Don't get the idea that it is soldierly to treat sacred things with levity.

So with an 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 Mountague (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.

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.

He lived in a degenerate age, when scepticism and sensuality were eating out the life and vigor of Grecian society, when Greek civilization was rapidly passing away, when ancient creeds had lost their majesty, and general levity and folly overspread the land.

Ray's voice harshened, possessing a certain quality of grim levity.

The old levity and the old passions lay doubtless very near the surface, but grave faces and serious talk were the fashion of the hour.

The hereditary enemy of our neighbours is levity, ours heaviness.

The levity with which he continually speaks of the assassination of Caesara man who had never treated him, at any rate, with anything but a noble forbearanceis a blot on Cicero's character which his warmest apologists admit.

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 witnessing a monkey show."[20]

The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the glare and blare of Bank Holiday.

In old days I used to say mass with the levity which in time infects even the gravest things when we do them too often.

"Your levity and heedlessness, if they continue, will prevent all substantial improvement.

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 going on.

Interesting to her it was that his levity still remained unsubmerged, failing him only in a final instant: Their hands had clasped in leave-taking and her eyes were lifted to his, when some plea with which "the entire man" seemed overcharged to the very lips was suddenly, subtly, and not this time by disconcertion, but by self-mastery, withheld.

Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter.

His chief assailants are the authors of The Canons of Criticism, and of The Revisal of Shakespeare's Text; of whom one ridicules his errours with airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary.

The Protestant religion proscribes, and the character of the English renders unnecessary, these sensible objects of devotion; but I have always been of opinion, that the levity of the French in general would make them incapable of persevering in a form of worship equally abstracted and rational.

But "a month, a little month," ago, on this altar the French swore to maintain the constitution, and to be faithful to the law and the King; yet this constitution is no more, the laws are violated, the King is dethroned, and the altar is now only a monument of levity and perjury, which they have not feeling enough to remove.

Yet Henry the Fourth is now a tyranthis pictures and statues are destroyed, and his memory is execrated!Those who have reduced the French to this are, doubtless, base and designing intriguers; yet I cannot acquit the people, who are thus wrought on, of unfeelingness and levity.

In this short space they have formed a compendium of all the vices which have marked as many preceding ages:the cruelty and treachery of the leaguethe sedition, levity, and intrigue of the Fronde [A name given to the party in opposition to the court during Cardinal Mazarin's ministry.

You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity.

Yet when La Fayette made an effort to maintain the constitution to which he owed his fame and influence, he was abandoned with the same levity with which he had been adopted, and sunk, in an instant, from a dictator to a fugitive!

His behaviour was that of a man who derived his fortitude from religionit was that of pious resignation, not ostentatious courage; it was marked by none of those instances of levity and indifference which, at such a time, are rather symptoms of distraction than resolution; he exhibited the composure of an innocent mind, and the seriousness that became the occasion; he seemed to be occupied in preparing for death, but not to fear it.

But his present levity was manifest to her.

In almost all, to my distorted view, there now seems to have been an unseemly levity.