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More "Levity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beloved, and who watched with incessant care over their interest and comfort. Affectionate and faithful as these home-bred servants were in general, there were some instances (but very few) of those who, through levity of mind, or a love of liquor or finery, betrayed their trust, or habitually neglected their duty. In these cases, after every means had been used to reform them, no severe punishments were inflicted at home. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... the battery at the brink, with the muzzles of the guns thrust forward against the sky. She could not move him to her pleasure in the grotesqueness of the circus-bills plastered half-way up the rock; but he tolerated the levity with which she commented on them, and her light sallies upon passing things, and he said nothing to prevent her reaching home ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code;' and reveal 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, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... has been treated as a bugbear. This levity is, at least, unseasonable, and, most of all, unbecoming some who resort to it. Who has forgotten the philippics of 1794? The cry then was, reparation—no envoy—no treaty—no tedious delays. Now, it seems, the passion subsides, or, at ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... "No levity," was the stern reply. "Before you are admitted you must swear solemnly not to divulge the ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger
... reign of Henry VIII., after Wolsey's fall, was rich in horrors and in tragical catastrophes. But it was not a mere carnival of lust and blood. High principles were at stake, and profound issues divided parties, beside which the levity of Anne Boleyn and the eyes of Jane Seymour were not worth a moment's thought. Hobbes wondered that a Parliament man worth thousands of pounds, like Hampden, to pay twenty shillings for ship-money, as if the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... her mind, as her most fair body, was delicate, nervous, spiritualized; but the instinct of imperious duty ever gave her strength in the day of trial. Long with an elder sister's eye had she watched and feared for Margaret; she had palliated natural levity by evident warmth of disposition, and excused follies of the judgment by kindness of the heart. Charlotte was no child; in any other case, she had been keener of perception; but in that of a young, generous, and most loving sister, suspicion had been ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Orleans on the twenty-sixth day; meaning that she had twenty-six days' passage. She has written both from Orleans and Nantz. Her letters are full of good sense, of acute observation, of levity, of gravity, and affection. No news ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... he killed for revenge, or in self-defense, he did that also without hysteria, for it was a very businesslike proceeding which admitted of no levity. ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 down to ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... increased from the circumstance of not less than one thousand students quitting the learned institutions of Paris, and repairing to Oxford for instruction; but these foreigners introduced so dangerous a levity of manners, that the Pope deemed it necessary to send his legate for the purpose of reforming " certain flagrant corruptions of the place." The legate was at first treated with much affected civility, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... now elapsed, and she had become acquainted with a number of gentlemen, many of whom had rendered themselves disgusting by the extreme levity and fickleness of their manners. She had repeatedly observed young gentlemen, whose professions of constancy and attachment would persuade their mistress of the impossibility of their ever deserting her, withhold their protection in those very cases ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... became the question of a wrong done himself in casting him nameless upon the world, a thing of scorn to cruel, unjust humanity. Could Mistress Winthrop have guessed the bitter self-derision with which he had, in apparent levity, offered her his name, she might have felt some pity for him who ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... despise to blot paper with a recitall of those wretched Interludes, Farces and Fantasms, which appear'd in the severall intervalls; because they were nothing but the effects of an extream gyddiness, and unparallel'd levity. Yet these are those various despensations and providences in your journey to that holy land of purchases and profits, to which you have from time to time appeal'd for the justification of your ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... to describe, no cruelty of guardians, or magnanimity of wards, or agonies of lovers. The record I have to make is one of sordidness, levity, and interest. In less than a week after the first interview which we have just described, the contract of marriage was fulfilled, and Schalken saw the prize which he would have risked anything to secure, carried off ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... advancing from the parlor, where she had overheard the whole, Edith laughed a gay, musical laugh, as hollow and meaningless as Mrs. Atherton's forced levity. ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... and vanity How sad these old memorics are in the autumn Never travel when the heart is troubled! Not more honest than necessary Poor France of Jeanne d'Arc and of Napoleon Redouble their boasting after each defeat Take their levity for heroism The leaves fall! the leaves fall! Universal suffrage, with its accustomed intelligence Were certain ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... a map of the Bakhatla country with its rivers and mountains, and is quite at home in the geographical details, crowning his description with some sentimental and half-ludicrous lines of poetry. No reasonable man will fancy that in the wailings of his heart there was any levity or want of sincerity. What we are about to copy merits careful consideration: first, as evincing the depth and tenderness of his love for these black savages; next, as showing that it was pre-eminently Christian love, intensified ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... their first meeting. In fact, the history of his grief inspired her with a sort of reverential compassion for him, and the perception of the terms on which she stood, made her laugh of yesterday seem to her such unbecoming levity, that upon it she concentrated all ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... break out into acts; but when it had vented itself in some citizen-like freedom of speech, there was an end of it. In fine, nobody charged malice or bitterness upon his nature, though many imputed hastiness and levity to it; in general, he was the most attractive and agreeable of companions, and could speak too, both with grace, and forcibly. For instance, to divert the Achaeans from the conquest of the isle of Zacynthus, "If," said he, "they put their head too far out of Peloponnesus, they may hazard themselves ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... breach of solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or thoughtlessness about his state; he was kind, and shrewd as ever; but how he flashed out with utter merriment when he got hold of a joke, or rather when it got hold of him, and shook him, not an inch of his body was ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... reputed a man of taste and discernment; and as a bigoted upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover an undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity and silliness. "Oh! he only says exactly as much as he means to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Sylvia, with a frown. She was feeling tremendously grown-up in these days, and did not permit overmuch levity on the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... sense of proportion as when we consider those beloved writers whom we hold to be humourists because they have made us laugh. It may be conceded that, as a people, we have an abiding and somewhat disquieting sense of fun. We are nimble of speech, we are more prone to levity than to seriousness, we are able to recognize a vital truth when it is presented to us under the familiar aspect of a jest, and we habitually allow ourselves certain forms of exaggeration, accepting, perhaps unconsciously, Hazlitt's verdict: "Lying is a species of wit, and shows spirit and invention." ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... caprices of the heart, and all the giddy ebullitions of gratified vanity, manifest themselves so strangely, that it is extremely difficult to understand them, or know their wishes. Under such circumstances, my lord, they will, in the very levity of delight, frequently say 'no,' when they mean ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 'Sermons on the Seriousness of Life;' they are the only ones he has printed, I believe," said Miss Harriet, with much pleasure. "They are considered very fine discourses. He pays you a great compliment, my dear. I feared that he noticed your girlish levity." ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... profound levity, an antipathy to enthusiasm that wavered between laughter and disgust, combined with an unswerving devotion to the exacting and arduous ideals of social intercourse—such were the characteristics ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... very fit place for thinking on our wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: the blindness of our minds, the depravity and the bondage of our wills, the forgetfulness of our memories, the slipperiness of our tongues, the levity and frivolity of our hearts, with all their extravagances, presumptions, neglects. In fine, let there be no spiritual wound within us, great or small, old or new, which we do not daily discover and lay open to our Sovereign Physician, beseeching of Him a remedy. This day it is very proper to ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... understand, because it often meant no more than a confession of ignorance with regard to God, which we all confess, and need not necessarily amount to the denial of the existence of Deity. But that Voltairian levity which scoffs at everything connected with religion was certainly something I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should never think of mentioning names, but it seemed ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... In a year or two it was cut short. He then let his beard grow, and, after some hesitation, his moustache. Many of the older people, we are told, were scandalised, but remained silent; some wrote to the newspapers in protest. The moustache was declared to invest ministers "with an air of levity and worldliness." A letter of approval purported to come from the shade of a Wesleyan minister, the Rev. H.D. Lowe, who, in 1828, had his beard cut off by order of the Wesleyan ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... State! You have made yourself liable to be brought before the bench at Assizes," said the Marshal, "like that clerk of the Treasury! And you take this, monsieur, with such levity." ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... extreme astonishment, and he now said to him with some severity: "Pray, sir, do not accuse unjustly a man whose position is in the highest degree respectable—a priest, sir?—yes, a priest? I warned you beforehand to reflect upon what you advanced. All this becomes very serious, and, at your age, any levity in such matters would ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... does but heighten more and more the jealousy of Othello. To throw out still more clearly the angelic purity of Desdemona, Shakspeare has in Emilia associated with her a companion of doubtful virtue. From the sinful levity of this woman it is also conceivable that she should not confess the abstraction of the handkerchief when Othello violently demands it back: this would otherwise be the circumstance in the whole piece the most difficult to justify. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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 the worthy ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... frivolity, her eternal smiling. Of course he knew that she cared for him, that he had power over her, that there had never been and never would be any other man for Fanny; but he couldn't go on with Fanny's levity for ever. He wanted something more; something sound and solid; something that Elise gave him and no other woman. ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... or incivility on the part of a Post-Office servant is, next to dishonesty, one of the worst offences he can commit. This notice is not addressed to men alone. Of the young women employed by the department, there are, he says, some, if not many, whom it is impossible to acquit of inattention and levity in the discharge of their official duties. It is Sir JAMES FERGUSSON's intention to ascertain, at short intervals, the effect of this notice on the behaviour of Post-Office officials ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... struck Eyer for his grinning levity; but at that moment a door opened in the side of the large building and a man ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... of the monastic hours was an exceedingly common fault during the later Middle Ages, though the monks were always worse about it than the nuns. Sometimes they 'cut' the services. Sometimes they behaved with the utmost levity, as at Exeter in 1330, where the canons giggled and joked and quarrelled during the services and dropped hot candle wax from the upper stalls on to the shaven heads of the singers in the stalls below![7] Sometimes they came late to matins, in the small hours ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... garrison was permeated by the exosmose action of his cheery optimism and humour during seven weary months of waiting; and while it might seem to some that he was treating the serious situation with unbecoming levity, he wisely kept the tragedy of it, of which he was fully conscious, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... scholars of the country 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 a pennyworth of cheese ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... loftiness of the platform whence the observation is made, and that which is produced by the malignant envy of the observer; between the gloomy judicial ferocity of a Pope or a Tacitus, and the villain levity which revels in the contemplation of imputed faults, or that fiendishness of feeling which gloats and howls over the ruins of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and dancing mad, I sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too—most cold and dreadful—had its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, and a blind hilarity, on I sped, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... certain professional touches of colour at waist, neck, and wrists made her appear, in spirit at least, the younger woman. There were times when Winona suffered herself to doubt her mother's seriousness; times when the woman appeared a slave to levity. She would laugh at things Winona considered no laughing matters, and her sympathy with her ailing husband had come to be callous and matter of fact, almost perfunctory. She longed, moreover, to do fancy dressmaking for her child; and there was the matter ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... was as troubled as some men are pleased when they get much for nothing. Suwanee appeared in a somewhat new role. She was the personification of dignity and courtesy. She acted as if she knew all and was aware that their guests did. Therefore levity would be in bad taste, and their only resource was the good breeding which ignores the disagreeable and the inevitable. Her mother looked on her with pride, and wondered at so fine an exibition of tact. She did not know that the poor girl had a new teacher, and that ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... the Colonel the latter had regained his wig, his natural complexion and his dignity, the last being so great that it was a perfect danger signal warning away all levity or even the slightest sign of it on ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... this dark and formidable determination of the Italians, and their mocking gaiety and reckless levity, is just as marked as that, between the resolute countenances of the Orsini type, such as I noticed here, and the frivolous faces, which express nothing but a contemptuous superiority or mere indifference. Faces of this type were also to be seen among the spectators, ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind; indeed, the necessary effects of the ignorance and levity of the vulgar. Such complaints and humours have existed in all times; yet as all times have NOT been alike, true political sagacity manifests itself in distinguishing that complaint which only characterises the general ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... strongest bass. "Pardon me. I cannot accept such a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I must deplore. No matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end we have the spectacle of a struggle between men where lying decides the survival of the fittest. Better, far better, if it was to come, that they ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... was so much mischief in his nature that he would rebound at any moment from a mood of pathos or seriousness to one of levity. "Well, Annette," and he leaned yearningly towards her, "when you leave me to take the chances of this tumultuous time, the greatest light that I have known will have gone ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... 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 goodwill ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... 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
... This time his levity grated on me. I peered eagerly towards the gates, striving to make out the figure of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... presses that have no direct interest in the matter, would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would mystify the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private station to make the truth available in any country, in a matter of public interest; and those in public stations seldom or never attempt it, unless they ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... have brought together, because they both seem subject to the objection of too much levity for the solemnity of enchantment, and may both be shewn, by one quotation from Camden's account of Ireland, to be founded upon a practice really observed by the uncivilised natives of that country: "When any one gets a fall, says the informer of Camden, he starts up, and, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... and luxurious he appeared to me immediately; but fraudulent, base, designing, capable of every pernicious art of treachery and duplicity,—such, indeed, I expected not to find him, his very flightiness and levity seemed ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... 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. She had seemed not wholly negligible ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... ancient dame a foe to mirth. Her ballad, jest, and riddle's quaint device, Oft cheered the shepherds round their social hearth; Whom levity or spleen could ne'er entice To purchase chat or laughter at the price Of decency. Nor let it faith exceed, That Nature forms a rustic taste so nice. Ah! had they been of court or city breed, Such delicacy were ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... turned on an electric light beside him. Douglas was struck by something strange in his father's attitude and look—a curious irresponsibility and remoteness. The deep depression of their earlier weeks together had apparently disappeared. This mood of easy acquiescence—almost levity—was becoming permanent. Yet Douglas could not help noticing afresh the physical change in a once splendid man—how shrunken his father was, and how grey. And he was only fifty-two. But the pace at which he had lived for years, first in the attempt to double his already great ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our gondolier, in which the compliments of the day were passed in the usual terms of Venetian chaff, lifted the bier on shore and set it down. The priest followed with the two boys, whom he rebuked for levity, simultaneously tripping over the Latin of a prayer, with his eyes fixed on our harmless little party as if we were a funeral, and the dead in the black box an indifferent spectator Then he popped down upon ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... far superior to that of mere description: it is spoken in the character of the melancholy Man, and has therefore a dramatic propriety. The Author makes this remark, to rescue himself from the charge of having alluded with levity to a line in Milton: a charge than which none could be more painful to him, except perhaps that ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... similarly presented to my sisters, because my sex entitled me to a heavier article. I must have seen that lady at least four times in the twenty years following. She never alluded to my salvation in any way. People occasionally ask me to act as godfather to their children with a levity which convinces me that they have not the faintest notion that it involves anything more than calling the helpless child George Bernard without regard to the possibility that it may grow up in the liveliest abhorrence of ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... troubled himself any further about me. The company was excessively lively; there were dalliance and playfulness; trifles were sometimes discussed with an important tone, but oftener important matters with levity; and especially pleasantly flew the wit over absent friends and their circumstances. I was too strange to understand much of all this; too anxious and introverted to take an interest in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... well made without some such order of things as might, through a series of time, afford a rational hope of securing unity, coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He felt that nothing else can protect it against the levity of courts, and the greater levity of the multitude. That to talk of hereditary monarchy, without anything else of hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low-minded absurdity, fit only for those detestable "fools aspiring to be knaves," who began to forge in 1789 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of the Revolution, he, in common with many of his countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and yet ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... in the other. He has been described as one who, while conversing, even in his later years, kept "bobbing all the while like a cork on the sea of his enthusiasms." And, in a great deal of his rapture, there is much of the levity as well as the "bobbing" quality of the cork. He who sang the hymns of the Republic in his youth, ended his life as rhetorician-in-chief of the Jingoes against the Irish and the Boers. Nor does one feel that there was any philosophic basis ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... perhaps I might take this opportunity of expressing—. But, after all, the levity of the moment is hardly in accordance with the sentiments which I should wish ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... mythological importance, and they selected it for performance on occasions of gravity as a means of honoring the kings and alii of the land. They would have considered its presentation on common occasions, or in a spirit of levity, as a great impropriety. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... may be said, that the great disease of France has been the disorder in its domestic relations. That amidst the general surrender of its upper classes in former times to levity, "and something more," there were many exceptions of family happiness and purity, is as certain as that human nature, in its worst state of depravity, will ever assert its better tendencies, and give indications of the ethereal source from which it has ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... impossibility of tolerating the affront which had 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. 'Oui, de ce jour commence ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... as those which were constantly heard, during the siege, from the officers of the navy; and the Admiral's telegraphic note on page 327, "My chief pilot informs me a gale is coming on, and I am coming into the creek," was the source of very unpardonable levity on board some of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... against yourself?" cried 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 tincture as well as your father could, and though I know I must have made faces wry enough to ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... 