"Levity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remarkable in one of her advanced age and so no excuse for unusual misgivings. But the presence of the young girl in some measure, and the emotions of the others in greater, lent the conversation a constraint against which Duchemin's attempts at levity could not prevail. The talk languished and revived fitfully only when some indifferent, impersonal topic offered itself. The weather, for example, enjoyed unwonted vogue. It happened to be drizzling; Eve was afraid of a rainy ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... middle size, his voice clear and audible; his natural countenance grave and sober; but the moment he spoke, the settled seriousness of his features was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling, or laughing levity took such full possession of him, that I can only refer the idea of him to your imagination. In some of his low characters, that became it, he had a shuffling shamble in his gait, with so contented an ignorance in his aspect, and an awkward absurdity in his gesture, that had you ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... an Indian "grass widow" was, in any case, an extremely unlovely passage in Sterne's life. On the best and most charitable view of it, the flirtation, pursued in the way it was, and to the lengths to which it was carried, must be held to convict the elderly lover of the most deplorable levity, vanity, indiscretion, and sickly sentimentalism. It was, to say the least of it, most unbecoming in a man of Sterne's age and profession; and when it is added that Yorick's attentions to Eliza were paid in so open a fashion as to be ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... here was the country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows; and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody; she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar with a brute like his landlord; she took an immediate interest (which she lacked even the delicacy to conceal) ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... by degrees to talk herself. She spoke modestly of Paris, of her travels, of Baden; twice she made Marya Dmitrievna laugh, and each time she sighed a little afterwards, and seemed to be inwardly reproaching herself for misplaced levity. She obtained permission to bring Ada; taking off her gloves, with her smooth hands, redolent of soap a la guimauve, she showed how and where flounces were worn and ruches and lace and rosettes. She promised to bring a bottle ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... any man willingly travel about his own possessions? Have you such a large portion, believers, and should ye be taken up with other vanities? Should your hearts and minds be stayed on them, more than the living God? There is a great vanity and levity in men's minds; "The Lord knoweth the thoughts of man that they are vanity." There is an unsettledness of spirit,—we cannot pitch on that upon which we may be stayed; and so all the spirits of men are in a continual motion from one thing to another, for nothing ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... safe was finally opened and one by one the dull yellow bars were piled on the scales, there was too much tenseness to allow of even a show of levity. Zephyr had no doubts. No one could have got at the safe while in the river; he could swear to that. From its delivery to the driver by Firmstone there had been no time nor opportunity to tamper with its contents. As for Firmstone, he had too ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... let a spirit of levity creep into thy speech. Thy father has striven and wrestled with his urgings. I've seen it working on him all winter. He feels, now, it is the ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... an air of affected defiance on the one side, and of sarcastic levity on the other, the two conspirators parted. Her protracted residence in the Chateau des Anges, gloomy and anxious before, had become absolutely terrifying since she had heard the dark and menacing insinuations used by Blassemare. The evening ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... you don't know him and he's got a little grog 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 ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... drawing herself up, and giving him an austere glance over her spectacles; "how often must I tell you that there is subjects which shouldn't be treated with levity?" ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Susannah was not present. With respect to Susannah, I could not perceive that I was farther advanced in her affections than after I had known her two months. She was always kind and considerate, evidently interested in my welfare, always checking in me anything like levity—frank and confiding in her opinions—and charitable to all, as I thought, except to me. But I made no advance that I could perceive. The fact was, that I dared not speak to her as I might have done to another who was not so perfect. And yet she smiled, as I thought, more kindly ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... officers came scattering 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
... we had a good view within, and could also catch a peep through the open porch of the sunlit country outside. Charlie's father was in his place when we got in; his threadbare coat was covered by the white linen of his office, and I do not think it would have been possible even to my levity to have felt anything but a respectful awe of ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... twitching at the corner of his mouth, but he had sworn to himself that he would betray no levity. Brady looked so uncomfortable that his friend pitied him. There is much which disturbs us, chiefly through the sensibility of others. At the end of the singing, a man rose to tell of what the Army had done for him in rescuing him from the gutter; but ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... and when Polycarp died, it was at its height. Everywhere was it supported by the reigning emperors. 'The political and truly Roman instincts of Trajan were not more friendly to it than the archaeological tastes, the cosmopolitan interests, and the theological levity of Hadrian. From their immediate successors, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, it received even ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... no further remarks. Her sister had been shocked at her thoughtless levity, and had threatened to inform Aunt Bell, of whom she stood in awe; and so Bertha had a very ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... 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
