Less frivolous than someone I know.
In his youth Casimir was considered frivolous and licentious; while his sudden flight from the field of Plowce, the scene of his father's great victory over the Teutonic knights, argued but poorly for his personal courage.
Carlyle felt by this time conscious of having a message to deliver to mankind, and his comrades, he thought, were making literature a trade instead of a vocation, and prostituting their talents to frivolous journalism.
At bottom the man was frivolous, profoundly selfish, unstable, and utterly incapable of consistency or application.
Thus she was often led to interfere for frivolous reasons in public affairs, sometimes with serious results, as in the case of the trial of the comte de Guines (1776), when her interference was responsible for the fall of Turgot.
He was incorrigibly frivolous, idle and apathetic; his father had given.
In 1735, largely on account of his knowledge of military engineering, Duke Charles Alexander (1733-1737) made him a privy councillor, but his hands were tied owing to the frivolous atmosphere of the court.
These acts helped greatly to discredit the Moderate party, of whose spirit they were the outcome; and that party further injured their standing in the country by attacking Leslie, afterwards Sir John Leslie, on frivolous grounds - a phrase he had used about Hume's view of causation - when he applied for the chair of mathematics in Edinburgh.
He was also charged with Popish practices, but on frivolous grounds, and with aspersing the members of parliament for the city.
The most obvious method of rendering the Russian alliance unserviceable to the queen of Hungary was by implicating Russia in hostilities with her ancient rival, Sweden, and this was brought about, by French influence and French money, when in August 1741 the Swedish government, on the most frivolous pretexts, declared war against Russia.
The fourth, which alone has any political significance, and reflects on the emperor as a frivolous 1 This is especially noticeable in the seventh satire, but it applies also to the mention of Crispinus, Latinus, the class of delatores, &c., in the first, to the notice of Veiento in the third, of Rubellius Blandus in the eighth, of Gallicus in the thirteenth, &c.
I intended in this letter to let you understand the case fully; but it being a frivolous business, I shall content myself to give you the heads of it in short, viz.
For more than three years Lancaster practically reigned in his cousins name; it was soon found that the realm got no profit thereby, for Earl Thomas, though neither so apathetic nor so frivolous as Edward, was not a whit more competent to conduct either war or domestic administration.
The court was frivolous, vacillating, stone deaf and stone blind; the gentry were amiable, but distinctly bent to the very last on holding to their privileges, and they were wholly devoid both of the political experience that only comes of practical responsibility for public affairs, and of the political sagacity that only comes of political experience.
From 1715 to 1723 came the reaction of the Regency, with its Character marvellous effrontery, innovating spirit and frivolous of the immorality.
Had been proclaimed on the 16th of February 1723, Dubois was the first to depart; and four months after his disappearance the duke of Orleans, exhausted by his excesses, carried with him into the grave that spirit of reform which he had compromised by his frivolous voluptuousness (December 2, 1723).
Of war; and the cardinal de Tencin, a frivolous and worldly priest.
From 1770 onwards lived side by side with this king, rather than at his side, the archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria one of the very graceful and very frivolous women Ma,* who were to be found at Versailles, opening to life A~7,i,toa like the flowers she so much loved, enamoured of pleasure and luxury, delighting to free herself from the formalities of court life, and mingling in the amusements of society; lovable and loving, without ceasing to be virtuous.
Her reign (1730-40) was a regime of methodical German despotism on the lines laid down by her uncle, Peter the Great, and as she was naturally indolent and much addicted to frivolous amusements, the administration was directed by her favourite Biren (q.v.) and other men of German origin.
It was the cardinal Louis de Rohan, formerly ambassador at Vienna, whence he had been recalled in 1774, having incurred the queen's displeasure by revealing to the empress Maria Theresa the frivolous actions of her daughter, a disclosure which brought a maternal reprimand, and for having spoken lightly of Maria Theresa in a letter of which Marie Antoinette learned the contents.
There remains, however, a letter from the king, in which Philip tells his old favourite, with frivolous ferocity, that it might be necessary to sacrifice his life in order to avert unpopularity from the royal house.
Frivolous, selfish, avaricious and fond of luxury, she used her influence, during the different periods when she was invested with the regency, not for the public welfare, but mainly in her own personal interest.
But now, owing to the frivolous studies introduced by the Jesuits, the so-called macaronic period supervened, which lasted from 1606 to 1764, and was a time of great degradation for the language and literature.
Thrown into prison on a frivolous charge of friendliness to the royalists and England, he was released after the fall of Robespierre in the summer of 1794, and rose in the service until, in 1799, he became chief commissary to the French army serving under Massena in the north of Switzerland.
In 1566 he was summoned before a newly erected tribunal and condemned to death for gross neglect of duty, though not one of the frivolous charges brought against him could be substantiated.
It is true that his election was immediately impugned by the cardinals on frivolous grounds; but the responsibility for this rests, partially at least, with the pope himself, whose reckless and inconsiderate zeal for reform was bound to excite a revolution among the worldly cardinals still yearning for the fleshpots of Avignon.
That " there were in Athens persons who abused the dialectical exercise for frivolous puzzles " he admits; but " to treat Euthydemus and Dionysodorus as samples of ` the Sophists ' is, " he continues, " altogether unwarrantable."
Lastly, I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends; for I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations and verbosities, the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils, I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions and profitable inventions and discoveries - the best state of that province.
Soon after (22nd of January 1647) the Academy at last (it had twice rejected him on frivolous pleas) admitted the greatest of living French writers.
The king of Prussia had some reason to complain of the sudden desertion of his ally, but there is no evidence whatever to substantiate his accusation that Bute had endeavoured to divert the tsar later from his alliance with Prussia, or that he had treacherously in his negotiations with Vienna held out to that court hopes of territorial compensation in Silesia as the price of the abandonment of France; while the charge brought against Bute in 1765 of having taken bribes to conclude the peace, subsequently after investigation pronounced frivolous by parliament, may safely be ignored.