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; ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... sunk in slumber than he crawled stealthily upstairs in order to forestall by theft a promised generosity. He opened the door of the bed-chamber in a hushed silence; but the wrenching of the cofferlid awoke the sleeper, and Gilderoy, having cut his mother's throat with an infamous levity, seized whatever money and jewels were in the house, cruelly maltreated his sister, and laughingly burnt the house to the ground, that the possibility of evidence ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... other time Will Osten would have smiled at the solemn manner in which this was said, but there was something in the hour, and also in the tone of his friend's voice, which tended to repress levity and raise a feeling of ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... very arch look, she said: "I prithee, deliver thyself like a man of the world." The levity of this quotation jarred so discordantly on the romantic inamorato that he sprang to his feet, and beat his forehead with his clenched fist. The young lady was terrified, and, taking his hand in hers, said in her tenderest tone: "What would ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... of which has been imputed to the emperor Nero. The spirit of Madame de Pompadour's saying breathes the same selfish levity; and it amounts to the same thing. But it merits remark that the words of Metternich were of an entirely distinct signification. They did not imply that he cared only for himself and the affairs of his own life; but that he anticipated the inability of future ministers to avert revolution, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... effect upon her? Undoubtedly at Calais she was afraid; some misgiving, some haunting terror possessed her. Now, when standing before me fully confessed for what she was, and practically at my mercy, she could laugh with cool and unabashed levity and make little ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... system was likely to act barbarously. Thirdly, every slave family was exposed to the risk, on such occasions as the death or great impoverishment of its owner, of being ruthlessly torn asunder, and the fact that negroes often rebounded or seemed to rebound from sorrows of this sort with surprising levity does not much lessen the horror of it. Fourthly, it is inherent in slavery that its burden should be most felt precisely by the best minds and strongest characters among the slaves. And, though the capacity of the negroes for advancement could not then and cannot yet be truly ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... of us who are grateful to Mr. Leacock as an intrepid purveyor of wholesome food for laughter have not failed to recognize that he mingles shrewdness with levity—that he is, in short, ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... spared me much. Whether your attentions to me are in sport or earnest, they must cease. I have no right to listen to such words as yours last night—my heart and hand are engaged to one, who deserves better from me than the levity which alone could have placed me in the position from which I thus painfully extricate myself. For any fault on my part, I thus make bitter atonement. I wish you health and happiness, and now let this save us both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... renew his studies, which were totally lost in the joys more agreeable to his inclination. He 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 Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... Sir Walter and Lord Lindsay and Principal Forbes to the master of his later studies of men and the means of life, Thomas Carlyle. The religious instinct so conspicuous in him was a heritage from Scotland; thence the combination of shrewd common-sense and romantic sentiment; the oscillation between levity and dignity, from caustic jest to tender earnest; the restlessness, the fervour, the impetuosity—all these are the tokens of a Scotsman of parts, and were highly developed in ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... Merit, that he died in the same Gaiety of Temper in which he lived; but as his Life was altogether loose and dissolute, the Indifference which he showed at the Close of it is to be looked upon as a piece of natural Carelessness and Levity, rather than Fortitude. The Resolution of Socrates proceeded from very different Motives, the Consciousness of a well-spent Life, and the prospect of a happy Eternity. If the ingenious Author above mentioned was so ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... are not merely uninformed of, but in general, perfectly indifferent to political matters. This ignorance may in a great measure result from the unthinking and pleasure-seeking character of the Viennese public—which levity is encouraged by the Government, as taverns and concert rooms are open long after private houses are closed—but is also to be traced to the uneasy position which the citizens hold with respect to the police. It is not alone that ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... what he thought his independence and magnanimity. "He was," says Burns, "the only man I ever knew who was a greater fool than myself, where woman was the presiding star; but he spoke of lawless love with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror. Here his friendship ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... determin'd. But if the Tradition be true of that Extravagance which forc'd him both to quit his Country and Way of Living; to wit, his being engag'd, with a Knot of young Deer-stealers, to rob the Park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Cherlecot near Stratford: the Enterprize favours so much of Youth and Levity, we may reasonably suppose it was before he could write full Man. Besides, considering he has left us six and thirty Plays, at least, avow'd to be genuine; and considering too, that he had retir'd from the Stage, to spend the latter Part ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... laudable spirit of emulation among his fellows, which could not fail of turning out to the advantage of his education. Ferdinand was entered in the same academy; and the two lads proceeded equally in the paths of erudition; a mutual friendship and intimacy soon ensued, and, notwithstanding the levity and caprice commonly discernible in the behaviour of such boys, very few or rather no quarrels happened in the course of their communication. Yet their dispositions were altogether different, and their talents unlike. Nay, this dissimilarity ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... and was silent awhile. There was no levity in him now. Slowly he resumed, "I guess as much as it's humanly possible for two men to know each other—down to the bedrock, it's surely Burke Slavin and I. Should too, the years we've been together. The good old beggar! . . ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... told that such a Practice is contrary to the Letter of the Militia Act. I trust then I was misinformd when I was told that it was countenanced by those who of all Men ought to pay the most sacred Regard to the Law. Are we arrivd to such a Pitch of Levity & Dissipation as that the Idea of feasting shall extinguish every Spark of publick Virtue, and frustrate the Design of the most noble and useful Institution. I hope not. Shall we not again see that Sobriety of Manners, that Temperance, Frugality, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... by the same operation, morally cleansed himself, and left every stain and ugly blot of his late misdeeds and reputation in his bath. His face, albeit scratched here and there, was rosy, round, shining with irrepressible good-humor and youthful levity. His large blue eyes were infantine in their innocent surprise and thoughtlessness. Dripping yet with water, and panting, he rested his elbows lazily on the bank, and became instantly absorbed with a boy's delight in the movements ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... livery is so often stolen to serve evil in. What wickedness and hypocrisy have we not in our own Protestant clergy, and without even the tremendous excuse for it which the conditions of European society give for the occasional levity of its priesthood! In France the Church is a recognized profession, to which parents destine and for which they educate their sons without waiting for them to exhibit any special bias toward a religious life. In spite of themselves, many ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated by his younger brother, and it is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that, with his younger brother at a safe distance, he should manifest some jealousy, and affect to treat his sentiments with an unwarranted levity. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... having prepared ALMEIDA to receive him, he conducted him to her apartment. The idea which ALMORAN had formed in his imagination, was exceeded by the reality, and his passion was proportionably increased; yet he found means not only to conceal it from HAMET, but from ALMEIDA, by affecting an air of levity and merriment, which is not less incompatible with the pleasures than the pains of love. After they had been regaled with coffee and sherbet, they parted; and HAMET congratulated himself, that his apprehensions of finding in ALMORAN a rival for ALMEIDA'S ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... the fear of losing the Lady Margaret, or the hope of gaining her. The missionary had refrained from questioning the young knight, nor did Gilbert reveal any secret to his venerable friend. Whether he might have recovered his former levity can scarcely be answered, but the death of Rodolph seemed to have extinguished it forever. So great a change had this last incident wrought in him, that it was not only evident to Father Omehr and ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... has been there since I was eighteen," answered Norman of Torn, "and yet my head be where it has always been. Can you blame me if I look with levity upon the King's price? It be not heavy enough to weigh me down; nor never has it held me from going where I listed in all England. I am freer than the King, My Lord, for the ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... France the standard of the monarchy—all this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the casuistry ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... imagine, her beauty and grace being such, that she sinned greatly in pride and levity, as is the wont of girls in this age. She was as humble as a cloistered lay-sister, and as silent as if she were not a woman, and patient as the sucking lamb, and industrious as the ant, clean as the ermine, and pure as a saint of those times in which, by the ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... not that it is necessary for thee to be excellent if thou wouldst be powerful. Observe how the lighter substance in nature riseth by its own levity and overtoppeth that which is the more grave. Even so, my son, mayest thou be light and worthless, and yet make a goodly show above those who are of a more intrinsic value than thyself. But as much circumspection will be necessary for thee to attain this glorious end, ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... admire, put them on or off like a masquerade-dress, make much or little of them, indulge them for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased; and because while they amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry; he was in poetry what the ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... finished the account of the most remarkable transactions of this week, and though I am sensible that it exposes the levity and thoughtlessness of my pupils, I flatter myself that there are some marks in the disposition of each which promise improvement and more caution for ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... of our neighbours is levity, ours heaviness. In the ancient bass-fiddle, Europe, the thickest string is the German, with deep tone and heavy vibration; but once in vibration, it hums as if it would go on humming for an eternity. Our primitive ancestors deliberated on every thing twice—in drunkenness, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 398, November 14, 1829 • Various
... private 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