... 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 part ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... evidently not vanquished. There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if not of joy, at least of resignation. Her ancient levity of manner had vanished, or at most had left nothing but a trace. I thought I detected it here and there in a line about the mouth, and perhaps in her walk. There was a reminiscence of it too in her clothes. Notwithstanding poverty and distress, ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... now rapidly losing its hold on the consciences of the multitude. The high places of idolatrous worship often exercised a most demoralising influence, as their rites were not unfrequently a wretched mixture of brutality, levity, imposture, and prostitution. Philosophy had completely failed to ameliorate the condition of man. The vices of some of its most distinguished professors were notorious; its votaries were pretty generally regarded as a class ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the canopy, Babbalanja would fain have seriously discussed those things we had lately been seeing, which, for all the occasional levity he had recently evinced, seemed very ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... question, usually put and answered with more or less levity. We seldom hear of any one answering very favourably as to the usage he experiences from the world. More generally, the questioned seems to feel that his treatment is not, and never has been, quite what it ought to be. It has ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... thank you for letting me see your two new cantos [the 3rd and 4th], which I return. What sublimity! what levity! what boldness! what tenderness! what majesty! what trifling! what variety! what tediousness!—for tedious to a strange degree, it must be confessed that whole passages are, particularly the earlier stanzas of the fourth canto. I know no man of such general powers of intellect as Brougham, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... to almighty love? The god subdues the monarch; 'tis to your strength I trust, for I am a feeble woman, a virgin quite disarm'd by two fair eyes, an angel's voice and form; but yet I'll die before I'll yield my honour; no, though our unhappy family have met reproach from the imagined levity of my sister, 'tis I'll redeem the bleeding honour of our family, and my great parents' virtues shall shine in me; I know it, for if it passes this test, if I can stand this temptation, I am proof against all the world; but I conjure you aid me if I need it: if I incline ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... 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 pleased. He kept himself, from the beginning, pretty constantly in the ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... won't," said Mrs. Leighton, flushing at her levity before the very portals of the church. "She's all right. I looked back, and ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... friends and the world. His mother devoutly believed that all who differed from the basis of her own religious views would endure the eternal torments of hell; and his father seriously reproved his levity when, one Sunday, he happened to take the cat in his arms while walking in the garden. All this naturally impressed the child at the time, and his chief amusement or pleasure was preaching sermons in the kitchen every Sunday ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the blood were made to flow. They began with thanking God with having given them life, and providing them necessary food; and then praised him for the good examples they had been favoured with. From these melancholy rites were banished all licentiousness and levity, and while other customs changed, these continued the same. They roasted the flesh of the victim they had offered, and eat it in common, discoursing on the virtues of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... waves of the wing, and there it is high in the air; then a droop, a decline, but so light and soft, so exquisitely graduated, that the downward drift of a feather seems lumpish and leaden in the comparison; then again up it goes with such an ease as if it rose by specific levity, like smoke from a chimney in a day of calm; and aloft it wheels, circles, floats, and at length sails on its broad vans away, passing in a few minutes over wide spaces, and yet, with its leisurely stroke, seeming engaged only in airing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... is something else that casts out fear than perfect love, and that is—perfect levity. For it is the explanation of the fact that so many of us know nothing of this fear of which I speak, and fancy that I am exaggerating, or putting forward false views. There is a type of man, and I have no doubt there are some of its representatives among my hearers, who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and Caillaud were not of much use in organisation, and the whole burden fell upon the Major. Externally gay, and to most persons justifying the charge of frivolity, he was really nothing of the kind when he had once settled down to the work he was born to do. His levity was the mere idle sport of a mind unattached and seeking its own proper object. He was like a cat, which will play with a ball or its own tail in the sunshine, but if a mouse or a bird crosses its path will fasten on it with sudden ferocity. He wrought ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... 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 ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... supreme instance of the "unmoral" woman, the conscienceless egoist, morally colour-blind, vain, lewd, the intelligence quick and alert but having no influence whatever on conduct. One instance will suffice to show the sinister levity, the utter absence of all moral sense in this ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... question of the wrong done his 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 ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Berlin, perhaps at Koenigsberg, and France would have carried her frontier eastward to the Rhine, dismembering Germany. Such, I doubt not, would have been the attempt. The conception is entirely worthy of that Imperial levity with which the war began. But the madcap menace of the French Empire cannot be the measure of German justice. It is for Germany to show, that, notwithstanding this wildness, she knows how to be just. Dismemberment on this account would ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... more Henry's misfortune than his fault that he grew up to manhood as a compound of sensuality, levity, malice, treachery, and other mean qualities, for his nature had in it much that was good, and in his after-life he displayed noble qualities which had been long hidden under the corrupting faults of his education. The ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... worst 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. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... It is true, that it may frequently occasion such ridiculous scenes as those which I have mentioned; and our habits of mind, as Protestants, may lead us to conceive that such familiarity may tend to generate levity and indifference. On the other hand, however, amidst all the mummery which may mix itself up with the occasional ceremonies of the Catholic service, there is much worthy of commendation in the more common ordinances, to which alone a sensible Catholic must look for religious improvement. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... kite, closely followed by the constable in equally wild efforts to restrain him by tugging at the end of the line. The extraordinary race continued to the town until the constable fell, losing his hold of the line. This seemed to impart a singular specific levity to the Deacon, who, to the astonishment of everybody, incontinently sailed up into a tree! When he was succored and cut down from the demoniac kite, he was found to have sustained a dislocation of ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... slightly a bigot for his own form of doctrine, broke into a low chuckle of irrepressible laughter at Duprez's levity, but Mr. Dyceworthy's flabby face ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... receptivity, this infinite adaptability, in short? Why should he, any more than Rickman, be bound by the laws laid down in the Prolegomena to AEsthetics? The Prolegomena to AEsthetics was not a work that one could set aside with any levity; still, in constructing it he had been building a lighthouse for ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... man, however, with whom he must reckon. Ambrose Spencer not only loved power, but he loved to exercise it. He lacked the address of Tompkins, and, likewise, the vein of levity in the Governor's temperament that made him buoyant and hopeful even when most eager and earnest; but he was bold, enterprising, and of commanding intellect, with a determination to do with all his might the part he had to perform. His failure to become United States senator, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... but left her as free as though her age had been twice what it was. Undoubtedly, in the ardour of her gratitude she idealized every one of them. The sole reproach which in secret she would formulate against them had reference to their quasi- cynical levity in conversation. They would never treat a serious topic seriously for more than a few minutes. Either one or another would yield to the temptation of clever facetiousness, and clever facetiousness would ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... became something separate from himself, so that he could see her without seeing himself all the time; and it shone upon the garden in Solomon's Song, and the roses of Sharon, and the lilies of the valley, and the land flowing with milk and honey," said she, in a childish tone of levity which had an undercurrent of earnestness in it. All her emotional nature and her pride arose against Pyramids and Old Testament battle-fields, when she had only been conscious that the moon shone upon Horace and herself. ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... efficacy. We took particular pains to notice on this occasion the effects which this horrid spectacle would produce on their minds, and our observation taught us that while a very few turned with loathing from the scene, a large majority manifested that levity and curiosity superinduced by ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... have I ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. I have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify as they reward our utmost ardor and earnestness of pursuit. ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... and conscientious in all the steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol: he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 be ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... villagers could think of no answer and the jackal bade them ask his wife: so they laughed and asked whether it was true that she dropped dung twice to the he-jackal's once. But the jackal reproved them for their levity, wise men of old had said that it was wrong to jest when men of weight met to decide a dispute; so they became serious and the she-jackal answered "It is true that I drop dung twice to his once: there is an order laid on me to do so: I drop dung once at the same time that he does: that excrement ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... sudden levity.] I am always in high spirits, even when people do not bring me my slippers. [She runs to the chair and sits down, ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... fieri vitae dignitate.[4] It is the first rule, in oratory, that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be, and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life. I believe it might be of great service to let our public orators know, that an unnatural gravity, or an unbecoming levity in their behaviour out of the pulpit, will take very much from the force of their eloquence in it. Excuse another scrap of Latin; it is from one of the Fathers: I think it will appear a just observation to all, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... over by Mr Justice Monkhouse, one of those who are jeered at as humorous judges, but who are generally much more serious than the serious judges, for their levity comes from a living impatience of professional solemnity; while the serious judge is really filled with frivolity, because he is filled with vanity. All the chief actors being of a worldly importance, the barristers were well balanced; the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... early periods 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... because there are other analogies in favour of so long a duration of the prophetic