remained silent until the other had dumbly perused it, and then ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... defence. Some accused him, for instance, of entertaining ideas entirely too liberal for one of his rank; and, at the same time, others complained of his excessive arrogance. He was charged with treating with insulting levity the most serious questions, and was then blamed for his affectation of gravity. People knew him scarcely well enough to love him, while they were jealous of him and ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... it as a book merely human,—an uninspired production,—the result of mortality left to itself, and depending on its own limited resources. In taking up the subject in this point of view, we solemnly disclaim the slightest intention of indulging in any indecorous levity, or of wounding the religious feelings of a large class of very respectable persons. It is the only method in which we can possibly make this work a proper object of criticism. We have the strongest possible doubts of the attributes usually ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... encroachments of the subtle usurper, his religion should at length have "only a name to live," being gradually robbed of its vivifying principle; lest he should be mainly preserved in his religious course by the dread of incurring the charge of levity, for quitting a path on which he had deliberately entered. Or where, on a strict and impartial scrutiny of his governing motives, he may fairly conclude this not to be the case, let him beware lest ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... nothing of gladness in the worship of God—that it consisted simply of a chronic case of the snuffles. Jones has simply gone to the opposite extreme and transformed the Temple of the Deity into a variety dive. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; but Jones indulges in the levity of the buffoon while consigning millions of human beings to Hell. Alas, that so few preachers understand the pity which permeates ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... She smiles, her lips move, she is conversing with herself; she cannot be all silent, even when alone, for the sunny gladness of her nature must have vent like a bird's. But do not fancy that that gladness speaks the levity which comes from the absence of thought; it is rather from the depth of thought that it springs, as from the depth of a sea comes its music. See, while she pauses and listens, with her finger half-raised to her lip, as amidst that careless jubilee of birds she hears a note more grave and sustained,—the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with all his regard for the rights and welfare of the apprentices, showed a great and inexcusable partiality for the masters. The patience and consideration with which he heard the complaints of the latter, the levity with which he regarded the defence of the former, the summary manner in which he despatched the cases, and the character of some of his decisions, manifested ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... being a master in argument, is free to pursue his bent in illustration, and thus conjures up a whole picture that dwells on the mind, and is remembered for its effect on the feelings or the imagination, even by men whose levity or dullness precluded their being fixed by the argument. The very structure of his sentences is more adapted for this kind of speaking than any other. They sometimes appear involved, to an ordinary mind, from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... make it a success. Zachariah and Caillaud were not of much use in organisation, and the whole burden fell upon the Major. Externally gay, and to most persons justifying the charge of frivolity, he was really nothing of the kind when he had once settled down to the work he was born to do. His levity was the mere idle sport of a mind unattached and seeking its own proper object. He was like a cat, which will play with a ball or its own tail in the sunshine, but if a mouse or a bird crosses its path will fasten on it with sudden ferocity. He wrought like ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... susceptibilities of that tender passion without whose colourings no portrait of chivalry is complete, and in which he was capable of a sentiment, a tenderness, and a loyal devotion, which could hardly have been supposed compatible with his reckless levity ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Dorothy saw all levity depart from his face, giving way to a look of sternness and command. Although he was engaged in a joke, the subordinate must see no sign of fooling in his countenance. He said a sharp word to a blue-jacket, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... shoulders of the Reverend Mother, and the heavy figure of Mother Philippa. "Even in their backs they are like themselves," she thought. She smiled at her descriptive style, "like themselves," and then, seeing that Mass had begun, she resolutely repressed all levity, and began her prayers. She had not felt especially pious till that moment, and to rouse herself she remembered Monsignor's words, "That at the height of her artistic career she should have been awakened to a sense ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... cure me. I have no wish to be cured of love for Angelique, and in fine I cannot be, so let me go and receive the rod for coming to Belmont and the reward for leaving it at her summons!" He affected a tone of levity, but Amelie's ear easily detected the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sentinel fidelity residence direct intimate continent digest levity finance indivisible defensible hilarious reticent imitate equidistant predicate maritime reticule piazza ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... compliment he could. Who, of a certain year which shall be nameless, will ever forget the gravity with which he assured them that they were "the best-dressed class that had passed through college during his administration"? How sincerely kind he was, how considerate of youthful levity, will always be gratefully remembered by whoever had occasion to experience it. A visitor not long before his death found him burning some memoranda of college peccadilloes, lest they should ever rise up in judgment against the men eminent in Church and State who had been guilty of them. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... which their tell-tale countenances exhibited as I proceeded. After I had completed my task, the gentlemen breathed more freely, and stared at one another in silence. One or two were inclined to treat the prediction with levity, but their remarks were not well received. It was generally conceded that the subject was not a proper one for a joke. I received the thanks of several of my auditors for the acceptable manner in which I had performed my part in the drama. A few evenings afterwards I was ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... people gathered in knots to chat over—pretty much everything, for it was like one big family. Strangers looked on with curiosity, generally appreciative, less often with a certain air of disapproval at the apparent levity. One thing was noticeable: those who came once generally came again at some time, and so faces that had been strange came to ...
— Sixty years with Plymouth Church • Stephen M. Griswold
... see, you were so overcome by the first sight of her this morning, that it seemed no more than fair to let you recover your breath, as you say, and get used to her by degrees. But, James, this is unseemly levity on your part. What have we to do with girls? Let us leave them to the baser spirits who have use for them. The world's a bubble, and the life of man of no account at all. We have tried it, and it is empty; hark, it sounds. Vain pomp and glory of it all, we hate ye. Ye tinsel gauds, ye base ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... only a gleam of moonshine," said Lucy with a sigh. Moonshine! How often had George in the course of his life talked with levity, almost amounting to contempt, of things being "all a matter of moonshine!" What would he not have given to have had only a tithe of the things which surrounded him at that ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... substantial justice, according to the variable nature of human affairs, a progressive experience, and the improvement of moral philosophy, from those hazardous changes in any of the ancient opinions and decisions which may arise from ignorance, from levity, from false refinement, from a spirit of innovation, or from other motives, of a nature ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to think, a good deal that is undeniably untrue. I do not think it is unfair to say that in some respects Chesterton allows his cleverness to lead him to certain errors of judgment, and a certain levity in dealing with matters that are to a number of people so sacred that to reinterpret them ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... natural levity strove with the gloomy facts. He resembled a mourner at a funeral who experiences pleasant rather than painful emotions but continually reminds himself to behave in a manner appropriate ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... especially amongst the female servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother was mistaken. Women of humble station, less than any other class, have any tendency to sympathize with boldness that manifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion. Perhaps a natural instinct tells them that levity of that nature will pretty surely extend itself contagiously to other modes of conscientious obligation; at any rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance were ever known of a woman, in the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Thomas Howard, and lay off the Azores with the English squadron in 1591. He was a noted tyrant to his crew: a dark, bullying fellow apparently; and it is related of him that he would chew and swallow wineglasses, by way of convivial levity, till the blood ran out of his mouth. When the Spanish fleet of fifty sail came within sight of the English, his ship, the REVENGE, was the last to weigh anchor, and was so far circumvented by the Spaniards, that there were but two courses open - either to turn her back upon the enemy or ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... than the truth," said Susan. It was the old note of levity, anything but natural to to-night's mood and the matter in hand. But it was what Peter expected and liked. She heard him ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... guttural intonations; policemen on their beats could have looked less concerned. The English hung round the public-houses, enviously watching the arched insteps of the Frenchwomen tripping by. Smiles there were plenty, but the fog was so thick that even the Parisians lost their native levity and wished themselves ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... notice of even attentive readers that the comparatively uninteresting character of Sir Walter's heroes had always been studied among a class of youths who were simply incapable of doing anything seriously wrong; and could only be embarrassed by the consequences of their levity or imprudence. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... I was at this fatalism (for so it appeared to me), of which he had often shown symptoms before (but I took them for mere levity), now I knew not what to do; for it seemed to me a murderous thing to set such a man on horseback; where he must surely bleed to death, even if he could keep the saddle. But he told me, with many breaks and pauses, that unless I obeyed his orders, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us.—All the attempts that I know of to read the history of a "soul" in the Gospels seem to me to reveal only a lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank in psychologicus, has contributed the two most unseemly notions to this business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the genius and that of the hero ("heros"). But if ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... on the turf behind the Lodge, literally biting the earth in spasms of joy. Stalky kicked him upright. There was nothing of levity about Stalky or McTurk save a stray muscle ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... of a nation. The men implicated in the French Panama Scandal and the case of the Banca Romana (Bank of Rome) are instances. When under a cloud of disgrace, instead of that insensibility, cynicism, or levity common to true criminals, they show deep sorrow, shame, and remorse, which not infrequently result in serious illness or death. Their natural affections and other ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Eleusinian associations,) where the procession rests, and then moves on to the bridge over the Cephissus, where again it rests, and where the expression of the wildest grief gives place to the trifling farce,—even as Demeter, in the midst of her grief, smiled at the levity of Iambe in the palace of Celeus. Through the "mystical entrance" we enter Eleusis. On the seventh day, games are celebrated; and to the victor is given a measure of barley,—as it were a gift direct from the hand of the goddess. The eighth is sacred to Aesculapius, the Divine Physician, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of the discovery of conspiracies it is impossible so to guard as that either through treachery, want of caution, or levity, the secret shall not be found out, whenever more than three or four persons are privy to it. And whenever more than one conspirator is arrested, the plot is certain to be detected, because no two persons ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... they do in France and England, except only their long cloak, which they do not care to give up. It is said that Frenchmen are wiser than, from the levity of their behaviour, they seem to be; and I fancy the Spaniards look wiser from their gravity of countenance, than they really are; they are extremely reserved; and make no professions of friendship till they feel it, and know the man, and then they are ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... had read a part at least of the ill-fated young Russian's dairy. Yet in the presence of the grief-stricken face, outlined against the dark leather chair-back, I felt a pang of shame at a thought bordering on levity. There was indeed one likeness: both were the unexpurgated records of hearts laid ruthlessly bare; both were instinct with life: in every line one could feel ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes from a surfeit ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... heard of heedless, inconsiderate writers that, without any malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distinguishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire; as if it were not infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man than a wit. Where there is this little petulant humour in an author, he is often very mischievous without designing ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the atrocities or the imbecilities which mark the course of modern politics on the Continent. I am as keenly alive as any one to the levity of France, and the [Greek: hubris] of Germany. It may be true that the ordinary Frenchman is in some respects the victim of as poor an egoism as that of the ordinary Englishman; and that the American ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... intended raising him immediately to new honours. In fact, some days afterwards she created him Duke of Orkney, and on the 15th of the same month—that is to say, scarcely four months after the death of Darnley—with levity that resembled madness, Mary, who had petitioned for a dispensation to wed a Catholic prince, her cousin in the third degree, married Bothwell, a Protestant upstart, who, his divorce notwithstanding, was still bigamous, and who thus found himself in the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... notice or attention—thoroughly engrossed, as he appeared to be, with the terrible sanction of a portent of some coming retribution. His silence in some degree distressed me, as I thought he resented my levity in commenting upon his convictions; so it was with some relief that Dr. Rogers came in and sat down at the table, apparently to wait for a call to the bedroom. A man this of ostentatious gloom,—too grave to deign to be witty, too sanctified to stoop to be cheerful, and therefore ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... gown, stood on the platform, talking to the lady secretary of the Centre. She made a remark, and he smiled, and said something in reply at which they both laughed audibly. It shocked Rhoda in much the same way as it would have done to hear a chief mourner laugh at a funeral. Such levity was most unseemly, yet on the other hand the pictures on the walls were surely unnecessarily depressing! They were oil-coloured portraits of departed worthies, at that gloomy stage of decay when frame, figure, and background have acquired the same dirty hue, and the paint has cracked in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... credence, and who can fail to stand aside in tender reverence when crushed and bleeding hearts are seen to seek it for consolation and for hope? They beg that nothing which they may say may be interpreted as indicating indifference or levity. Wherever fraud in Spiritualism be found, that it is, and not whatever of truth there may be therein, which is denounced, and all Spiritualists who love the truth will join with us ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... sir," the old gentleman suddenly cried out "to protect me from this unseemly levity! I have not come here with any other object than that of doing ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... mistresses. The third exceptional case is the case of the upper housemaid; and here there is a little hitch. In plain words, the housemaid has been sent away at a moment's notice, for what Mrs. Blanchard rather mysteriously describes as 'levity ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... a light and wandering curiosity—arising, perhaps, from the sense that my toil on earth is ended and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied that there is a depth of feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one who has lived long and is soon ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their years are ever the pets of big sisters, and the object of loving, jealous, zealous care on the part of their mothers. John Milton talked like an oracle while yet a child, and one biographer records that even as a babe he sometimes mildly reproved his parents for levity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... for the King, and also that he himself, and England with him, might remain the principal author of the Restoration by promptly terminating the war before Paris, where he feared to be compromised through the violent hatred of the Prussians; the Count d'Artois, with impatient levity, always ready to promise and agree, and already entangled through his most active confidant, M. de Vitrolles, in the snare which Fouche had spread for the Royalists ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... alas! she, whose whole nature and whose entire condition seem but one lesson to awaken piety, has given her influence against it. By a worldly disposition, by a neglect of the means of religion, or by indifference to the most solemn themes, and an habitual levity of character and speech, the wife has been known to check the best aspirations of her husband, and reduce his spirit to the same low, earthly level with her own. She has fastened the more firmly around him, that chain, which the love of riches, or a thirst for fame, had already drawn ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... damnable invention of Sir Isaac Newton's slumbers not nor sleeps, and all the vital organs droop and drop when we neglect deep breathing. Inertia is a vice. The gods cultivate levitation, which is a different thing from levity, meaning skyey gravitation, uplift, aspiration expressed in bodily attitude. When levitation lets ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... humble instrument of making a fortune for you; it was also my lot to draw up the papers depriving you of the same!" Culver laughed amiably. "'Oft expectation fails, where most it promises.' Pardon my levity! There were two wills; the first, in your favor; the last, in his daughter's. I presume"—with a sudden, sharp look—"you have no intention of contesting the final disposition? The paternity of the child is ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... endowments, she never departed from matronly decorum. The company agreed silently, or in guarded asides, that she was charming. No tongue—even the most reckless or venomous—ever lisped the dread word, levity, in connection with ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... irregular habits, had a wonderful fascination for Burns, who admired him for what he thought his independence and magnanimity. "He was," says Burns, "the only man I ever knew who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of lawless love with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... conclude she was indifferent to him, but how did she rise in his estimation, as he heard the conversation. Not a word of her advice to Beatrice was lost on him, and he only wondered he had not done her more justice; how grateful he felt for the noble indignation she expressed at her friend's levity, and the honest warmth with which she took his part, and strove, as it were, to prevent his being betrayed by the heartless coquetry of Beatrice. He regarded all that had occurred as a special intervention of Providence ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... considered correct conduct was noticed with a threat of punishment, conveyed by pinching his own ear, slapping his own face, kicking out his foot, and similar indications of chastisement, with a knowing nod at the offender. But if he saw an approach to levity over the word of God, his manner wholly changed. Tears filled his eyes, he looked all grief and entreaty, and the words, "God see," were earnestly spelled on his uplifted hands. No one could stand the appeal; and very rarely had he occasion to make it. I am sure his prayers ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... thus always anticipate in her own mind the needs of the daughter, and prepare her for the changes in her physical condition which will come with maturity, in the simplest, the tenderest, and the most reverent manner. Everything approaching to levity or coarseness of speech should be utterly avoided, so that, while the young girl will speak frankly and without shame to her mother or her physician, she will shun light speaking to chance companions as ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... us to go into the Silences — only we never quite learned, for some of the girls would giggle. There are always people like that. The dear Swami! — he was so patient! It was Occidental levity, he said, ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... behavior to the girl whom he had ruined which cut his wife to the heart. She had been taught, and she had tried—with some misgiving—to believe that she ought to be prepared to condone a certain amount of levity, of "wildness," even, in her husband's past; but here she saw deliberate treachery, cold-blooded selfishness, which startled her from her dream of happiness. Nan was a little too logical for her own peace ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in a very intemperate style. I notice it as being a case which Phil. has noticed. But Phil. merits a gentle rap on his knuckles for the inconsideration with which he has cited a charge made and reported with so much levity. He quotes it from the 'Scaligerana.' Now, what right upon such a subject has any man to quote such an authority? The reasons against listening with much attention to the 'Scaligerana' ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... only looked upon music as an incentive to mirth, not caring for any that he could not "stamp the time to." The endeavour of his accomplished and gifted young organist to lead the King and his people to admire what he terms "the seriousness and gravity" of Italian music, and "to loathe the levity and balladry of our neighbours," was indeed ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... been intentionally put upon France by Bismarck's circular telegram. And it was at the end of this speech that he made use of the phrase which has become historical as the typical expression of the levity and rashness with which his ministry threw their nation into a tremendous war, insomuch that it has become one main cause why he is so commonly charged, very unfairly, with the whole responsibility for the blind haste that led to the defeat and dismemberment of his country. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... narrative is written in a humorous tone, which shows itself, not only in thought and word, but in a jolting measure, and even grotesque rhymes. The speaker desires it to be understood that he is not the less in earnest for this apparent "levity;" and the levity is quite consistent with religious seriousness in such a person as the poem depicts. But, as I have shown, it is alone enough to prove that the author is not depicting himself. The poem reflects him more or less truly in the doctrine of Divine ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... But her levity in such a crisis only excited her lover the more. "Everybody at the station was laughing at you. To-night when you traipsed down the stairs, looking so pretty in your new dress, you had to spoil everything by saying: 'What a chahming pahty. Shall we dahnce, Ahthuh?' I just wanted ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the variety and quantity of food, and not enough to merriment in taking it. To be successful, the social company should gather as early as possible; the first hour-and-a-half should be given to greetings and to social levity of the brightest and wittiest sort. If one has an ache or a pain, a care or a loss, let it be forgotten now. It is weakness and folly continually to be under any burden. Here every one should take a genuine ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... or with her mother, entering the casting office or perhaps issuing from the guarded gate. He avoided her when possible. She persisted in behaving as if they had been properly introduced and had known each other a long time. She was too familiar, and her levity jarred upon his more serious mood. So far as he could see, the girl had no screen future, though doubtless she was her own worst enemy. If someone had only taught her to be serious, her career might have been worth while. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... commenced. Then he crept to the edge, where he could see his master, and imitated his gestures in such a droll and amusing manner, that the entire congregation began to laugh. The minister, who did not see his favorite monkey, and who was surprised and confounded at this unaccountable levity, rebuked the audience, but to no effect. The people still laughed, and the preacher, in the warmth of his zeal, redoubled his earnestness and action. The consequence was that the ape became more animated too, and increased the number and violence of his gestures. The congregation could ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... expect this levity, Juanita," he answered, severely. "You must know that I have never thought of such a thing. And believe me," he said, in a tenderer tone, "that, among all the beautiful women I have seen,—and some have not disdained to show me favor,—none ever touched my heart for a moment. Had we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... he, with seriousness and levity, 'I've been a manager of one thing and another for over twenty years. That's what I was cut out for—to have somebody else to put up the money and look after the repairs and the police and taxes while I run the business. I never had a dollar ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... to the hut and made to sit down in two rows facing one another, at attention—that is, body rigid, head thrown well back, chest out, hands held stiffly at the sides and eyes straight to the front—for two hours! Meanwhile the sentries marched up and down the lane, watching for any relaxation or levity. If so much as a face was pulled at a twinkling eye across the way, another day's strafing was added to the penalty. At the end of the two hours one hour's rest was allowed, during which the prisoners could walk about in the hut but could not lie ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... did but inflame fanaticism, then, perhaps, the unheroic, less observed, but still equally severe punishment of the galleys, would be well-adapted to bring down all high notions of martyrdom. As to the delinquencies which might have arisen out of mere levity, curiosity, and thoughtlessness it would perhaps be sufficient to punish them by fines, exile, or ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... was in a hurry!" There was no attempted levity in his tone,—he spoke rather listlessly, as one who had found the world, or its problems, slightly wearisome. The composer-publisher now arose; a new thought had suddenly ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... men. But while he grew in the esteem of the religious and worthy, he sunk in the opinion of his old companions in gaiety: He was reckoned by them to have degenerated from the gay, sprightly companion, to the dull disagreeable pedant, and they measured the least levity of his words and actions with the character of a Christian Hero. Thus he found himself slighted, instead of being encouraged for his declarations as to religion; but happily those who held him in contempt for his defence of piety and goodness were characters, with whom to be at variance ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... Fields, there was now a project to erect a new playhouse in St. Martin's-le-Grand. It was no less surprising than shameful to see so great a change in the temper and inclination of the British people; "we now exceeded in levity even the French themselves, from whom we learned these and many other ridiculous customs, as much unsuitable to the mien and manners of an Englishman or a Scot, as they were agreeable to the air and levity of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... him in one of the sacks of quartz taken from Kilmeny. The message, genial to the point of impudence, had hoped he had enjoyed his little experience as a hold-up. To Bleyer, always a serious-minded man, this levity had added insult to injury. Just now the very mention of the highgrader's name was a red rag to his temper. It was bad enough to be bested without being jeered at by the man who had set a trap ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... Runs to behold the poor culprit, to execution conducted: Now all are sallying forth to gaze on the need of these exiles, Nor is there one who considers that he, by a similar fortune, May, in the future, if not indeed next, be likewise o'ertaken. Levity not to be pardoned, I deem; yet it lies in ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... pleasantly that Edith, absorbed by the agony of her brother's disappearance and possible disgrace, could not conceal an expression of blank amazement at his levity. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... nowhere. She seemed even less human and irresponsible than when a child—verily a being of the air, a fairy, without human thoughtfulness, or sympathy, or affections! She only seemed so—under all that fay-like levity there was a heart. Poor heart! little food or cultivation had it had in all ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... probable that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging parsimony; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved in debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the score of levity in her behavior; and it was rumored that even during the brief space of their union she had proved a faithless wife. Yet she contrived to keep Francesco's confidence, and it is certain that her family profited by their connection with the Peretti. Of her six brothers, Mario, the eldest, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... same populace who raised this monument and applauded these verses were, with ferocious and obscene threats, clamoring for her blood. And there is hardly any thing more strange or more grievous in the history of the nation, hardly any greater proof of that incurable levity which was one great cause of the long series of miseries which soon fell upon it, than that the impressions of gratitude which were so vivid at the moment, and so constantly revived by the queen's untiring benevolence, could yet be so easily effaced ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... seeming levity. You have flattered my cheerfulness by commending it, and must, therefore, indulge me in the exercise of it. I cannot conveniently be at the pains of restraining its sallies when I write ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of averages claimed ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... all his seeming levity, was a powerful hand at revivals, as was developed at the "protracted" meetings at the Grove during December. Indeed, such was the pitiless intensity of his zeal that a gloom was cast over the whole ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... to him any one temperament. He was neither sanguine, like Peter, nor choleric, like Paul, nor melancholy, like John, nor phlegmatic, as James is sometimes, though incorrectly, represented to have been; but he combined the vivacity without the levity of the sanguine, the vigor without the violence of the choleric, the seriousness without the austerity of the melancholic, the calmness without the apathy of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the most gloomy hotels in Paris—conveyed in a close carriage once or twice a week to the Bois de Boulogne, or the gardens of Versailles—fearing to express delight, lest she should be reproved for levity—or desire for any thing, lest it should be the very thing she would not be permitted to possess—the proud, warm, frank-hearted Jewess became gradually metamorphosed into the cunning, passionate, deceptive intriguante, only waiting for an opportunity to deceive her guardians, and obtain that ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... came in contact with the Muhammedans. Even in Europe, during mediaeval times, maugre the "lady fair" of chivalric romance, it was quite as much the custom to decry women, and to relate stories of their profligacy, levity, and perversity, as ever it has been in the East. But we have changed all that in modern times: it is only to be hoped that we have not gone to the other extreme!—According to an Arabian writer, cited by ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... don't want to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really no better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am a person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you better than when ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... admitted by herself, disentitle her to plead her character in answer to the charges against her. Young men do not speak of love to young and beautiful married women, still less to ladies of so high rank, unless something more than levity has encouraged them; and although to have permitted such language is no proof of guilt, yet it is a proof of the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... was presided over by Mr Justice Monkhouse, one of those who are jeered at as humorous judges, but who are generally much more serious than the serious judges, for their levity comes from a living impatience of professional solemnity; while the serious judge is really filled with frivolity, because he is filled with vanity. All the chief actors being of a worldly importance, the barristers were well balanced; the prosecutor for the Crown was Sir Walter ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... failings; as if he had never stood by and seen the issue, the final result of it all. I believe, if only once the prospect of a promising life blasted on the outset by wild ways had passed close under his eyes, he never COULD have spoken with such levity of what led to its piteous destruction. Had I a brother yet living, I should tremble to let him read Thackeray's lecture on Fielding. I should hide it away from him. If, in spite of precaution, it should fall into his hands, I should ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... got the bit fast in her teeth. Now, the Baroness Waldstaedten had been touched by the troubles of the young lovers and had invited Constanze to visit her for some weeks. This excited the mother's apprehension, perhaps not unwisely in view of the levity of the baroness' standards of conduct, and she insisted upon ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... have I ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. I have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify as they reward our utmost ardor and earnestness ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... magistrate, with all his regard for the rights and welfare of the apprentices, showed a great and inexcusable partiality for the masters. The patience and consideration with which he heard the complaints of the latter, the levity with which he regarded the defence of the former, the summary manner in which he despatched the cases, and the character of some of his decisions, manifested no ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!" Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that—this—article confesses that ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... His excitement and natural levity strove with the gloomy facts. He resembled a mourner at a funeral who experiences pleasant rather than painful emotions but continually reminds himself to behave in a manner ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... forced into materialism by some mental confusion or obscurity, but he revels in it, and invites all to taste and see how gracious a philosophy it is. There is an ill-concealed levity and coarseness in his handling of religious ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... suspicion {43} of any whole expressing itself in them, shunning the bitter parts and husbanding the sweet ones, as the occasion served, and as the day was foul or fair, he could have zigzagged toward an easy end, and felt no obligation to make the air vocal with his lamentations. The mood of levity, of 'I don't care,' is for this world's ills a sovereign and practical anaesthetic. But, no! something deep down in Teufelsdroeckh and in the rest of us tells us that there is a Spirit in things to which we owe allegiance, and for whose sake we must keep up the serious mood. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... a levity about your tone that I do not approve of, Armstrong," Frank Mallett said, reprovingly. "There were no women when we went out to the Crimea, at the time when you were a good little boy ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... but not wronged me! To wake me from a doting dream—that was not wrong! A dream of woman's purity and innocence; a foolish dream of married happiness between thy youth and my decrepitude; to put an end to such a madness, surely was not wrong! Wronged me? Thy levity hath righted my poor mind, which, pondering o'er thy ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... much in America, much said and much done, since the war broke out that has surprised the world. I may confess for myself, and I believe that I shall speak for many other Europeans in this matter, that what we feared most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "stamp the time to." The endeavour of his accomplished and gifted young organist to lead the King and his people to admire what he terms "the seriousness and gravity" of Italian music, and "to loathe the levity and balladry of our neighbours," was indeed ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... whole time I was with them, I never heard them indulge in a joke, or other levity, and the practice of it is apt to give offence: they are so accustomed to take what is said in its literal meaning, that irony was always considered a falsehood, in spite of explanation. They could not see the propriety of uttering ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... that long journey from Cape Town, as the two half-brothers lounged on deck together in their canvas chairs, Granville Kelmscott was wholly at a loss to understand what seemed to him Guy Waring's unaccountable and almost incredible levity. The man's conduct didn't in the least resemble that of a person who is returning to give himself up on a charge of wilful murder. On the contrary, Guy showed no signs of remorse or mental agony in any way; he seemed rather elated, instead, at the pleasing thought that ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... was moving apace. We must settle on something in short order. I spoke in the most matter-of-fact tones that I could summon, not, heaven knows, out of a feeling of levity concerning what had happened, but to try to lighten the grim business a degree or so and ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... used to say, "Bobus and I have inverted the laws of nature. He rose by his gravity; I sank by my levity." ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass—the strong man of passion and levity—the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks—was what the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God's breath—what glory, genius, power, and beauty, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cannot excuse," said Mrs. Bartley Simson, "is the tone of levity in which she answered Mr. MacTavish when he met her on the way from the station. It is possible that she had some good reason for coming on that particular train. I am not one of those who hold that nothing can ever justify Sunday travel. Exceptional cases must be allowed for. But the ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... were but as straws in the storm of anti-warlike passion that was then raging. Nor did Defoe succeed in turning the elections by addressing "to the good people of England" his Six Distinguishing Characters of a Parliament Man, or by protesting as a freeholder against the levity of making the strife between the new and the old East India Companies a testing question, when the very existence of the kingdom was at stake. His pamphlets were widely distributed, but he might as soon have tried to check a tempest by throwing handfuls of leaves ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... unaccustomed to it - provokes a smile from His Excellency, and he straightway orders an attendant to fetch in a chair and a small table; the counsellors look on in silence, but they are evidently too deeply impressed with their own dignity and holiness to commit themselves to any such display of levity as a smile. A portion of each dish is placed upon my table, together with a travellers' combination knife, fork and spoon, a relic, doubtless, of the Governor's Parisian experience. His Excellency having waited and kept the counsellors ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... namely, of those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the Apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this he relates without smiling, or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God, always looking forward with dread to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the Last Judgment he should find Him in anger whom, when on His way to death, he had provoked ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... pleasure she had promised herself from this visit. The levity of the gentlemen and the freedom of their conversation disgusted her. She was astonished at the liberties Mademoiselle permitted them to take; grew thoughtful and uneasy, and heartily wished herself at home ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... of Roland, and the encouraging countenance maintained by Telie Doe, who seemed little affected by their forlorn situation, gradually tranquilised her mind, and enabled her the better to preserve the air of levity and mirthfulness, which she so vainly attempted at first to assume. This moment of calm Roland took advantage of to apprise her of the necessity of recruiting her spirits with a few hours' asleep; for which purpose he began to look about him for some ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... they made him take theatricals seriously. All his plays were indeed "plays for Puritans." All his criticisms quiver with a refined and almost tortured contempt for the indulgencies of ballet and burlesque, for the tights and the double entente. He can endure lawlessness but not levity. He is not repelled by the divorces and the adulteries as he is by the "splits." And he has always been foremost among the fierce modern critics who ask indignantly, "Why do you object to a thing full of sincere philosophy ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... meantime, writes his "Institutes of the Christian Religion" in French as well as in Latin, showing once and for all, that in the right hands his vernacular tongue was as capable of gravity as many a writer before him had superfluously shown that it was capable of levity. Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is a French writer of power, without whom the far greater Montaigne could hardly have been. The influence of Amyot on French literary history is wider in reach and longer in duration than we thus indicate; but Montaigne's indebtedness to him is alone ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... us make a decision: does His Majesty go to Washington or shall the Chautauqua lecturer extend his professional tours to include London?" Graves gave his sly secretive laugh. Then as if ashamed of his momentary levity, and changing his entire manner, he said: "Well, gentlemen, what ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... 'Misericordia!' The foreigner from the north of Europe, who knows nothing of earthquakes but by description, waits with impatience to feel the movement of the earth, and longs to hear with his own ear the subterranean sounds which he has hitherto considered fabulous. With levity he treats the apprehension of a coming convulsion, and laughs at the fears of the natives: but, as soon as his wish is gratified, he is terror-stricken, and is involuntarily prompted to seek ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... instance of the "unmoral" woman, the conscienceless egoist, morally colour-blind, vain, lewd, the intelligence quick and alert but having no influence whatever on conduct. One instance will suffice to show the sinister levity, the utter absence of all moral sense in ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... was all unresponsive to Elinor's tiny bit of friendly levity also; her face was still sober. Yet she obediently got up from the floor and seated herself at the table to eat the steaming plate of soup which George immediately brought. And it went down her throat much easier than she had imagined any sort of food ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... Sans-terre, or "lack-land," was sent over by his father to strengthen the English interest in Ireland. He arrived in Waterford, accompanied by a fleet of sixty ships, on the last of March, 1185, and remained in the country till the following November. If anything could excuse the levity, folly and misconduct of the Prince on this expedition, it would be his youth;—he was then only eighteen. But Henry had taken every precaution to ensure success to his favourite son. He was preceded into Ireland by Archbishop Cuming, the English successor of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... She allows she don't have enough to keep her doin' in the new—" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty dollars ye've ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... anxious time shaken me a little, at last? I have been writing, for the last few days, in a tone of levity which, Heaven knows, is far enough from my heart, and which it has rather shocked me to discover on looking back at the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... houses; and there were crowds of gay people parading up and down, looking as busy about nothing and as full of themselves as if the great awful sea had not been close beside them. In fact, I was displeased with the levity of their deportment, and the contrast of all that fashionable frivolity with the grandest of all natural objects seemed to me incongruous and discordant; and I was so annoyed at finding myself by the sea-side and yet still surrounded with all the glare and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... your last answers it would appear that money seems sometimes capable of being treated with levity. Can you give me an instance when cash is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... expect to find. There is a great deal of what is undeniably true in this book; there is also, I venture to think, a good deal that is undeniably untrue. I do not think it is unfair to say that in some respects Chesterton allows his cleverness to lead him to certain errors of judgment, and a certain levity in dealing with matters that are to a number of people so sacred that to reinterpret them is almost ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... this fresh pill in moody silence, while the gentlemen of the club discussed the engagement with easy levity. They soon passed to a topic of wider interest, viz., who was to succeed Sir Charles with La Somerset. Bassett began to listen attentively, and learned for the first time Sir Charles Bassett's connection with that lady, and also that she was a ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... unconsciously subduing influence over the lively juniors. Mr. Raymond never frowned upon innocent joyousness, and even the boisterous little Harry was never afraid of his father; yet there was about him a certain realization of the great truths he preached, which checked any approach to levity in his presence, and impressed even the most thoughtless; although, not tracing it to its real source, they generally set it down simply to his "being a clergyman." His children looked up to him with devoted affection and deep reverence; ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... our own, and with whom, therefore, we have conceived ourselves likely to spend our time in a very stiff and constrained manner; while, on the other hand, our destined companion may have apprehended some disgust from the supposed levity and thoughtless gaiety of a disposition that when we, with that urbanity and good-humour which is our principal characteristic, have accommodated ourself to our companion, by throwing as much seriousness into our conversation as our habits ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... cry again: they did not however resume their mourning in our presence. This strange behaviour would incline us to think them hardhearted and unfeeling, did we not know that they are fond parents and in general very affectionate: it is therefore to be ascribed to their extreme levity of disposition; and it is probable that death does not appear to them with so many terrors as it does to people of a ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... entire manner had changed; his levity had suddenly given place to a gravity most unusual to him, and instead of his wonted jollity his face wore an expression of the greatest seriousness. He, after a casual glance at Lawrence, suddenly insisted ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... earth's axis as having possibly co-operated with redistribution of land and sea in causing the cold of the Glacial period. Now, when we consider how extremely modern, zoologically and botanically, the Glacial period is proved to be, I am shocked at any one introducing, with what I may call so much levity, so organic a change as a deviation in the axis of the planet...' (see Lyell's "Principles," 1875, Chapter XIII.; also a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker printed in the "Life of Sir Charles Lyell," Volume ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... amazement. We are not concerned with the judgment upon Montesquieu, nor with the truth as to contemporary English opinion about him, but a writer who devises an antithesis to such a man as Montesquieu in learned pigs and musical infants, deliberately condescends not merely to triviality or levity, but to flat vulgarity of thought, to something of mean and ignoble association. Though one of the most common, this is not Macaulay's only sin in the same unfortunate direction. He too frequently ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. "Mr. Bender's bound to ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... inconstant world, what changes like the heart? Love is a dream, and friendship a delusion. No wonder we grow callous; for how few have the opportunity of returning to the hearth which they quitted in levity or thoughtless weariness, yet which alone is faithful to them; whose sweet affections require not the stimulus of prosperity or fame, the lure of accomplishments, or the tribute of flattery; but which are constant to us in distress, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... looking so glum, Dr. Christobal?" she demanded. "Has the captain's quip given you a shock, or is it that you are surprised at my levity?" ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... to sit down just in this way. I have been talking with so much levity that I have said no serious thing, and you are really no better or wiser, although Robert Buchanan has suggested that I am a person who deals in wisdom. I have said nothing which would make you better ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his possession—like the "Luck of Eden Hall"—no great harm could happen to him. He attached all the importance of a religious ceremony—and, indeed, it was the only one he practiced—to the using of this goblet, and resented any levity during the process as though it were sacrilege. But to stand up after dinner, and much less to support this elaborate drinking-vessel, was not always an easy matter with the Squire's guests, and so it happened on the present occasion. The usage was, that one held the cover ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the spurious kinds arising from anger, or ignorance of the peril, or levity, or a reckless confidence. These are all very easy. His distinction was that he knew all the danger to himself, was anxious to save pain to others, was buoyed up by no rash hope that the world was to be permanently bettered ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... gratitude or praise. Some one at the house had given her a pair of little hoops with bells attached, which she was wont to wear about her ankles, and it afforded her malicious enjoyment to scatter her opponents by the tintinnabulation of her step. For all that levity, she was not destitute of her peculiar mode of adoration. For the religion of the Shout she had no absorbents whatever; she furtively watched it, and openly ridiculed it; but she had a religion of her own, notwithstanding,—a sort of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... say, without shame! Well, my dear, I am in a hurry to have done with all this: though I 'doted upon folly,' yet I was terrified at the thoughts of any thing worse. The idea of a divorce, the public brand of a shameful life, shocked me in spite of all my real and all my assumed levity. O that I had, at this instant, dared to be myself! But my fear of ridicule was greater than my fear of vice. 'Bless me, my dear Lady Delacour,' whispered Harriot, as we left this house, 'what can make you in such a desperate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head (vous fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you have no pain;"—whereat they all laugh. (Moniteur Newspaper, of December 1st, 1789 (in Histoire ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... armed himself with the authority of his sacred office, and used a tone of interference which might have overawed even a monarch, and made him feel that his monitor spoke by a warrant higher than his own. But the indiscreet latitude he had just given to his own passion, and the levity in which he had been detected, were very unfavourable to his assuming that superiority, to which so uncontrollable a spirit as that of Charles, wilful as a prince, and capricious as a wit, was at all likely to submit. The Doctor did, however, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the first play presented at the new theatre might be a failure. He had meant to witness the production incognito among the crowd in the pit or in the gallery. But, after visiting the pit a few moments before the curtain went up, he had been appalled by the hard-hearted levity of the pit's remarks on things in general. The pit did not seem to be in any way chastened or softened by the fact that a fortune, that reputations, that careers were at stake. He had fled from the packed pit. (As for the gallery, he decided that he had already ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the failure of my cotton-sack experiment with very unbecoming levity, as it struck me, accompanying his report with a somewhat unjust comment upon new-fangled notions, such as sewing-machines, etc., etc., winding up with—"Now, when mother was alive" (I fairly winced), "the house was not considered too good for the darkies to sit on the back ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... and she noticed the fine delicate shoulders of the Reverend Mother, and the heavy figure of Mother Philippa. "Even in their backs they are like themselves," she thought. She smiled at her descriptive style, "like themselves," and then, seeing that Mass had begun, she resolutely repressed all levity, and began her prayers. She had not felt especially pious till that moment, and to rouse herself she remembered Monsignor's words, "That at the height of her artistic career she should have been awakened ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the Apostles, did take his spittle, and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized, and say, "In odorem suavitatis," that is, "for a sweet savour unto the Lord;" wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle, for the uncleannesse; nor the application of that Scripture for the levity, can by any authority of man ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... troops had been brought over from Holland by George II. in 1745, during the rebellion in Scotland. In the midst of the storm by which he was assailed, Lord North acknowledged himself the adviser of this measure, and treated the opposition with much levity,—but he was obliged to yield to the representations of some of his friends, and to state in conclusion, that though he still considered he was right, yet as other gentlemen, for whom he had ever had the greatest ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the year 1811, we heard the church bell tolling while we were dressing in the back nursery and were told it was for old Mrs Pontifex. Our man-servant John told us and added with grim levity that they were ringing the bell to come and take her away. She had had a fit of paralysis which had carried her off quite suddenly. It was very shocking, the more so because our nurse assured us that if God chose we might all have fits of paralysis ourselves that very day and be taken ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... invariably brought them on themselves. In incoherent misery, I run over in my head, as well as the confusion of it will let me, our past meetings and dialogues. In almost all, to my distorted view, there now seems to have been an unseemly levity. Things I have said to him; easy, familiar jokes that I have had with him; not that he ever had much sense of a jest—(even at this moment I think this ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... relieving army, and it is on record that the first message flashed through from the south was a question about the number of a horse. With inconceivable stupidity this has been cited as an example of military levity and incapacity. Of course the object of the question was a test as to whether they were really in communication with the garrison. It must be confessed that the town seems to have contained some very querulous ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not altogether his fault that he treated the matter with such brutal levity. It was a long time since he had been at school, and he could not quite realise what it meant to Barry not to be able to play against Ripton. As for Barry, he felt that he had never loathed and detested any one so thoroughly as he ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... that some dissatisfaction with things as they are is necessary even in order to be satisfied; third, that to have this necessary content and necessary discontent it is not sufficient to have the obvious equilibrium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital objection to the advice merely to grin and bear it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin: but gargoyles do—because they ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... John Charteris afforded an entry I found little that smacked of such antiquity. I had entered a world inhabited by people who amused themselves and apparently did nothing else; and I was at first troubled by their levity, and afterward envious of it, and in the end embarked upon sedulous attempt to imitate it. I continued to be very boyish; indeed, I found myself by this in much the position of an actor who has made such a success in one particular role that the public declines to patronize ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... it wandered round its target, in apparent though terrible playfulness, it burned into the spot, and engraved there a brand, and a token indelible and perpetual,—this no man could witness, when darted towards another, and feel safe for himself. The very caprice and levity of the jester seemed more perilous, because less to be calculated upon, than a systematic principle of bitterness or satire. Bolingbroke compared him, not unaptly, to a child who has possessed himself of Jupiter's bolts, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of Matrimony. The company present are there as witnesses and to ask God's blessing upon the marriage. While, therefore, they may bring into the church gladsome hearts on such an occasion, they should guard against levity. They should behave with reverence, attend to the service, say the Amens to the prayers, and conduct themselves with the same regard for the place, and for the sacredness of the act, as they ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... Children"; and often did he feel willing to die if he could, with equal success, engage the admiration of his friends and the world. His mother devoutly believed that all who differed from the basis of her own religious views would endure the eternal torments of hell; and his father seriously reproved his levity when, one Sunday, he happened to take the cat in his arms while walking in the garden. All this naturally impressed the child at the time, and his chief amusement or pleasure was preaching sermons in the kitchen every Sunday afternoon, unmindful whether the audience ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... for their God, to be so ignorant of him! Would not any man willingly travel about his own possessions? Have you such a large portion, believers, and should ye be taken up with other vanities? Should your hearts and minds be stayed on them, more than the living God? There is a great vanity and levity in men's minds; "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity." There is an unsettledness of spirit,—we cannot pitch on that upon which we may be stayed; and so all the spirits of men are in a continual motion from one thing ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... its knees searching the corners of his conscience for some sin of omission or commission, and one by one every pleasure, every recreation, every trifle scraped out of the dust of past experience, was magnified into a huge offence. He thought that the smallest evidence of levity, the least unbending to human instinct, might be seized by those around him as evidence of inconsistency, and might lead the weaker brethren into offence. The incident of the carpenters and the comic song is typical of a condition of mind which now possessed ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Levity, mirth and joy were condemned by the Puritans, and nearly all amusements were discarded. The merry whistle of the lad was ungodly in their eyes, and Charles Stevens had come in for his share of the reproof because God had given him a ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... as a cause and a result of this undervaluing and general fruitlessness of the ordinary Church ordinances, that we find so much levity and irreverence in many so-called revival Churches. Because the Holy Spirit is not supposed to be effectively present, is not in the Word and Sacraments, does not bring His saving and sanctifying Grace through them; therefore there is nothing solemn, awe-inspiring, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... their lives in building up all four, lives a gentleman who writes real stories about the real insides of people; and his name is Mr. Walter Besant. But he will insist upon treating his ghosts—he has published half a workshopful of them—with levity. He makes his ghost-seers talk familiarly, and, in some cases, flirt outrageously, with the phantoms. You may treat anything, from a Viceroy to a Vernacular Paper, with levity; but you must behave reverently toward a ghost, and particularly ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... a digression, but, it came from contemplating the singular beauty of one woman's soul, among the tarnished multitude of victims to that social levity and those superficial virtues that society honors, and with which our modern fashionable women persuade themselves they are doing marvels in the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... office be overcome by a deference for the reasons and opinions of my friends, might I not, after the declarations I have made (and Heaven knows that they were made in the sincerity of my heart), in the judgment of the impartial world and of posterity, be chargeable with levity and inconsistency, if not with rashness and ambition? Nay, farther, would there not be some apparent foundation for the two former charges? Now, justice to myself and tranquillity of conscience require that I should act a part, if not above imputation, at least capable of vindication. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... question at issue has been treated by a brace of mathematical birds with too much levity. It may be said, however, that sarcasm and ridicule sometimes succeed, where reason fails.... Such a course is not well suited to a discussion.... For this reason I shall for the future [this implies there has been a past, so that Nauticus is not before me for the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... gasped the astonished Kendrick. He stared at the detective. "You're not joking? If so, your levity is decidedly ill-timed." ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... fear, it was not the time to show it. He heard all around him speak of fighting as if it were fun, and of death with seeming levity. It is the way of the young and the thoughtless. Old sailors and old soldiers seldom talk thus, and think more of duty than of glory. For young or for old the loss of life is not a matter for light talk, as if death were only the end of it. Those that cause ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself all the time; and it shone upon the garden in Solomon's Song, and the roses of Sharon, and the lilies of the valley, and the land flowing with milk and honey," said she, in a childish tone of levity which had an undercurrent of earnestness in it. All her emotional nature and her pride arose against Pyramids and Old Testament battle-fields, when she had only been conscious that the moon shone upon Horace and herself. She was shamed and angry as she had ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... not disposed to treat the philosophy of the "absolute" either with levity or with scorn. We feel that it brings us into contact with some of the most profound and most deeply mysterious problems of human thought. Finite as we are, we are so constituted that we cannot avoid framing the idea, although we can never attain to a comprehension, of the Infinite. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... music found salvation there. The rules of genius were taught there most methodically. Laborious pupils applied the formulas with infinite pains and absolute certainty. It looked as though by their pious labors they were trying to regain the criminal levity of their ancestors: the Aubers, the Adams, and the trebly damned, the diabolical Berlioz, the devil himself, diabolus in musica. With laudable ardor and a sincere piety they spread the cult of the acknowledged masters. In ten years the work they had to show was considerable: French ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... to write to you, such writing as you have seen—strange! The proper time and season for good sound sensible and profitable forms of speech—when ought it to have occurred, and how did I evade it in these letters of mine? For people begin with a graceful skittish levity, lest you should be struck all of a heap with what is to come, and that is sure to be the stuff and staple of the man, full of wisdom and sorrow,—and then again comes the fringe of reeds and pink little stones on ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... been so far of his party, that you have contested that his principal fault is over-frankness, and too much regardlessness of appearances, and that he is too giddy to be very artful: you would have it, that at the time he says any thing good, he means what he speaks; that his variableness and levity are constitutional, owing to sound health, and to a soul and body [that was your observation] fitted for and pleased with each other. And hence you concluded, that could this consentaneousness [as you call it] of corporal ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... instructions relative to farming, and the economy of a country life, in its various departments. Though Varro was at this time in his eightieth year, he writes with all the vivacity, though without the levity, of youth, and sets out with invoking, not the Muses, like Homer and Ennius, as he observes, but the twelve deities supposed to be chiefly concerned in the operations of agriculture. It appears from the account which he gives, that upwards of fifty Greek ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... frowning. A messenger! What on earth did they want with such a person? Just like John!—putting the disagreeables on other people. She said to herself that one saw where the child's levity ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the strict observance of Sunday. 'It should be different,' he observed, 'from another day. People may walk, but not throw stones at birds. There may be relaxation, but there should be no levity.' ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... They began with thanking God with having given them life, and providing them necessary food; and then praised him for the good examples they had been favoured with. From these melancholy rites were banished all licentiousness and levity, and while other customs changed, these continued the same. They roasted the flesh of the victim they had offered, and eat it in common, discoursing on the virtues of him they came ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Paisley gallops down into these San Andres mountains for the purpose of a month's surcease and levity, dressed in the natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Pinos, which certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing with condensed milk and honey. It had a street or two, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... everywhere, but rested nowhere. She seemed even less human and irresponsible than when a child—verily a being of the air, a fairy, without human thoughtfulness, or sympathy, or affections! She only seemed so—under all that fay-like levity there was a heart. Poor heart! little food or cultivation had it had in ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we saw," Slim Riley broke in. "That thing came straight out of Hell." And in his voice was no suggestion of levity. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... expression we may imagine that poor old piano would have worn, to any one who could have taken in the full absurdity of the position. A venerable instrument like itself, after thirty-five years of honorable service, thus to be forced to exhibit a levity so unbefitting its age ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Frenchman. It is a common and a very just remark, that one of the most agreeable characters in the world is a Frenchman who has served long in the army, and has arrived at that age when the fire of youth is properly tempered. Such a character is gay without levity, and judicious without severity. Such a character was the Count de Marboeuf, of an ancient family in Britanny, where there is more plainness of character than among the other French. He had been Gentilhomme de la Chambre to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... that all substances gain instead of losing weight by undergoing combustion; and after the usual attempt to accommodate the old theory to the new fact by means of an arbitrary hypothesis (that phlogiston had the quality of positive levity instead of gravity), chemists were conducted to the true explanation, namely, that instead of a substance separated, there was, on the contrary, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... well paid for his services, and succeeded in acquiring, partly by the sale of his influence, partly by gambling, and partly by pimping, an estate of three thousand pounds a year. For under an outward show of levity, profusion, improvidence, and eccentric impudence, he was in truth one of the most mercenary and crafty of mankind. He was now no longer young, and was expiating by severe sufferings the dissoluteness of his youth: but age and disease ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bounty. He could not always win respect by the power of his dark and {29} piercing eyes, for he had few advantages of person and disdained to be genial in manners. Brooding over neglect and injustice, he grew so repellant that Cane was secretly relieved when thoughtless, cruel levity drove the poet from his court. He never cared, perhaps, that Dante, writing the concluding cantos of his poem, decided sadly not to send them to ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... he never got out of that class." It was evident that Mr. Speed's levity made no impression upon the Glee Club tenor. "He hates to talk ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... an iconoclast from predilection. No bitterness or empty hate dictated his vituperations against existing values and against the dogmas of his parents and forefathers. He knew too well what these things meant to the millions who profess them, to approach the task of uprooting them with levity or even with haste. He saw what modern anarchists and revolutionists do NOT see—namely, that man is in danger of actual destruction when his customs and values are broken. I need hardly point out, therefore, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... in Orlov's department; he was his head-clerk, but he said that he should soon exchange into the Department of Justice again. He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to another with exceptional levity, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism: "It's only in the Government service you learn the truth." He had a little wife with ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... edge, and overlooking the preacher, imitated all his gestures in so grotesque a manner, that the whole congregation were unavoidably urged to laugh. The father, surprised and confounded at this ill-timed levity, severely rebuked his audience for their inattention. The reproof failed in its effect; the congregation still laughed, and the preacher in the warmth of his zeal redoubled his vociferation and his action; these the ape imitated so exactly that the congregation could no longer restrain ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... Lynch that he was conducting himself with unseemly levity in company with a foremast hand. His face became stern, his voice hard, and my moment ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... "Nothing is to be gained," she said severely, "by speaking with levity of serious subjects. And, after all, whatever your personal views may be, psychical research is a perfectly ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... endeavouring to speak with as much dignity as her insecure position and her qualmishness would allow, "I am surprised at your asking me such a question and displaying levity when I feel as if I am dying, and we are all going ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... violently, then subsided into the respectful silence they were wont to accord Dr. Rogers; at the finish they stole out without a word. As for Knox, he sat alone, overwhelmed with the powerful sermon he had repeated, and by remorse for his own attempted levity. His emotional Celtic nature was deeply impressed. A few days later he disappeared, and was not heard of again until, some months after, Dr. Rogers learned that he was the guest of the Rev. Aaron Burr at Newark, and studying for the church. He was ordained in due course, converted ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... are in full dress, with a rose in your hair, waiting to set out to a court at the palace! Are you willing to pass through contemptuous rioting crowds, and over your sick father's body, to become queen? What callous levity! What a presumptuous mixture of what you think is love, duty, sacrifice, trial—with an unscrupulous ambition—! The King? Are you depending on him? He is a poet. He loves anything unusual or sensational. Resistance stimulates him; and that is what drives him into believing that his love ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... his age, and had all the manner of a joyful and diverting youth. His fathership, as they told us, had acquired the priory by means of a gift of a thousand ducats, which he had sent to the Father Provincial. After dinner he invited some of us to visit his cell, and there it was we came to know the levity of his life. It exhibited little of the appearance of a life of penance and self-mortification. We expected to find in the habitation of a prelate of such an establishment a most magnificent library, which would furnish an index of his ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... burden your memory to such an extent, but he still remembers you. In some conversation with him yesterday he did me the honour to say that I brought you back to his recollection by what he was pleased to call the mingled levity and obstinacy of my character. The levity seems to have already impressed you. I am now reduced to showing you the obstinacy." He sat down in a chair near the door and folded his arms, still ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never thought of resuming again the pursuit of knowledge, 'till the fine address of his governor, Dr. Balfour, won him in his travels, by degrees, to those charms of study, which he had through youthful levity forsaken, and being seconded by reason, now more strong, and a more mature taste of the pleasure of learning, which the Dr. took care to place in the most agreeable and advantageous light, he became enamoured of knowledge, in the pursuit of which he often spent those hours ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... beyond the pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor which runs through George Eliot's works there was comparatively little trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, joining heartily in any mirth ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Roman poet laughs at the grotesque misery which he himself exhibits, and purposely groups together objects with the intention of exerting to his readers the feeling of ridicule. But in no instance can we detect the faintest symptom of levity in the Hebrew penmen; their style, like their subject, is uniformly exalted, chaste, and severe; they wrote to men concerning the things of God, in a manner suitable to such a momentous communication; and they never ceased to remember that, in all their records, whether historical ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... and the Squire led off with Mrs. Crackenthorp, joining hands with the rector and Mrs. Osgood. That was as it should be—that was what everybody had been used to—and the charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony. It was not thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middle-aged people to dance a little before sitting down to cards, but rather as part of their social duties. For what were these if not to be merry at appropriate times, interchanging visits and poultry with ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... preach to his heart's content,—as he will, no doubt, to his hearers' welfare, and will not annoy me in the least." On hearing this, Mr. Puddleham pushed his hat off his forehead and looked up and frowned, as though the levity of expression in which his rival indulged, was altogether unbecoming the solemnity ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... been gone from Mrs Dinkman's threequarters of an hour. I had left a small group excited at the free show consequent upon the too successful beautification of a local eyesore; I returned to a sizable crowd viewing an impressive phenomenon. The homely levity had vanished; no one shouted jovial advice. Opinions and comments passed in whispers accompanied by furtive glances toward the lawn, as though it were sentient and might be offended by rude speculation. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is odd what an effect one's early training has. D'you remember how discouraged G.-A. Alison was about our levity—especially mine? She once said bitterly that I was like the ell-woman—hollow—because I laughed in the middle of the Bible lesson. And how antiquated and stuffy we thought her views, and took pleasure in assuring ourselves ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Despite my levity, I have been secretly stricken with remorse at the monstrous selfishness that lay coiled like a canker in my words. I was really no better than those men who say to ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... Abraham, was despised by Esau, who, doubtless, in his prolonged wanderings from home, and his frequent associations with the inhabitants of the land, had been led to feel contempt for the worship and the promises of God, and in his reckless levity he transferred it to Jacob for "a mess of pottage," while he further alienated himself from his parents and brother by marrying the daughter of a Hittite. "This was a grief and sorrow of mind to Isaac and Rebekah." Forgetting the respect due to them as his parents; ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... his helpmeet, drawing herself up, and giving him an austere glance over her spectacles; "how often must I tell you that there is subjects which shouldn't be treated with levity?" ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sapling well fed from the old tree. Taller than his father by many inches, broader, heavier, and larger in all ways, with the slow eyes of a seal and something of a seal's face as well. But with his father's sprawling legs and his father's levity and irony of manner and of voice—a Manxman disguised out of all recognition of race, and apeing the fashionable follies ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... at Saratoga, this was considered a grand opportunity through tracts to sow the seeds of rebellion all through the Southern States. This Convention afforded a new theme for conversation at the hotels, and was discussed for many days after with levity or seriousness, to be laughed over and thought over by the women at ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word "cleverness," ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the Revolution, he, in common with many of his countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
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