... the 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 again ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... found her quite unhappy. She had not been married over a few months. I asked what troubled her, and she said, 'I feel as miserable as I can be.' 'But what makes you miserable, Alice?' I inquired. 'Because William and I have quarrelled—that's the reason,' she said, with some levity, tossing her head and compressing her lips, with a kind of defiance. I was shocked—so much so, that I could not speak. 'The fact is,' she resumed, before I could reply, 'all men are arbitrary and unreasonable. They think women inferior to them, and their wives ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... 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," ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... with Sirajuddaula he resolved to turn his arms against the French. They were suspected of helping the Nawab in his expedition against Calcutta: it was known that the Nawab, treating his engagements with reckless levity and faithlessness, was trying to persuade Bussy, the French commander in the Dekkan, to help him to expel the British from Bengal. There was excuse enough for an ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... derive from one of those whom she had frequently seen inebriated at my table, and some of whom, when they were in that state, had incautiously expressed their opinions upon such matters with so much levity as to disgust her as well as myself. This was too true, but yet the sanction of a clergyman carried great weight; custom, early-initiated custom, still proved predominant; and as I saw she had set her mind ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... I often did at first) to converse gaily with such of the townspeople as were of my master's rank in life, I was checked by a bitter smile, or a sudden sigh, which told me that while I was giving way to levity, the thoughts of my hearers had wandered back to the heavy hours when their houses were last darkened by the shadow of death. I carried about with me an unceasing curse; an imaginary barrier separated me from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... entertainments, and did something to impart to them a literary cast, as in the series of readings from the poets which he gave, the first winter, for the benefit of each church in turn. At these lectures he commended himself to the sober elders, who were troubled by the levity of his behavior with young people on other occasions, by asking one of the ministers to open the exercises with prayer, and another, at the close, to invoke the Divine blessing; there was no especial relevancy in this, but it ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... suppose? Balloon is a whole-hearted fellow. I can't help loving that man, for all his drollery and waggishness. He puts on an air of levity sometimes, but there aint a man in the senate knows the scriptures as he does. He did ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... the men, and more than the generality, are dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved, instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, impertinent. I have wondered, knowing my own ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... Lincoln had thrown off the overpowering gloom which possessed him in the latter days at Springfield. It is possible he had reacted to a mood in which there was something of levity. His oscillation of mood from a gloom that nothing penetrated to a sort of desperate mirth, has been noted by various observers. And in 1861 he had not reached his final poise, that firm holding of the middle way,—-which afterward fused his moods and made of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the luck to light upon a stanza in the schoolmaster's copy of Burns which describes me exactly. I love it the better, because it was originally designed for Captain Grose, an excellent antiquary, though, like yourself, somewhat too apt to treat with levity his own pursuits: ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... a checking and disapproving influence, not to be provoked, but equally not to be trusted. Hugh had no confidences with his father; he never felt sure, if he gave way to easy and unconstrained talk with him, that his father would not suddenly discern something of levity and frivolity in his pursuits; and this developed in Hugh a gentle hypocrisy, that was indeed the shadow of his sympathy, which made him divine what would please his father to talk about. He found all ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Buddy. She allows she don't have enough to keep her doin' in the new—" Caleb pulled himself up abruptly and changed the subject with a ponderous attempt at levity. "What-all have you done with your trunk check, son? Now I'll bet a hen worth fifty dollars ye've gone ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... 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, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Frank, who began to be a little tired of this levity; "and very thankful to Heaven you ought ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... grave burgher, still in his night-cap, might be seen with a head thrust out of an upper window, listening to these barbarisms of speech, and taking note of all the merry jibes, that flew from mouth to mouth with an indomitable gravity, that no levity of ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... strokes he had received, and as each one fell, he would add two or three according to whether he felt it more or less than its predecessor. Once he even laughed as the man struck him on a part of his body that was clothed, with the effect that the executioner, enraged at the levity, redoubled his ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... sufficient to look only at that which is before the eyes, that is, at the Present; and, therefore, Prudence, Foresight, is given to us, which looks beyond to that which may happen." I say that I thought that for a long time I might be reproached by many with levity of mind, on hearing that I had turned from my first Love. Wherefore, to remove this reproach, there was no better argument than to state who the Lady was who had thus changed me; that, by her manifest excellence, they might gain some perception of her ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... also that stubbornness is not simply wrong choice persevering, but also a disposition to persevere therein, which is due to some good supposed to be inherent in the choice, or some evil imagined as arising from a change. The first choice has perchance been made in mere levity, but the intention to abide by it springs from certain stronger reasons or impressions. There are even some writers on ethics who lay it down that one ought to abide by one's choice so as not to be inconstant ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... 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 ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Political Economy is only the science of selfishness; Adam Smith is the prophet of individualism; grow rich per fas et nefas is its ultimate teaching. Such a judgment is evidence of much levity and little enlightenment. How could the man who conceived the study of human interests on so large a scale, the philosopher who acknowledged Hutcheson as his master and gave his ideas a still more expansive character, be the apostle of egotism; and how can the science which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... prospect was now changed. The question assumed a new form. After the offer made by them, and accepted by their friends, in what words could they clothe a proposition to retract it, which would not cover themselves with the reproaches of levity and ingratitude? which would not appear an insult to those whom they loved? Federal principles, popular discontent, were considerations, whose weight was known and felt by themselves. But would foreigners know and feel them equally? Would they so far acknowledge their ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... opening for their incompetence; just as forlorn widows and ignorant old maids thrown suddenly on their own resources open a school—no other means of livelihood seeming to be within their reach. Lowest of all are those whose esurient vanity, acting on a frivolous levity of mind, urges them to make Literature a plaything for display. To write for a livelihood, even on a complete misapprehension of our powers, is at least a respectable impulse. To play at Literature is altogether ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... other in a new position. However feebly she may have tried to flee, she had nevertheless made the attempt. It was on account of my prayers that she remained; there was an obligation implied. I was under oath not to grieve her either by my jealousy or my levity; every thoughtless or mocking word that escaped me was a sin, every sorrowful glance from her was a reproach acknowledged ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... age of Charles the First presents a strange contrast with the licentiousness which subsequently prevailed among the people: there seems to be a secret connexion between a religious and an irreligious period: the levity of popular feeling is driven to and fro by its reaction; when man has been once taught to contemn his mere humanity, his abstract fancies open a secret bye-path to his presumed salvation; he wanders till he is lost—he trembles till he dotes ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... everything that had taken place between him and them upon the subject of Reform, and with regard to the creation of Peers, admitting that he had consented, but saying he had been subjected to every species of persecution. His ignorance, weakness, and levity put him in a miserable light, and prove him to be one of the silliest old gentlemen in his dominions; but I believe he is mad, for yesterday he gave a great dinner to the Jockey Club, at which (notwithstanding ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... that, in spite of the humor of the situation and the levity of the ladies, there was a characteristic national practicalness about them, and the consul, with a sigh, at last gave the address of one or two responsible experts in genealogical inquiry, as he had often done before. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... corresponding issue of the rival publication. He also dwells on the superior artistic quality of the programme of the Penny Reading in his parish hall as compared with that of the Little Titley Temperance Reed Band at their annual concert. And, finally, with ill-timed levity, he disclaims any intention of "bolstering up" his parish magazine by crude appeals to democratic sentiment—an allusion to the name of the Vicar of Little Titley which has been deeply resented by the numerous admirers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... re-elected President, he continued to be a surprise to those who shrank from levity. Lincoln was their puzzle; for he had a sweet sauce for every "roast," and showed the smile of invigoration to every croaking prophet. His state papers suited the war tragedies, but still he delighted the people with those tales, tagging all the events of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... to introduce something akin to levity or badinage into an examination the seriousness of which we were all beginning to realize, produced an immediate revulsion of feeling toward the man who, in face of facts revealed and to be revealed, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... the, quite real, friendship of 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 ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... duty which he now proclaimed as the sovereign law over all written or spoken words. But he was assailing the cherished beliefs of those before him, and of Christendom generally; not with hard or bitter words, not with sarcasm or levity, rather as one who felt himself charged with a message from the same divinity who had inspired the prophets and evangelists of old with whatever truth was in their messages. He might be wrong, but his words carried the evidence of his own serene, unshaken confidence ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night. When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to complain of nature; she has doubtless used me ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the liver and lungs too close to the diaphragm, because that 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 go, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... place. Neither yet is it moved, for what is moved must have a place and space in which to move. Moreover, what is moved either moves itself, or suffers motion from another. Now, that which is moved by itself has some bents and inclinations proceeding from its gravity or levity; and gravity and levity are either certain habits or faculties or differences of bodies. But the universe is not a body. It follows then of necessity, that the universe is neither, heavy nor light, and consequently, that it has not in itself any principle of motion. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... had not that winning grace which gains the gaze and applause of the drawing-room assemblies. There was none of that light brilliancy which only exists in the heated atmosphere of a crowded apartment. Her blue eye was never lit up by the levity of the mind beneath. There was a melancholy charm about it which did not seem to arise from misfortune, but from some feeling within, that appeared to indicate a soul conscious of a brighter realm. Her step was not that light footing, which strays where'er a butterfly ...
— The Vampyre; A Tale • John William Polidori
... one, of the 'Times,' he breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions—of course political—on which he would consent to support Italian unity. These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those fanciful variations great violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, "Is there a path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... was some speech of marriage 215 Betwixt myself and her; which was broke off, Partly for that her promised proportions Came short of composition; but in chief, For that her reputation was disvalued In levity: since which time of five years 220 I never spake with her, saw her, nor heard from her, Upon my ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... 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 ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... friends would remark that evidently this little fellow Decoud connaissait la question a fond. An important Parisian review asked him for an article on the situation. It was composed in a serious tone and in a spirit of levity. Afterwards he ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... constructed a legend for the pair which is probably much worse than the reality, that reality is more than a little awkward. Mrs. Sterne was a Miss Lumley, of a good Yorkshire family, some, though small, fortune, and more friends who exerted themselves for her husband. By inexcusable levity, ignorance, misjudgment, or heartless cupidity their daughter Lydia published, after the death of both, letters some of which contain courtship of the most lackadaisical sentimentality and others later expressions ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... be so to triflers; to the true Christian it will ever be characterized by thoughtfulness and repose. The Parisian flies from the church to the railway station to join some picnic excursion, or to assist at the race-course, or he passes with a careless levity from St. Genevieve to the dance booths of the Champs Elysees. In New Orleans, the Creole who has just bent his knee before the altar repairs to the theatre to pass the evening; and the Cuban goes from the absolution of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... more than half a century ago, and this one of to-day. The differences are all in favor of the earlier opera. It was in a letter written by Lafcadio Hearn to me that he called attention to the fact that under the levity of Mrger's picturesque bohemianism there was apparent a serious philosophy, which had an elevating effect upon the characters of the romance. "They followed one principle faithfully,—so faithfully ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... gaiety and splendour to absolute solitude and comparative poverty; and the ideas and wishes which she chiefly fostered, respected great national events, and changes not to be brought round without both hazard and bloodshed, and therefore not to be thought of with levity. Her manner, consequently, was grave, though she readily contributed her talents to the amusement of society, and stood very high in the opinion of the old Baron, who used to sing along with her such French duets of Lindor and Cloris, &c., ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Their 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 ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... he was fully six feet tall, with a grand head set upon massive shoulders. A full suite of dark brown hair, worn rather long and considerably disordered, crowned and adorned his head. His face ... was pleasant and attractive though never exhibiting levity, and rarely, humor. The nose was large and somewhat Roman. The rather long side beard had not yet turned gray. His carriage was upright and dignified. I never saw him in a hurry. He was always approachable, but ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... see a man who drives, and is not run away with,—a man who, in prosecuting great designs, has an absolute command of the means of representing his ideas, and uses them only to express these; placing facts, placing men; amid the inconceivable levity of human beings, never for an instant warped from his erectness. There is for every man a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to receive,—a statement possible, so broad and so pungent, that he cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... up in the court of Catherine de Medici, in an atmosphere of duplicity and lax morals. She had the vices of the Stuarts,—an extravagant idea of the sacred prerogatives of kings, a disregard of popular rights, a willingness to break engagements. Her levity, even if it had been kept within bounds, would have been offensive to her Calvinistic subjects. She had at heart the restoration of the Catholic system. In Knox she found a vigilant and fearless antagonist, with so much ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... was needed to calculate Easter. With such an eager and impatient pupil as Charles, the other scholars were soon inspired to beset Alcuin with endless puzzling questions, and there are not wanting evidences that some of them were disposed to levity and even carped at his teachings. But he was indefatigable, rising with the sun to prepare for teaching. In one of his poetical exercises he says of himself that "as soon as the ruddy charioteer of the dawn suffuses the liquid deep with the new light of day, the old man rubs the sleep of night ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... should object to this. He contentedly takes his place in a world that does not pretend to be genteel—a laughing, working, jeering world. He sees millions of animals carrying, with quite a dandified levity, the most monstrous shapes and appendages, the most preposterous horns, wings, and legs, when they are necessary to utility. He sees the good temper of the frog, the unaccountable happiness of the hippopotamus. He sees a whole universe which is ridiculous, from the animalcule, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... 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 which might ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... recovered from her surprise. She reflected a moment, then determined to meet the absurd youth with the spirit of levity which his audacity merited. "But, Reginald," she said in mock seriousness, "though your father was a duke, how about your mother? Was she not just an ordinary American girl, a sister of plain Mrs. J. Wilton ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... back to their own firesides, the infantry subs to turn in for another snooze, the cavalry to swallow a cup of coffee before going down to stables. Sanders hailed the lonely figure with characteristic levity. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... shallowness of the present time. This prevailing frivolity and unscholarliness is something which the United is seeking to remedy, and we are thankful indeed for stories such as this, which expose modern levity in all its nauseousness. It is evident that Miss Sisson is emulating the appreciative Anne Carroll of 1834, rather than her obtuse and indifferent descendant. "The District School," by Edna R. Guilford, describes ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... such as he here conceived it, exists only as a fragment, "Passages from a Relinquished Work," though he doubtless used elsewhere the stories he intended to incorporate into it. In the young man as he is sketched in the opening passage there is, notwithstanding the affectation of levity, a ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... to silence, chess, books, and mischief, except when a treat of facetious small talk was got up for their benefit. Any attempt of the ladies to join in the conversation was replied to with a condescending levity that reduced Ethel to her girlhood's awkward sense of forwardness and presumption; Mary was less disconcerted, because her remarks were never so aspiring, and Harry's wristbands sufficed her; but the never-daunted Daisy rebelled openly, related ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... On the memorable night when Mr. Flood presented to the House the petition of the Convention, was made the grand effort which was to decide whether the will of the nation or that of the old faction should govern. The latter was victorious. The people, with the characteristic levity of their nation, repulsed in this great effort, for the present, at least, shrunk back from the contest. The victorious party, possessing means of the most extensive and corrupting influence, strained them to the utmost; and gaining ground from that moment on the sense ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... destroy the greater—the heroism, the devotion—to which the eye would most naturally have been riveted, so as to have seen little else, and to have been quite out of a condition to arithmetise the pettinesses of things. Such treatment would better suit the levity of the author of the "Pucelle" than the grave historian or the still more serious and impressive historical painter. It is very important that Mr Etty, if he is likely to be again selected to pronounce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... in his wit, his indifference to religion, to say the least, his satirical turn, his love of the world, and his contempt of all that was great and good, he strongly resembles his reputed son; whilst the levity of Lady Walpole's character, and Sir Robert's laxity and dissoluteness, do not furnish any reasonable doubt to the statement made by Lady Louisa Stuart, in the introduction to Lord Wharncliffe's 'Life of ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... hampering your future freedom by this step, and they know it. That is why it was planned. It was not necessary; nothing can be necessary so pregnant with evil. You might have made, you might yet make, a thousand excuses. It is a rite which hardly suits the levity of the hour, even with their feelings; but, with your view of its real character, it is sacrilege. What at is occurring tonight might furnish you with scruples?" And she looked up in ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... half so interesting. Some men shall be fortunate and others shall not; everything has to balance in some way. I am necessary to one side of the scales, as a weight." He spoke with a levity he by no ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... said to his brother, a pompous man, "You and I have reversed the natural course of things; you have risen by your gravity; I have sunk by my levity." ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... the prince, who seemed blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, wan so struck with the extreme funniness of the young man's speech, that he relaxed into another paroxysm of levity, shriller and more unearthly, if possible, than any preceding one, and which left him so exhausted, that he was forced to sink into his chair and into silence through sheer fatigue. Seizing this, the first opportunity, Miranda, with a glance of displeased ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... author, in his composition, then suppose, that an air, made for the purpose of levity and ridicule, should be marked for such high destinies. In twenty years from that time, the national march—now universally recognized by the patriots—inspired the heroes of Bunker's Hill; and, in less than thirty, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... Ruskin's warning against science as an interpreter of its own observations. How man's inner nature and the outer universe interpret one another. The Solfatara phenomenon. The super-physical character of Levity. ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... amidships. All the same, I'd have given something to have heard him 'running' you, when all the while you had the biggest bulge on him, only neither of you knew it." He laughed again, until Randolph, amazed at his levity and indifference, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 'to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes profane levity, which his conduct and language often exhibited,' and which so much shocks the tone of Pope, than the tone of the time. With the exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of the period have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... matter was that the difficulty in question had arisen not from any tendency in the lady to behave in the Lombard capital with more reprehensible levity than, it must unfortunately be admitted, she had been very well known to have behaved in other places and on other occasions; but from a change in her manners in a diametrically opposite direction. It was a change of tactics, which the strictest moralist must have admitted to involve an improvement ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... 