office, which was sometimes entered upon even in early youth. The inscription has the same authority in its favour as every other part of the book; and it is hardly possible to understand the levity with which it has, in recent times, been pretty generally designated as spurious, or, at least, suspicious. [Pg 173] It is altogether impossible to sever it from the other parts of the book. There must certainly have been some object in view when, in ver. 2, it is expressly ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... writing should be appropriate: that it should fit the occasion; that it should rise and fall with the subject, be grave where that is serious, where it is light not afraid of what Stevenson in "The Wrong Box" calls 'a little judicious levity.' If your writing observe these precepts, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... not disposed to treat the philosophy of the "absolute" either with levity or with scorn. We feel that it brings us into contact with some of the most profound and most deeply mysterious problems of human thought. Finite as we are, we are so constituted that we cannot avoid framing the idea, although we can never attain to a comprehension, of the Infinite. ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... had never met with the love I had dreamed of from my childhood. My poor dress and my dwelling-place had hidden me from the eyes of men of your class. A few young men, whose position did not allow of their insulting me, were all the more intolerable for the levity with which they treated me. Some made game of my husband, as if he were merely a ridiculous old man; others basely tried to win his good graces to betray me; one and all talked of getting me away from him, and none understood the devotion ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... to find that Guert was somewhat of a favourite. But even the most intellectual and refined women, I have since had occasion to learn, feel a disposition to judge handsome, manly, frank, flighty fellows like my new acquaintance, somewhat leniently. With all his levity, and his disposition to run into the excesses of animal spirits, there was that about Guert which rendered it difficult to despise him. The courage of a lion was in his eye, and his front and bearing were precisely those that are particularly attractive to women. To these advantages ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... administered by Taurus and Florentius, who united that important office with the vain honors of the consulship; and as those magistrates had retired with precipitation to the court of Asia, Julian, who could not always restrain the levity of his temper, stigmatized their flight by adding, in all the Acts of the Year, the epithet of fugitive to the names of the two consuls. The provinces which had been deserted by their first magistrates acknowledged the authority of an emperor, who, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... own way one thing in particular, which, though often, between them, heaven knew, hovered round and hung over, was yet to be established without the shadow of an attenuating smile. Oh there was no gleam of levity, as little of humour as of deprecation, in the long time they now sat together or in the way in which at some unmeasured point of it Mrs. Wix became distinct enough for her own dignity and yet not loud enough for ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... characteristic. They were puffed up with spiritual pride, and I used to amuse myself with finding their originals in the Pilgrim's Progress. When I tried to judge them by the standard of old Peter, they fell woefully short. They shut out the war from their lives, some out of funk, some out of pure levity of mind, and some because they were really convinced that the thing was all wrong. I think I grew rather popular in my role of the seeker after truth, the honest colonial who was against the war by instinct and was looking ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... them, notwithstanding a growing tendency to like every one of their pleasant, really agreeable faces. There was neither solemnity, sourness, nor bitterness to be seen anywhere; at the same time, there was no sign of levity. In every countenance was the same inexplicable mixture of wisdom and benevolence that distinguished Estra. Nowhere was there hostility, and nowhere was there crudity. Somehow, the big geologist would have felt more at home had he seen something antagonistic. Essentially, Van Emmon ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... unjust to the clergy to suppose that they turn the barrel of sermons to save themselves the trouble of writing new ones. Nothing but the levity of the pews could be guilty of such a suspicion. The preacher knows that one squeezing does not take all the juice out of an orange; and how much jucier a fruit is a good sermon! Moreover, the pews are so pachydermatous, so rhinoceros-skinned, that nothing but an incessant pelting upon the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... most interesting and important subject, Ludlow informs us, that Cromwell, by way of frolic, threw a cushion at his head, and even in the high court of justice, in that solemn moment when he took the pen to sign the warrant for the unhappy monarch's execution, he could not forbear the levity of daubing the face of his neighbour with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... little place in his heart, and the siren, Mrs. Billington, held it in temporary thraldom; but constancy was to a man of such a calibre impossible. Nevertheless, when the duke saw his wife surrounded by admirers, whom her levity of manner encouraged, he became jealous, and they parted, for the last time as it proved, on bad terms. One evening, seeing him engaged in play, the duchess approached the window of the room in which he sat, and tapped at it. He was highly incensed by this interference with his ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... has lost its King, remains entire; and 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 by a silly Wench, so far as to deliver and fling up the Reins ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... trust? Oh, be able to give a satisfactory answer before it is too late." 