Frivolity Quotes

• These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.

  Pedro Calderon de la Barca

  Heartbreak, Morning, Flower

  "A las flores". Poem by Pedro Calderon de la Barca,

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• There is always some frivolity in excellent minds; they have wings to rise, but also stray.

  Joseph Joubert

  Humor, Wings, Mind

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• A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.

  Edith Wharton

  Dramatic, Significance, Acquire

  Edith Wharton, Janet Beer (2002). “The House of Mirth”, p.15, Wordsworth Editions

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• Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Philosophical, Conceit

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• The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.

  Che Guevara

  America, Dreamer, Saving

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• Frivolity is a stern taskmaster.

  Bill Griffith

  Bill Griffith (2012). “Lost and Found: Comics 1969-2003”, p.365, Fantagraphics Books

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• You're considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion....But I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity.

  Sofia Coppola

  Fashion, Silly, Thinking

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The people of the United States, perhaps more than any other nation in history, love to abase themselves and proclaim their unworthiness, and seem to find refreshment in doing so... That is a dark frivolity, but still frivolity.

  Robertson Davies

  Dark, America, People

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• Years hence, perhaps, may dawn an age, More fortunate, alas! than we, Which without hardness will be sage, And gay without frivolity.

  Matthew Arnold

  Gay, Years, Age

  Matthew Arnold (1954). “A selection of his poems”

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• Most people are too busy working on insignificant projects and pursuing life's frivolities to tap their creative abilities. It's a mistake to be one of them. Striving for excellence where excellence doesn't matter is the stuff misfits are made of.

  Ernie J Zelinski

  Inspirational, Mistake, People

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• An easygoing person is probably more accessible to the realization of eternity--the endless flow of life and death--than one who takes his prospects and duties overseriously. It is the overserious who are truly frivolous.

  Eric Hoffer

  Life And Death, Realization, Flow

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• Indulgence is emptiness. I have proved the limits of food and frivolity. There is no real fulfillment in meaningless rushes of pleasure. You try to conceal the emptiness with more extravagance, only to find the thrills becoming less satisfying and more fleeting. Most pleasures are best as a seasoning, not the main course. However you try to disguise it, you end up feeding without being nourished.

  Brandon Mull

  Real, Trying, Extravagance

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• We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; talk and chat and prefer 'speech' and 'discourse'; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the 'worthy, brave and courteous men' of long ago.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Men, Long Ago, Brave

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• Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.

  Ogden Nash

  Lying, Mean, Acceptance

  "A Gleeful Splash of Ogden Nash" by Jonathan Yardley, www.washingtonpost.com. May 08, 2005.

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• Frivolity, under whatever form it appears, deprives attention of its power, thought of its originality, and sentiment of its depth.

  Madame de Stael

  Depth, Attention, Originality

  "Corinne, or Italy". Book by Madame de Stael, 1807.

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• a connotation of infinity sharpens the temporal splendor of this night when souls which have forgot frivolity in lowliness,noting the fatal flight of worlds whereto this earth’s a hurled dream down eager avenues of lifelessness consider for how much themselves shall gleam, in the poised radiance of perpetualness. When what’s in velvet beyond doomed thought is like a woman amorous to be known; and man,whose here is alway worse than naught, feels the tremendous yonder for his own— on such a night the sea through her blind miles of crumbling silence seriously smiles

  e. e. cummings

  Dream, Night, Men

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• Youth is always too serious, and just now it is too serious about frivolity.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Serious, Youth

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• Fashion does not have to prove that it is serious. It is the proof that intelligent frivolity can be something creative and positive

  Karl Lagerfeld

  Success, Fashion, Intelligent

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• The moral qualities are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Giving, Support, Quality

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Ida Husted Harper, Matilda Joslyn Gage (1902). “History of Woman Suffrage ...: 1883-1900”

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• We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous.... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for.... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Meaningful, Profound, Goal

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• I am a reasonable and sane functionalist tempered by irrational frivolity.

  Alexander Girard

  Irrational, Sane, Reasonable

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• Heavy, heavy-hearted people grow lighter and rise occasionally to their surface through precisely that which makes others heavier,through hatred and love.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hate, People, Rose

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• The beet is the most intense of vegetables

  Tom Robbins

  Vegetables, Beets, Intense

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Jitterbug Perfume”, p.1, Bantam

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• What importance can we attach to the things of this world? Friendship? It disappears when the one who is liked comes to grief, or the one who likes becomes powerful. Love? it is deceived, fleeting, or guilty. Fame? You share it with mediocrity or crime. Fortune? Could that frivolity be counted a blessing? All that remains are those so-called happy days that flow past unnoticed in the obscurity of domestic cares, leaving man with the desire neither to lose his life nor to begin it over.

  François-René de Chateaubriand

  Love, Life, Friendship

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• He who does most to cure woman of her weakness, her frivolity, and her servility will likewise at the same stroke do most to cure man of his brutality, his selfishness and his sensuality.

  Frances Power Cobbe

  Men, Selfishness, Weakness

  Frances Power Cobbe (2010). “The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures”, p.36, Cambridge University Press

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