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 an ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... has been employed on contemplations suitable to its greatness, it is unnatural to run into sudden mirth or levity; but we must let the soul subside, as it rose, by proper degrees. My late considerations of the ancient heroes impressed a certain gravity upon my mind, which is much above the little gratification received from starts of humour and fancy, and threw ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... I hadn't any business coming here," he added, "but the truth is I've wanted to see you again ever since that first afternoon. I got to wondering whether," he laughed in an embarrassed way, and added with an attempt at levity, "whether you would wear a ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... The emigration left her to confront alone the vengeance of the people. The terrific experience of October, when she saw death so near, and was made to feel so keenly the hatred she inspired, sobered in a moment the levity of her life, and brought out higher qualities. It was on that day that she began to remind those around her whose daughter she was. Ignorant as she was and passionate, she could never become a safe adviser. But she acquired decision, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... which this volume is composed appeared originally in the columns of "FUN," when the wisdom of the Fables and the truth of the Tales tended to wholesomely diminish the levity of that jocund sheet. Their publication in a new form would seem to be a fitting occasion to say ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... was little in a temper to brook this levity, and hastened to relieve the joint occupants of the chair from the ridicule of their situation. "Enough!" he exclaimed, "enough! All my friends are requested to resume the situation most agreeable to them; my purpose is answered." The prince was himself standing with all his household, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... and other similar manifestations, the grotesque spirit is traceable through all the strength of the Venetian people. But again: it is necessary that we should carefully distinguish between it and the spirit of mere levity. I said, in the fifth chapter, that the Venetians were distinctively a serious people, serious, that is to say, in the sense in which the English are a more serious people than the French; though the habitual intercourse of our lower classes in London has a tone of humor in it which ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... under which Irving placed his tales of terror, indicates the mood in which he fashioned them. He regarded them much as he would regard the wonderful adventures of Baron Munchausen. They were to be taken, like one of Dr. Marigold's prescriptions, with a grain of salt. The idea of blending levity with horror, suggested perhaps by German influence, was very popular in England and France at this period. Balzac's L'Auberge Rouge and L'Elixir de la Longue Vie are ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... creatures, are unacquainted with the lax morals of the cheque-book; a pound is just twenty shillings to them, and each shilling is an entity, and each is spent with an indomitable aim to get the most out of it. How would my wife regard the definite disappearance of five thousand shillings? Not with levity, I knew; and I thought it best to say nothing of that guinea volume on the Tombs of the Etruscans. The Tombs of the Etruscans would have meant to her three pairs of boots; and I wished that I might conceal it in mine. A wise ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... used, therefore, all their interest to push matters to extremity against the Presbyterians, who had formerly been their most severe oppressors, and whom they now expected for their companions in affliction. The earl of Bristol, who, from conviction, or interest, or levity, or complaisance for the company with whom he lived, had changed his religion during the king's exile, was regarded as the head of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... spoke plainly at last, without further reticence or concealment, so useless in the face of this indifference and levity, real or affected. ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... grandson ascribes to it; [ Memoires de Brandebourg (Preuss's Edition of OEuvres, Berlin, 1847 et seqq.), i. 112.] she died without epigram, and though in perfect simple courage, with the reverse of levity. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... have understood the levity of mind that underlies changes of Cabinets, have not always understood the numerical pettiness of the voting power by which the change is effected. Just as every philosopher is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian, so, as Mr. Gilbert ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... ambition and vanity How sad these old memorics are in the autumn Never travel when the heart is troubled! Not more honest than necessary Poor France of Jeanne d'Arc and of Napoleon Redouble their boasting after each defeat Take their levity for heroism The leaves fall! the leaves fall! Universal suffrage, with its accustomed intelligence Were certain against ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... who is our home." To quarrel, then, with the class of minds that instinctively attack abuses, is not only profitless but senseless; to sneer at the sentiments which are the springs of all just and virtuous actions, is merely a display of unthinking levity, or of want of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... destinies 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 ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... expected to meet Culpepper somewhere in her ramble, now that he came upon her suddenly, she felt disappointed and embarrassed. His manner, too, was more than usually grave and serious; and more than ever seemed to jar upon that audacious levity which was this giddy girl's power and security in a society where all feeling was dangerous. As he approached her she rose to her feet, but almost before she knew it he had taken her hand and drawn her to a seat beside him. This was not what Miss Jo had expected, ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... Mrs. Leighton, flushing at her levity before the very portals of the church. "She's all right. I looked back, and saw her crossing ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... 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
... and Abe's grin relaxed for several inches, nor did it resume its normal width until some days later when Morris began to negotiate for his permanent mortgage loan. Once Morris remonstrated with him for his levity. ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... The presses that have no direct interest in the matter, would treat the affair with indifference or levity, while a few would mystify the truth. It is quite impossible for any man in a private station to make the truth available in any country, in a matter of public interest; and those in public stations seldom or never attempt it, unless they see a direct party end to be obtained. ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... was thought capable of a good deal of levity; but her levity had never gone so far as this. It moved her greatly, however, to hear Felix say that he was sure of something; so that, raising her eyes toward him, she tried intently, for some moments, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... I am sure that is the sharpest thing about me. You may think I can have no sense of my condition, that while I am thus wretched, I should offer at ridicule: but, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportioned levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer the patient approaches his dissolution. However, Sir, to show you I am not lost to all reflection, I think myself poor ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... was different. There was no levity. Every man seemed to sense the situation and stood to his post of duty grimly conscious of the serious business upon which he had embarked. Through the minds of the lads flitted visions ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... the interests of his country and the habits of his countrymen, that he was far more fitted to rule than the scientific Worcester or the learned Scales. The Young Duke of Gloucester presented a marked contrast to the general levity of the court, in speaking of this powerful nobleman. He never named him but with respect, and was pointedly courteous to even the humblest member of the earl's family. In this he appeared to advantage by the side of Clarence, whose weakness of disposition made ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a childlike feeling, or the levity of youth, that had induced him to give himself up to grace, and which made him feel elevated above so many? For had he not cast away the vanity of the world, was he not a son of ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... Besides, to have it intimated, even in jest, that I would take advantage of my position in this family to pay my ridiculous addresses to Miss Sherwood—I do declare, Griffith, I never will again to you, or any other man, touch upon this subject, but in the same strain of unmeaning levity one is compelled to listen to, and imitate, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... 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. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... siege; had taken part too many times in one of the most wretched spectacles in which a people can show vanity in adversity. He was heart broken to see his dear compatriots, his dear Parisians, redouble their boasting after each defeat and take their levity for heroism. If he admired the resignation of the poor women standing in line before the door of a butcher's shop, he was every day more sadly tormented by the bragging of his comrades, who thought themselves heroes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... However feebly she may have tried to flee, she had nevertheless made the attempt. It was on account of my prayers that she remained; there was an obligation implied. I was under oath not to grieve her either by my jealousy or my levity; every thoughtless or mocking word that escaped me was a sin, every sorrowful glance from her was ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... son to me," cried his father, "you that have always been the favourite, to my shame be it spoken. Never a good hour have I gotten of you since you were born; no, never one good hour," and repeated it again the third time. Whether it was the Master's levity, or his insubordination, or Mr. Henry's word about the favourite son, that had so much disturbed my lord, I do not know: but I incline to think it was the last, for I have it by all accounts that Mr. Henry was more made up to from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Dreadful it was. If Berthold would like to sit and hear—Ah! she is gone. A good girl! and of a levity only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... which, as it savored of insanity, made him an object of commiseration with some, while it rendered him yet more obnoxious to others. The habit we allude to, was the indulgence of wild screaming laughter at times when all merriment should be checked; and when the exhibition of levity must proceed from utter disregard of human grief and suffering, or from ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... something like that silver, too; for though she was bright and pleasant and with a constant liking for fun, there was a great deal of gravity beneath her smile. No one could have treated her with familiar levity, though she was gentle and sweet-tempered; for no one who had seen her very rare expression of deep displeasure would care to provoke it. Of course I am chiefly speaking now of our girls, but I think other people—grown-up and important people—thought ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... exhibiting in manners and character a certain degree of thoughtful gravity beyond his years, was, like all his countrymen, a dancer. Nor does the Circassian dance require, for the most part, any levity of disposition in the performer; some varieties of it being practised as a martial exercise, and with a decorum bordering on seriousness. In the war-dance the Lesghian, more particularly, is imperious in look as well as animated in action. He carries himself haughtily through all the evolutions, ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... What would be thought in Philadelphia or New York, in an austere and solemn Presbyterian church, to see the most noted beauty of the day handing round the plate? But such is one of the forms which French levity takes, even in the consecrated precincts ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... his easy nonchalance there lurked more earnest and patriotic conviction than he ever cared to admit. 'I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings,' said Sydney Smith, 'and to brush aside the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honesty and diligence.' Ridiculous rumours filled the air during the earliest years of her Majesty's reign concerning the supposed undue influence which Lord Melbourne exerted at Court. The more ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... That the survivor of us endeavour, after the death of either of us, to maintain the reputation and dignity of the deceased, by avoiding levity of behaviour, dissoluteness of life and disgraceful marriage; not only so, but that such survivor persevere in good offices to the children of the deceased, as a discreet, faithful, and honourable survivor ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... W. M. Best, "is attributed to Moses by Josephus: 'Let the testimony of women not be received on account of the levity and audacity of their sex'; a law which looks apocryphal, but which, even if genuine, could not have been of universal application.... The law of ancient Rome, though admitting their testimony in general, refused it in certain cases. The civil canon ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... eye followed them forth of the apartment with a glance of contempt, a part of which his mind instantly transferred to himself, for having stooped to be even for a moment their familiar companion. "These are the associates, Amy"—it was thus he communed with himself—"to which thy cruel levity—thine unthinking and most unmerited falsehood, has condemned him of whom his friends once hoped far other things, and who now scorns himself, as he will be scorned by others, for the baseness he stoops to for the love of thee! But ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... lay hands on, to fortify him for the contest. The end, as you know, was extremely sad for him, but highly satisfactory to them, I fear. They have signified their resolution to attend his funeral; and Mordacks has said, with unbecoming levity, that if they never were drunk before—which seems to me an almost romantic supposition—that night they shall be drunk, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to what may be called critical laughter is recorded where Abraham and Sarah were informed of the approaching birth of Isaac. Perhaps this laughter was mostly that of pleasure. Sarah denied that she laughed, and Abraham was not rebuked when guilty of the same levity.[4] ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... gay. This word, now applied to persons with a touch of levity, was formerly used both of things and persons in the sense of gay or neat. Compare the present and earlier uses of the word jolly, on which Pattison says:—"This is an instance of the disadvantage under which poetry in a living language ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... 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 ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... 1200, 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. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtue neither of the countries they came from, nor of those they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished." And now, in 1776, in his Wealth of Nations he showed in a forcible manner (for he appealed to the interest of those concerned,) the dearness of ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialism generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none the less deeply serious—serious even ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... have been bitterly disappointed, however much she might have tried to deceive herself. It was a pity, a thousand pities, the child could not have come to them without that smirch. But it had not touched her: there was no stain on her. Thinking upon Stella's mother she said to herself that no levity in the girl she had been had led to her downfall. Why, Shawn had said she was the simplest, whitest of creatures. It made ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Honor was balked by bestowing sympathy, and could only wonder whether this were reserve, levity, or resignation, and if she must accept it as a fact that in the one the attachment had been lost in the duties of his calling, in the other had died out for want of requital. For the present, in spite of herself, her feeling towards Robert verged more on distant rather piqued ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... saw the Colonel the latter had regained his wig, his natural complexion and his dignity, the last being so great that it was a perfect danger signal warning away all levity or even the slightest sign of it on ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... frankness, which the novelty of her situation excused, she confirmed the truth of what he had before heard, and addressing him by the name of fair Montague (love can sweeten a sour name), she begged him not to impute her easy yielding to levity or an unworthy mind, but that he must lay the fault of it (if it were a fault) upon the accident of the night which had so strangely discovered her thoughts. And she added, that though her behaviour to him might not be sufficiently prudent, measured ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... earth, coolly criticises the Universe, settles law, and measures his puny stature against that awful Unknown Force, deeply hidden, but majestically existent, which for want of ampler designation we call GOD—God, whom some of us will scarcely recognize, save with the mixture of doubt, levity, and general reluctance; God, whom we never obey unless obedience is enforced by calamity; God, whom we never truly love, because so many of us prefer to stake our chances of the future on ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... considered by the fishermen as indicating a want of Porpus. They are also very much chagrined with the Government for sending out to the fishing-banks a dispatch boat bearing the inappropriate name of "Frolic." There is a levity about this quite out of keeping with the serious character of the question, and it is doubtful whether the fishermen would not prefer a fight on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... disciplined ferocity. She has shown an equally amazing failure to read the character of her foes aright. We now know what German Kultur means: but of the soul and spirit of England she knows nothing. Least of all does she understand that formidable and incorrigible levity which refuses to take hard knocks seriously. It will be our privilege to assist in educating our enemies on these and other points, even though, as Lord Kitchener thinks, it takes three years to do it. The Mad Dog of Europe is loose, ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... without saying that I 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
... was kept boiling at the surface the heat would not penetrate sufficiently to begin melting ice at a depth of 3 inches in less than about two hours. As, therefore, the heated water cannot impart its heat to its neighboring particles, it remains expanded and rises by its levity, while colder portions come to be heated in turn, thus setting ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.
... mode it is enclosed in a chamber more or less remote, commonly called a furnace, and made of brick, sheet-iron, or wood lined with tin. Into this chamber cold air is admitted from some source, and escapes by its own levity, usually through tin pipes, to the rooms where the heat is needed. Sometimes it is ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... mother thirty years ago; it became the question of a wrong done himself in casting him nameless upon the world, a thing of scorn to cruel, unjust humanity. Could Mistress Winthrop have guessed the bitter self-derision with which he had, in apparent levity, offered her his name, she might have felt some pity for him who had no ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... 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
... the siege of 1649 foreshadowed that of 1870. There were the same levity and anarchy, the same endurance and courage. Conde and Moltke both experienced similar difficulties in their attempts to subdue the French capital. Through the influence of De Retz negotiations were entered into with Spain, and a Spanish envoy arrived in Paris. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... unscrupulous: he is partly angry with the popular Press for being popular. He is not only irritated with Limericks for causing a mean money-scramble; he is also partly irritated with Limericks for being Limericks. The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the glare and blare of Bank Holiday. Now this is a motive which, however human and natural, must be strictly kept out of the way. It takes all sorts to make a world; and it is not in the least necessary that everybody should have that love of subtle and ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... country. What we understand by flirtation is not encouraged, unless it is almost sure to lead to marriage; and what the Germans understand by flirtation is justly considered scandalous and reprehensible. For the Germans have taken the word into use, but taken away the levity and innocence of its meaning. They make it a term of serious reproach, and those who dislike us condemn the shocking prevalence of Flirt (they make a noun of the verb) in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... which is not. This pertains to false swearing, which is chiefly called perjury, as stated above (Q. 98, A. 1, ad 3). For when a man swears to that which is false, his swearing is vain in itself, since it is not supported by the truth. On the other hand, when a man swears without judgment, through levity, if he swear to the truth, there is no vanity on the part of the oath itself, but only on the part of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with realities of life alone have humorists been saved from temptations to any dangerous levity; great humorists, as we have said, have generally been earnest men, very grave at heart, and much that they have written has been tragedy in the guise of irony. All readers cannot find this out. They cannot see the grief of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... 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. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... native union is afterwards regarded. It sometimes, indeed, happens, that some supervenient cause of discord may overpower this original amity; but it seems to me more frequently thrown away with levity, or lost by negligence, than destroyed by injury or violence. We tell the ladies that good wives make good husbands; I believe it is a more certain position that good ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... little creature and truly pious. She had married me in the full confidence that my levity was merely put on, and would at once give way before the influence she hoped to exert upon my mind. Poor little thing! she deceived herself. I allowed her, indeed, to do entirely as she pleased; but for myself, I carried my ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... government for not having kept a more stringent watch over his subordinate, were he to attach any importance to the fact of Alessandro's apostasy. But he hoped that by merely glancing at the event as one scarcely worth special notice, the Council of Florence would be led to treat it with equal levity. Nor was the embassador deceived in his calculation; and thus the accounts which reached Florence relative to Alessandro's renegadism—and which were not indeed communicated to the council until some months after the occurrence of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... immediately upon such a Misfortune a Convention is call'd, and proper Remedies are sought by the chief Men of the Nation against the present Mischiefs; Which we know has been done upon like Accidents. A King, either through Infirmities of Age, of Levity of Mind, may not only be missed by some covetous, rapacious or lustful Counsellor; may not only be seduced and depraved by debauch'd Youths of Quality, or of equal Age with himself; may be infatuated ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... never do for me to be paying visits upon ladies so soon after an affair of so deplorable a gravity. Besides I have to be buried at seven in the morning, and if I chanced not to be back in time, I should certainly acquire a reputation for levity, which since I am unknown in the county, I am unwilling to incur," and, leaving the butler stupefied in the hall, he ran out into the road. He heard no sound ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... difficult things in the world is the levity with which people talk about "obtaining information." As if information were as easy to pick up as stones! "It ain't so hard to nuss the sick," said a hired nurse, "as some people might think; the most of 'em doesn't want ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... 