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 dimmer, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... last answers it would appear that money seems sometimes capable of being treated with levity. Can you give me an instance when cash is not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... bought things at a shop I am quite unfit for social intercourse. I have to go home and fume. There was a time when Euphemia would come and discuss my purchase with a certain levity, ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... universal law, that all substances gain instead of losing weight by undergoing combustion; and after the usual attempt to accommodate the old theory to the new fact by means of an arbitrary hypothesis (that phlogiston had the quality of positive levity instead of gravity), chemists were conducted to the true explanation, namely, that instead of a substance separated, there was, on the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... over both the fugitives—a groan, or rather howl, of rage, and despair, and agony, appalled even the hardest on whose ear it came. Morton sprang to his feet and looked below. He saw on the rugged stones far down, a dark, formless, motionless mass—the strong man of passion and levity—the giant who had played with life and soul, as an infant with the baubles that it prizes and breaks—was what the Caesar and the leper alike are, when the clay is without God's breath—what glory, genius, power, and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... I 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 not make ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... very much vexed at his inconstancy, and accused himself of "only loving Rome when he was at Tibur, and only thinking of Tibur from the moment he found himself in Rome." However, he cured himself at last of this levity, which annoyed him so much. To this he bears witness in his own favor in the letter addressed to his farmer, where he strives to convince him that one may be happy without having a public-house next door. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... undertaken in all levity. And with his chief's complete departure a change came into the mien of Mr. Adolph Meyers. He told the stenographer in the outer office to engage two girls to copy a play that afternoon and evening, to keep him from being interrupted until six, and to muffle the telephone unless ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the unwearying assiduity of his kinswoman, Miss Willoughby. On his recovery, the bride (for the Earl won her heart and hand) who stood by him at the altar looked fainter and more ghostly than the bridegroom. But her dark hour of levity was passed and over. There is no more affectionate pair than the Earl and Countess of Embleton. Lady Mary, who lives with them, is once more an aunt, and spoils, it is to be feared, the young Viscount Scremerston, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... Regor and Max Graub were seemingly not disposed to levity, and they offered no response to their lighter minded comrade beyond vague hasty side-looks of alarm, which appeared to amuse him to an extent that threatened to go beyond the limits of caution. Sergius Thord, however, saw nothing of their interchange of glances for the moment,— ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... he asked, enjoying the other's sudden discomfiture. "You takin' thot li'l' horse for thee walk—thee exercise?" And then, without waiting for a reply, had there been one forthcoming, which there was not, he slammed down the window, leaped to the door, flung it open—all levity now gone from him. "Pedro Garcia!" he raged. "You thief and robber! I'm killin' you thees time sure!" And, regardless of his scant attire, and stringing out a volley of oaths, he sprang out of the doorway after his ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... devoid of all softness, mildness, tenderness, indulgence or levity, or (in literature and art) devoid of unnecessary ornament, amplification, or embellishment of any kind; as, a severe style; as said of anything painful, severe signifies such as heavily taxes endurance or resisting power; as, a ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Heliographic communication had been opened with the relieving army, and it is on record that the first message flashed through from the south was a question about the number of a horse. With inconceivable stupidity this has been cited as an example of military levity and incapacity. Of course the object of the question was a test as to whether they were really in communication with the garrison. It must be confessed that the town seems to have contained some ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the haunted quarter, she caught the faint reflection of its dull effulgence with the corner of her eye, would sign herself with the cross or fumble at her beads, and deeper furrows would gather in her forehead, and her face grow ashen and perturbed. And this was not mended by the levity with which the young ladies, with whom the spectre had lost his influence, familiarity, as usual, breeding contempt, had come to talk, and even to ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... and fortune in marriage. Marie de la Tour's first impulse was to laugh in the face of a man who, old enough to be her father, addressed her in such terms; but one glance at the pale face and burning eyes of the speaker, convinced her that levity would be ill-timed—possibly dangerous. Even the few civil and serious words of discouragement and refusal with which she replied to his ardent protestations, were oil cast upon flame. He threw ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last, And spake of 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 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... 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
... of those Thoughts which are in their own Nature good, may be so order'd as to bear a part in Pastoral. For as We may make a Shepherd false to his Mistress, if he be offended with the Levity of his Nature; so We may make a Lass Ill-natured and Satyrical, for Instance, if 'tis not in her Temper, but assumed only for ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... attentive readers that the comparatively uninteresting character of Sir Walter's heroes had always been studied among a class of youths who were simply incapable of doing anything seriously wrong; and could only be embarrassed by the consequences of their levity or imprudence. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... an expression we may imagine that poor old piano would have worn, to any one who could have taken in the full absurdity of the position. A venerable instrument like itself, after thirty-five years of honorable service, thus to be forced to exhibit a levity so unbefitting ...
— Harper's Young People, June 29, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... cruelty in Sydney's behavior to the girl whom he had ruined which cut his wife to the heart. She had been taught, and she had tried—with some misgiving—to believe that she ought to be prepared to condone a certain amount of levity, of "wildness," even, in her husband's past; but here she saw deliberate treachery, cold-blooded selfishness, which startled her from her dream of happiness. Nan was a little too logical for her own peace of mind. She could not look at an action as an isolated fact in a man's ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... bundles of chopped straw. When released it rapidly rose to a great height, and descended, at the expiration of ten minutes, at the distance of about 1 1/2m. This was the discovery of the balloon. The brothers Montgolfier imagined that the bag rose because of the levity of the smoke or other vapour given forth by the burning straw; and it was not till some time later that it was recognized that the ascending power was due merely to the lightness of heated air compared to an equal ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... 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 his ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chivalrous in etiquette, had much influence with her. He relied greatly on the noblesse; made frequent references to his sword. He laughed at the crises: he disdained this war of words, caballed against ministers, and treated passing events with levity. The queen, intoxicated with the adulation of those around her, urged the king to recall the next day what he had conceded on the previous evening. Her hand was felt in all the transactions of the government: ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... undertone to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an unnatural insensibility to the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... matter altogether for levity, Anna," she said. "Your sister's future is at stake. I imagine that even you must realize that ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... keep up in your mind and heart this habitual sense of religion by every means in your power. It will require from you considerable care and attention. The lively spirits natural to your time of life, and the thoughtless levity of some of the young men into whose society you will be thrown, will have a tendency to make you think less of religion, if not to induce you entirely to forget it. Be ever on your guard against thus swerving from your ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... Garden, Drury Lane, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Goodman's Fields, there was now a project to erect a new playhouse in St. Martin's-le-Grand. It was no less surprising than shameful to see so great a change in the temper and inclination of the British people; "we now exceeded in levity even the French themselves, from whom we learned these and many other ridiculous customs, as much unsuitable to the mien and manners of an Englishman or a Scot, as they were agreeable to the air and levity of a Monsieur." Moreover, it was remarked that, to the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... are intirely, ye ould omadhawn!" said Judy, whose notions of propriety were somewhat shocked with the undignified levity of her partner; "the likes of you I never seed; ye are too foolidge intirely. Have done now wid your diviltries, and set the stools for the gintlemens, while I get ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... opinion in England subsequently confirmed, Ross, in spite of qualities as a naval officer of the highest order, showed extraordinary apathy and levity on this voyage, appearing not to trouble himself in the least about the geographical problems for the solution of which the expedition was organized. He passed Wolstenholme and Whale Sounds and Smith's Strait, opening out of Baffin's Bay, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... apply to the Asiatic tour of the author, or his first volume, but is not appropriate to the second, which owes its main interest to his interview with Skryznecki, the illustrious Pole. Neither is the term pilgrimage characteristic of the journey, which has the sketchiness and levity of a flying tour rather than the observant gravity of a patient pilgrimage. Nevertheless, the work is altogether full of vivacity and interest, and the author, Mr. J.H. Stocqueler, must be as pleasant on his travels, as his book will be in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... history in the vulgar, topical frippery that passes for a certain kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen hundred years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable lunacy, I could endure; but as a tedious wag, cheapening his egregious story with song-book levity, his importance as an ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... wind had come, as we who lolled lazily in the boat longed, the myriad host of resplendent creatures would have been scattered and millions beaten down into the sea, above which they flew with such airy levity. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... "Some people do. It depends upon how much of it he can sell. It depends upon how handsomely a wife wishes to be supported. The result isn't usually beyond the dreams of avarice," I said, with a desperate levity. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... curiously at his companion; then thrust his hands into his pockets and whistling softly walked about the room. John was shocked at what seemed in the squire a sort of indecent levity; he could not understand that his friend felt as though ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... he said quietly, too much in earnest just then to resent her levity, "so it is most natural to me to speak of pounds. But that makes no difference to the question at issue. When your father gets his factory going he will employ twenty men where he now employs one. They in turn will be able to support wives and families, which will mean ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... arrangement with Minky, so as not to spoil trade, drank from a bottle of colored water when the necessity for refreshment arose. But just now his manner suggested that he had drunk quite as much whisky as the strangers. His spirits rose with theirs, and his jocularity and levity matched theirs, step by step, as they ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... 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 ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... and embraced his commander on the field of battle. Bonaparte and his staff spent the night at the Convent of Nazareth; and when his officers burst out laughing at the story told by the Prior of the breaking of a pillar by the angel Gabriel at the time of the Annunciation, their untimely levity was promptly checked by the frown ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... brotherly attachment subsisting between them, and each felt the disposition of the other was the one most assimilated to his own. In fact, Sir Everard was far from being the ephemeral character he was often willing to appear. Under a semblance of affectation, and much assumed levity of manner, never, however, personally offensive, he concealed a brave, generous, warm, and manly heart, and talents becoming the rank he held in society, such as would not have reflected discredit on one numbering ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... whom thou wilt, but not wronged me! To wake me from a doting dream—that was not wrong! A dream of woman's purity and innocence; a foolish dream of married happiness between thy youth and my decrepitude; to put an end to such a madness, surely was not wrong! Wronged me? Thy levity hath righted my poor mind, which, pondering o'er thy beauties, listed to ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... 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
... honest 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
... you kindly tell me something more about this?—All I can tell you is that there is no conceivable kind of sin, no imperfection, disorder, error, or unruliness of which the flesh is not full, just as there is no levity, folly, or stupidity of which the flesh is not ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... prompted him to all kind of cruelty. As I was of a sour morose temper, and hated nothing more than the symptoms of happiness appearing in any countenance, I represented all kind of diversion and amusement as the most horrid sins. I inveighed against cheerfulness as levity, and encouraged nothing but gravity, or, to confess the truth to you, hypocrisy. The unhappy emperor followed my advice, and incensed the people by such repeated barbarities, that he was at last ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... see the subject is too sacred to be jested with—pardon my levity! I assure you, my good Ferrari, I will watch over the lady with the jealous scrutiny of a BROTHER—an elderly brother too, and therefore one more likely to be a model of propriety. Though I frankly admit it is a task I am not specially fitted for, and one that is rather distasteful ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... being all I cared for as I looked upon the mangled corpses lately filled with life and vigour. I had embarked on the enterprise in a spirit of levity and carelessness, reflecting little on what it might entail, and there was something shocking in thus suddenly coming face to face with the dread reality of war. But whatever may have been the source of the feeling, ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... noble woman with all that is serene, oracular and beautiful in her soul. Let him be great, and love shall follow him. Nothing is more deeply punished than the neglect of the affinities by which alone society should be formed, and the insane levity of choosing ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Washington, in forming him for those distinguished parts he was destined to perform, first taught him the duties of OBEDIENCE, the better to prepare him for those of command. In the well-ordered domicile where his early years were passed, the levity and indulgence common to youth was tempered by a deference and well-regulated restraint which, while it curtailed or suppressed no rational enjoyment usual in the spring-time of life, prescribed those enjoyments within the bounds of ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer |