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 to a sense of her own exceeding sinfulness was a miracle ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... gibbered, and eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too—most cold and dreadful—had its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, and a blind hilarity, on I sped, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... perceive the superiority of the Catholic religion to all other forms of worship that ever existed. But to be present at the death hour of a Christian is a privilege which Protestants and unbelievers seldom or never enjoy; their levity and want of devotion, with their impiety and irreverence, being sufficiently powerful obstacles to their admittance into such sacred places as the chamber in which the sacred offices of religion are administered to the "departing soul." It is only the true believers, and not "those outside," who ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... led a disconsolate life, and deserves, perhaps, pity for her misfortunes, more than our censure for a behaviour to which the artifices of her aunt very probably contributed, and to which very young women are often rendered too liable by that blameable levity in the education of ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Into such levity I could not possibly enter; I resolved to wait the morrow, and the succeeding days of our convention at Chickle University, for opportunities to exert upon this impressionable ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... numbers," answered the Seigneur whimsically—to the Cure's pain, for levity seemed improper ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... broke out and said, 'Hinney, you are to blame, you are to blame. You won't let Mr. Barker alone: he would be silent if you would allow him: you are too bad.' He repeated his terrible rebuke of my levity, and I began to explain. I told him what had passed between his wife and me before he came in. I told him all that I thought about his way of proceeding towards me in those matters, and he, poor fellow, was completely ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Tapley and to see the humorous aspect of the most depressing situation. The "luxurious hotel," to which we were consigned according "to the best and most noble traditions of German honour," moved me to unrestrained mirth, when once I had taken in our surroundings. My levity fell like a cold water douche upon my companions, while the guards frowned menacingly. But to me it was impossible to refrain from an outburst of merriment. It was quite in accordance with German promises, which are composed of the two ingredients—uncompromising ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... almost like madmen, and all with a delightful glee which became contagious, first in the clerical body, and then among the spectators. The aged Dean of the Chapter, Protonotary of his Holiness, held up his purple skirt a little higher, and stepping from the ranks with an amazing levity, as if suddenly relieved of his burden of eighty years, tossed the ball with his foot to the venerable capitular Homilist, equal to the occasion. And then, unable to stand inactive any longer, the laity carried on the game among ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... I will not give the conversation which followed. It was very brief. The result was, that each of us turned ourselves to prayer, and prayed as we had never prayed before. Had we even been more disposed to levity than we were, we could not but have felt the earnestness of the appeal made to us—the importance of the subject—the awful truths uttered by our companion. Darker grew the night—the sea-birds screamed above us—the distant cliffs grew ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... became stern, and dropping the tone of levity which he had employed, he opened the letter Sam had forged, and suddenly handing it ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... indifference, that she had so well assumed for a few days, and which might perhaps have effected her design, she had not the patience to persevere in, without calling levity to their aid. She visited repeatedly without saying where, or with whom—kept later hours than usual—appeared in the highest spirits—sung, laughed, and never heaved a ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... inclination. He 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 ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... to be followed by a popular audience with that slight degree of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style is not brilliant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally free from the levity and from the stiffness which disfigure the sermons of some eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious: yet there is about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him as a man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities and in splendid courts, and who has conversed, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... means of bringing peace to Ireland the debate was absolutely futile. But it enabled Mr. DEVLIN to fire off one of his tragical-comical orations, and Sir H. GREENWOOD to disclaim the accusation that he had treated the Irish problem with levity. "There is nothing light and airy about me," he declared; and no one who has heard his pronunciation of the word ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... said, "Well, I resign myself to your levity. And after all, it doesn't much matter, for no one ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... quote if I thought that any boy would chance to read them and so have one of the pleasures of his young life destroyed. As for "Don Quixote," which its author persisted in regarding with such misplaced levity, it has passed through many bewildering vicissitudes. It has figured bravely as a satire on the Duke of Lerma, on Charles V., on Philip II., on Ignatius Loyola-Cervantes was the most devout of Catholics—and on the Inquisition, which, fortunately, did ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Some writer has connected this difference with their preference for the open prairie country in contrast to the endless and sombre forests where were the homes of the Iroquois. Their history abounds in great men, whose ambitious plans were foiled by the levity of their allies and their want of persistence. They it was who under King Philip fought the Puritan fathers; who at the instigation of Pontiac doomed to death every white trespasser on their soil; who led by Tecumseh and Black Hawk gathered the clans ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... subsided, I could not help correcting, in gentle terms, (though I was otherwise glad to see even an English footman so far from English land) a man in his station for speaking of people of high rank with so much indecent levity, and then told him, that there was no such person living as the Duchess of Kingston, but that it was probable the Lady he thought he had seen might be Lady Bristol; that there was not however, the least resemblance between the person of her Ladyship and the other Lady ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... agreeably and with great spirit." The Friends of Reading Meeting even noted that he was "facetious in conversation," and there is a tradition of a venerable Friend who spoke of him "as having naturally an excess of levity of spirit for a grave minister." A handsome, graceful, and even a merry gentleman it was who ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... in them a lark's song,— but a spiritual lark's song, floating and running in the golden glories of the Spiritual Sun; a song whose verve carries us openly up into the realms of pure spirit; a wonderful radiance and sweetness of dawn, of dawn in its fresh purity, its holiness,—haunted with no levity or boisterousness of youth, but with a wisdom gay and ancient,—eternal, laughter-laden, triumphant,—at once hoary and young,—like the sparkle of snows on Himalaya, like the amber glow in the eastern sky. Here almost alone in literature we get long draughts of the Golden ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... 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 small degree ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... 15, or that stated with no less earnestness in pp. 197, 198. I trust that I shall not be thought to magnify a mere slip of the pen. Both passages—though, as far as I can see, self-contradictory—appear to be written with the same absence of levity. Fontenelle, I own, speaks of Greeks, not Semites, as being originally savages. But I pointed out {124} that he considered it safer to 'hedge' by making an exception of the Israelites. There is really nothing in Genesis against the contention that the naked, tool-less, mean, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... Ray's voice harshened, possessing a certain quality of grim levity. "I guess old Hiram's brother hasn't come to life ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... Excuse my 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
... very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. The bishop declared that the work tended "toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been "guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception of the essay by Dr. Temple, their writings were "full of sophistries and scepticisms." He was especially bitter against Prof. Jowett's dictum, "Interpret the Scripture like any ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... accusing look on the Spectre's face. I don't know what put it into my head, and I had no sooner said it than I was sorry for my levity, but the figure with the sad garments there in the matchless and triumphant spring day affected me with a curious, sharp impatience. Had any one the right to look out so dolefully upon such a day and such a scene of simple happiness as ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... passions, but of passion past: The pride, but not the fire, of early days, Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise; 70 A high demeanour, and a glance that took Their thoughts from others by a single look; And that sarcastic levity of tongue, The stinging of a heart the world hath stung, That darts in seeming playfulness around, And makes those feel that will not own the wound; All these seemed his, and something more beneath Than glance could well reveal, or accent breathe. Ambition, Glory, Love, the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... faculties, which should have prevented them, were entirely occupied by the ideal. In some of these paroxysms of fancy, Miss Walton did not fail to be introduced; and the picture which had been drawn amidst the surrounding objects of unnoticed levity was now singled out to be viewed through the medium of romantic imagination: it was improved of course, and esteem was a word inexpressive of the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or thoughtlessness about his state; he was kind, and shrewd as ever; but how he flashed out with utter merriment when he got hold of a joke, or rather when it got hold of him, and shook him, not an inch of his body was free of its power—it possessed him, not he it. ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... feature of our civilization is the daily paper. It scatters crime, bad manners, and a pernicious levity as a wind scatters fire. Crime feeds upon crime, and the newspapers make sure that every criminally inclined reader shall have enough to feed upon, shall have his vicious nature aroused and stimulated. Is it ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... i.e. a man ready of wit and immediate of action, as opposed to his name Al-Atwash — one notable for levity ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... with nothing when you are not pleased with your wife. One of the "Spectators" is very just that says, "A man ought always to be upon his guard against spleen and a too severe philosophy; a woman, against levity and coquetry." If we go to Naples, I will make no acquaintance there of any kind, and you will be in a place where a variety of agreeable objects will dispose you to be ever pleased. If such a thing is possible, this will secure ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... That delicate-minded, intellectual old maid, Miss Thornton, used to remark with silent horror on what she called Mary's levity of behaviour with men, but more especially with honest Tom Troubridge. Many a time, when the old lady was sitting darning (she was always darning; she used to begin darning the things before they were a week out of the draper's shop), ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... in my levity, however, and said with feeling, "Thank the good Lord you are here!" and down in my heart I echoed his prayer ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... a fighting religion, which languished in peaceful fair weather, but flamed high in the storm. The throng of loafers and light-minded worldlings of both sexes, with their jeering interruptions and lewd levity of conduct, brought upon the scene a kind of visible personal devil, with whom the chosen could do battle face to face. The daylight services became more and more perfunctory, as the sojourn in the woods ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... 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 that it was necessary to exchange a cartel, ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover,—a serious-minded, practically abstracted man, abstentive of youthful society, and the last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious flirtation. The Colonel was mystified, but determined of purpose, whatever ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the open air. The place is quite a solitude, and the surrounding scenery very striking. How much is it to be regretted that, instead of writing such poems as the 'Holy Fair,' and others in which the religious observances of his country are treated with so much levity, and too often with indecency, Burns had not employed his genius in describing religion under the serious and affecting aspects it must ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
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