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Light-hearted   Listen
adjective
Light-hearted  adj.  Free from grief or anxiety; gay; cheerful; merry.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Light-hearted" Quotes from Famous Books



... grow and deepen in intensity. It did not dazzle their eyes in the least, but as the light penetrated the forest and its furthest rays fell upon the group, they experienced a queer sense of elation and light-hearted joy. ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum

... that Lyly was himself conscious that his hero was an insufferable coxcomb, and that he only created him because he wished to comply with the public taste. It may be, as M. Jusserand asserts, that Lyly anticipated Richardson, but, if the light-hearted Oxford madcap had any qualities in common with the sedate bookseller, artistic sincerity was not ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... falling silently in the woods about Arden, and the whole scene wore that aspect of subdued mournfulness which is pleasant enough to the light of heart, but very sad to those who mourn. Clarissa Lovel was not light-hearted. She had discovered of late that there was something wanting in her life. The days were longer and drearier than they used to be. Every day she awoke with a faint sense of expectation that was like an undefined hope; something would come to pass, something would happen ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... before her marriage. Several of them were extravagantly loud, one or two were inclined to be vulgar; but the others were quite as refined and gentle as the girls with whom she had grown up, and what impressed her about them all was their courageous and yet essentially light-hearted Southern spirit. To her surprise, she found an utter absence of jealousy among them. The elder women were invariably kind and helpful, and though she liked the girls, she soon discovered in herself a growing feeling of respect for these older women. They represented ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... surely happen the instant Dory found how matters stood; but she deemed it tactful to keep this thought to herself. Just then she was called to the telephone. When she came back she found Adelaide restored to her usual appearance—the fashionable, light-hearted, beautiful woman, mistress of herself, and seeming as secure against emotional violence from within as against discourtesy from without. But she showed how deep was the impression of Madelene's common-sense analysis of her romance by saying: "A while ago you said there were only three serious ills, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... The young light-hearted masters of the waves— And snatched his rudder, and shook out more sail; And day and night held on indignantly O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... not only missed my occasional glimpses of her pretty, slim figure, always draped in some soft black stuff with a bit of scarlet at the throat, but I inferred that she did not go about the house singing in her light-hearted manner, as formerly. What had happened? Had the honeymoon suffered eclipse already? Was she ill? I fancied she was ill, and that I detected a certain anxiety in the husband, who spent the mornings digging solitarily in the garden and seemed to have relinquished ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... is gone! he is gone! Like the leaf from the tree, Or the down that is blown By the wind o'er the lea. He is fled—the light-hearted! Yet a tear must have started To his eye when he parted ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... with us as a matter of course in starting for Zeeland. Has he not more right than I to the deck of "Mascotte," as the cousin of the owner and the fiance of her stepsister? He and Phyllis were the only ones among us who had the same air of cheerful, light-hearted anticipation at setting off for new scenes, which all used to have when the trip was but a few days old. For them there is no thought of any end, since the tour of life together is just ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... are on my side, Shalah. Take my pistols and Ringan's sword. I am going into this business with no human weapons." And as they set me on an Indian horse and the whole tribe turned their eyes to the higher glens, I actually rejoiced. Light-hearted or light-headed, I know not which I was, but I know that I ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... had lain and watched the brightening scene for a time, I got up, and having stretched and shaken my clothes into some sort of order, we strolled down the hill and joined the light-hearted crowds that twined across the plain and through the streets of their city of booths. They were the prettiest, daintiest folk ever eyes looked upon, well-formed and like to us as could be in the main, but slender and willowy, so dainty and light, ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... lonely as during the past month. For many years my brother Robert, Phyllis's father, lived with me there. It will be hard for you to believe I was ever gay, but it was really a gay house then. His friends were a light-hearted lot, and they were as welcome there as my own; mine were few by comparison. We talked pictures most of the time; his friends were painters. What dreams for the future I heard from them! The best of them loved Robert—and believed in him. ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens

... said Mr. Dudley; "whoever knew a light-hearted man, used to the sea, who could not sing. Will you please ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... confiding, affectionate, and happy. "The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... plans and interests. It did not seem by any means impossible in the prospect and I got a considerable amount of satisfaction from planning it all out. My life was to be that of a sort of glorified Hastings. After my healthy, peaceful day in the quiet country I felt quite light-hearted—as nearly happy as I could ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... nature, like the wind Melancholy or light-hearted without reason, And like the waxing or the waning moon Ever pale and lovely: you are like these Because you are free and live by your own law; While I, desiring life and half alive, Dream, hope, regret and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... slight awkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on the candle-flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened that when confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a temporarily light-hearted man, who has started himself on a flight of song whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old ditty that she ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... curtains heard, And also laughed, amused at her word, And at her light-hearted view of him. "Let's get him made so—just for a whim!" Said the Phantom Ironic. "'Twould serve her right If we coaxed the Will to do it some night." "O pray not!" pleaded the younger one, The Sprite of the Pities. "She said it ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... you are pleased!" said Marcus; and away he ran to school, feeling more light-hearted than he had done for many days. Mrs. Lee said she would take care of the children in the nursery, as Jane must be busy, and leave Hatty with Aunt Barbara. Hatty was glad to be trusted, and she brought her sewing, and took a low seat near ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly

... down, and only a thin layer covered with ice remained, which rang under the horse's big hoofs. The thin light air made breathing easy, and the sun shone redly over the snow. It was impossible to be anything but light-hearted. But then he remembered the object of the drive, ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo

... were spread all around the walls, on which some of the Indians lay asleep; some were braiding ropes, others sitting and lounging, gossiping and courting, while a little baby was swinging in a hammock. All seemed to be light-hearted and jolly, with work enough and wit enough to maintain health and comfort. In the winter they are said to dwell in substantial huts in the woods, where game, especially caribou, is abundant. They are pale copper-colored, have small feet and hands, are not at all negroish in lips or cheeks ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... must be quite individual, he decided. All soldiers were not so affected. Take Blanchard, for instance. Blanchard had seen service, more and quite as hard fighting as he had seen, but Blanchard was, to all appearances, as light-hearted and serene and confident as ever. Blanchard was like Madeline; he was much the same now as he had been before the war. Blanchard could dance and talk small talk and laugh and enjoy himself. Well, so could he, on occasions, for that ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... changed; the glare of the white houses is quenched in the gathering shades; you hear no more any rolling but that of the carriages on their way to some party of pleasure; you see only the lounger or the light-hearted passing by; work has given place to leisure. Now each one may breathe after the fierce race through the business of the day, and whatever strength remains to him he gives to pleasure! See the ballrooms lighted up, the theatres open, the eating-shops along the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... chances of his complete recovery to sound enough condition for future Army service were wholly in the balance. But Captain Goodwin had impressed upon him that good spirits would have a lot to do with his chances. So strong was his will that Prescott was actually almost light-hearted when it came around time to eat his evening meal of ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... Seven Days. His calm and collected action had been of the very character to inspire that confidence, and could not have wrought more effectually to that end had it had no other purpose. Some men, jubilant and light-hearted when all their plans are progressing favorably, permit their words to become few and their manner sombre and abstracted when difficulties thicken, creating fear and distrust in the minds of those around them, even when they themselves have not lost confidence and are only ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... fact, a young man of an old family; but he had been unsuccessful in his studies, and had lost his father and mother. He was naturally light-hearted and magnanimous; not particular in minor matters; immoderately fond of spear-exercise and fencing, of gambling and boozing; even going to such excesses as spending his nights in houses of easy virtue; playing the fife, thrumming the harp, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... 'creeps' and her fluffiness—knew no flicker of fear. In any case, there were few who would confess to it, though it gnawed at their vitals; and Roy's quick eye noted that, among the women, as a whole, the light-hearted courage of Anglo-India prevailed. It gave him a sharp inner tweak to look at them all and remember that nightmare of seething, yelling rebels at Anarkalli. He wished to God Rose had not seen it too. It was the kind of thing that would stick in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... Meantime the Bohemian circles which he had adorned with his gaiety and good-fellowship had been wondering what had become of him. His new work in the Exhibitions supplied a sort of answer, and the few who chanced to meet him reported dolefully that he was a changed man. Gone was the light-hearted and light-footed dancer of the Paris pavement. Silent the licentious wit of the neo-Pagan. This was a new being with brooding brow and pained eyes that lit up only when they beheld his dream. Never had ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... felt the warmth of his greeting. She noted the change in his manner, and fancied it arose from his fear lest he betray himself. She set herself to overcome his reserve; and when she had succeeded she sprang up with a gay laugh, light-hearted and full of a delicious, incomprehensible pleasure. She wanted to break out into singing, so sweet is the delight of new love unrecognized save as simple joy ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... it was a resigned if not light-hearted adventurer who disposed himself and his belongings in the Orient Express, after experiencing the singular good luck of securing a section in the sleeping car returned by a Viennese banker at the last moment. He went about the business of buying his ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... Graces. The three Graces of classical mythology were Euphrosyne (the light-hearted one), Aglaia (the bright one), and Thalia (the blooming one). See L'Alleg. 12: "Euphrosyne ... Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore." They were sometimes represented as daughters of Zeus, ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... way when she thought that the soul's welfare was concerned. She had seen the shrinking, retreating horror with which Linda had almost involuntarily contrived to keep her distance from her future husband. She had listened to the girl's voice, and knew that there had been not one light-hearted tone from it since that consent had been wrung from the sufferer by the vehemence of her own bedside prayers. She was aware that Linda from day to day was becoming thinner and thinner, paler and still paler. But she knew, or thought ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... him safe?" asked Dicky incredulously. "Well, I'll have to say that you know more than I thought you did." And the relief and satisfaction in his tone were so evident that I gladly repented of my suspicions of the light-hearted Dicky. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... house was unreservedly cheerful and light-hearted. She had the advantage of Mr. Corfe's instruction for two hours every Wednesday, and expressed herself as well satisfied with his methods. Her own intimate friends knew that she quite intended to go on ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... difficulty. Last night I was so down in the dumps, and so disappointed over Jack's Christmas present, that I thought I never could smile again. But now I'm so sure it is coming out all right that I am as light-hearted as a ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... care-free is almost over, and every greeting of a comrade is touched with Vale. It is the little things that are to be lost, so to the little things the time remaining is given. It is then one learns that little things are the dearest, the light-hearted supper in the pleasant cafe with the friend whose talk satisfies, the walk down street past familiar windows, the look of roofs and steeples dim in ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... his friend Krumpholz, he expressed doubts as to the value of his work hitherto. "From now on I shall strike out on a new road," he said. He is now dominated by a greater seriousness; his mission has been shown him. Adieu now to the light-hearted mode of life characteristic of his friends and of the time. His new road led him into regions where they could not follow; from now on he was more and more unlike his fellows, more misunderstood, isolated, a prophet in the wilderness. ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... was only too plain that she was filled with remorse. I really pitied her, for she was a light-hearted, flighty, little woman who loved gaiety, and, without an evil thought, had no doubt allowed her friends to draw her into that round of amusement. They sympathised with her—as every woman who marries an old man is sympathised ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... sleeps; The workmen all are from the Babel fled, And lost their tools, till the return they dread: Meantime the master, with his wig awry, Prepares his books for business by-and-by: Now all th' insignia of the monarch laid Beside him rest, and none stand by afraid; He, while his troop light-hearted leap and play, Is all intent on duties of the day; No more the tyrant stern or judge severe, He feels the father's and the husband's fear. Ah! little think the timid trembling crowd, That one so wise, so powerful, and so proud, Should feel himself, and dread the humble ills Of rent-day charges, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... Bernard Barton's. He did not come to us, except occasionally, till 1846. He seemed to me when I first saw him much as he was when he died, only not stooping: always like a grave middle-aged man: never seemed very happy or light-hearted, though his conversation was most amusing sometimes. His cottage was a mile from Bredfield. He was very fond, I think, of my Father; though they had several coolnesses which I believe were all my Father's fault, who took fancies that ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... once belonged to a queen, a beautiful, light-hearted queen of France, who came to ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm

... and even weeks passed quickly, carried on the wave of light-hearted play which Philip had so wisely started that Christmas night. February came with clear sun that set the snow glittering like a field of crystal under the dark pines, and they laughed with exuberance of spirit as they swept over it on their ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... Jack. This was my broad-browed, frank-faced, golden-haired, bright, smiling, incoherent, inconsistent, inconsequential, light-hearted, hilarious Jack—the Jack who was once the joy of every company, rollicking, reckless, and without a care. To this complexion had he come at last. Oh, what a moral ruin was here, my countrymen! Where now were his jests and gibes—his wit, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... path again, almost light-hearted in her relief from that vague terror which had held her for the past hour. From the corral Sorry and Jim came walking up the path to meet the wagon which was making straight for the bunkhouse instead of going first to the stable. One man rode on the seat, driving the team which walked slowly, oddly, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I found my mother's brother settled among the household Lares. Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible, enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in trying to make a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... up, and the trees seemed to be whispering together. He seemed to know what they said, though he could not have put it into words. He felt as if his old happiest self were rising once more from the tomb in which his resentment had buried it. It was not the light-hearted self which had once been, but it was the old loving, unselfish Tom for all that. He wandered on aimlessly at first, but afterwards with definite intentions. He would go to Brooks's cottage. He could bear to do so now. He would see how the neglected garden had done ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan

... park-like trees, its beautiful stream, wandering and twisting along, and its rural bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white farmhouse, half hidden by the magnificent elms which stand before it. Ah! riches dwell not there, but there is found the next best thing—an industrious and light-hearted poverty. Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton was the prettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her father, an old gamekeeper, had retired to a village alehouse, where his good beer, his social humour, and his black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She had lovers by the score; but Joseph ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford

... side of the man's nature. He was a practical moralist, with little love for abstract theories, and a morality far from asceticism, but, with profound unselfishness and pity for his fellow-man, he strove to right the wrongs and correct the abuses of a cruelly indifferent and light-hearted society. He once said of himself: "Je serais peu flatte d'entendre dire que je suis un bel esprit; mais si on m'apprenait que mes ecrits eussent corrige quelques vices, ou seulement quelque vicieux, je serais vraiment sensible a cet eloge."[78] However, he was ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... little suggestion of any death-wound about the manner or speech of this light-hearted and frank-spoken fellow who now welcomed his old friend Ogilvie ashore. He swung the gun-case into the cart as if it had been a bit of thread. He himself would carry ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... had dropped behind, for the glib comments of the dragoman, and the empty, light-hearted chatter of the tourists jarred upon their sense of solemnity. They stood in silence watching the grotesque procession, with its sun-hats and green veils, as it passed in the vivid sunshine down the front of the old grey wall. Above them two crested hoopoes ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... surlily, half amused at the easy-going, light-hearted way in which the boy could forget the horrible peril in which he ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... me that night to ask me about living here. 'What he was once to me,' she said, 'is buried in a grave, side by side with what I was to him. But I have thought of this; and I will make the trial. In the hope of saving him; for the love of the light-hearted girl (you remember her) who was to have been married on a New Year's Day; and for the love of her Richard.' And he said he had come to her from Lilian, and Lilian had trusted to him, and she never could forget that. So they ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... The light-hearted boy shrugged his shoulders with a gesture which said as clear as day: "In that case I would rather be plain Jack than a prince." And all ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... rate go out before we are married." Mary Lowther felt this to be a decision in her favour,—to be a decision which for the time made her happy and light-hearted. She had so dreaded a positive and permanent separation, that the delay seemed to her to ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... is urged on by Impulse, offspring of Infatuation, till his mischief stands out clear, as worthless bronze stripped of its varnish. So Paris sees now his light-hearted crime has brought his city low. He came to the house of the Sons of Atreus, and stole a Queen away, leaving Shame where he had sat ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... to have asked this question. How could she be otherwise than "flat-spirited," "a poor companion," and a "sad drag" on the gaiety of those who were light-hearted and happy! Her honest plan for earning her own livelihood had fallen away, crumbled to ashes; after all her preparations, not a pupil had offered herself; and, instead of being sorry that this wish of many years could not be realised, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... queens—one at the dawn, the other in the midsummer of life—presented at this moment the utmost contrast. Catherine was an imposing queen, an impenetrable widow, without other passion than that of power. Mary was a light-hearted, careless bride, making playthings of her triple crowns. One foreboded great evils,—foreseeing the assassination of the Guises as the only means of suppressing enemies who were resolved to rise above the Throne and the Parliament; foreseeing also the bloodshed of a long and bitter struggle; ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... years it had been Honor's dream to cross the Indus and join her favourite brother, the second-in-command of a Punjab cavalry regiment; to come into touch with an India other than the light-hearted India of luxury and smooth sailing, which she had enjoyed as only daughter of General Sir John Meredith, K.C.B., and now, with the completion of her father's term of service, her dream had become an ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... this I had scorned the red-cheeked dairy-lass at Echobank, and the waved kerchiefs of the baker's daughter opposite. And the more unhappy and miserable I looked, the closer I drew my inky cloak about me, the gayer, the more light-hearted ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... Jack Gray always was light-hearted and jolly, no matter whether things worked to suit him or not; but Marcy and his mother thought they had never seen him quite so much at peace with himself and all the world as he appeared to be after this interview with Aleck Webster. If those Union ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon

... magistrate of Anstruther, was a wealthy and respectable shipowner, and his family consisted of a son about twenty, and a daughter about seventeen years of age, besides some younger children. Mr Gordon, their guest, then in his twenty-fifth year, was a light-hearted and rising young officer. He was, at first, a little impatient of the delay occasioned by the repairs of the vessel, the superintendence of which fell to be his duty; but circumstances soon occurred which checked this impatience, and more than reconciled ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way round the globe. Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the mornings, and returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and fisher-folk travelled the red, winding harbor roads, light-hearted and content. There was always a certain sense of things going to happen—of adventures and farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... poetry on a long journey through the Middle West. He took but one book in his bag. It was by Whitman (the poet of cities, mark). And he determined to read it every evening in his bedroom after the toils of the day. The first part of the trip ran in the country. "Afoot and light-hearted" he took to the open road every morning, and reveled every evening in such things as "Manahatta," "The Song of Joys," and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Then he carried his poet of cities to a city. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... more light-hearted, and more sane? And if Charlotte is suspicious of the dangers of her own temperament, that only proves her lucidity ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... me to go a roaming for a little while. Then softening still more in manner, he began to question me concerning Venice, and after this wise we conversed some space of time. At last he bade me apply myself to business, and complete his Perseus. So I returned home glad and light-hearted, and comforted my family, that is to say, my sister and her six daughters. Then I resumed my work, and pushed it forward as briskly ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... in England, according to Matthew Arnold, has "the sense of conduct—and has but little else." This class hated and feared him; feared him for his intellectual freedom and his contempt of conventionality, and hated him because of his light-hearted self-indulgence, and also because it saw in him none of its own sordid virtues. Punch is peculiarly the representative of this class and of all English prejudices, and Punch jeered at him now in prose, now in verse, week after week. Under ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... she, Harriet, was right in suspecting that Ward's feeling was more than the passing gallantry of a light-hearted boy? She bit her lip, narrowed her idle gaze on the meadows that flew by the car window. It would be a nine-days' wonder, his marriage at twenty-two with his mother's secretary, more than four years his senior. But after that? After that there would be nothing to say or do. Young Mr. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... over everything. Nothing appealed to her seriously. So, one day, her mother decided to invite a very serious young parson to dinner, and he was placed next the light-hearted girl. Everything went ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... all strolled out into the garden. Isobel, with her hands full of flowers, flitted in and out amongst the rose-bushes, laughing and talking with all the invincible gaiety of light-hearted youth, and Arthur hung all the while about her, his eyes following her every movement, telling her all the while by every action and look—if indeed the time had come for her to discern such things—all that our ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... swallowed hard at a lump in her throat, and Celia lingered an instant behind the rest to pinch the colour back into her cheeks, nobody observed it. Perhaps each was too occupied with acting his own light-hearted part. Somehow the minutes slipped away, and soon the travellers were ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... vezzy good of you," said Hoodie, approvingly; and as happy and light-hearted as if no temper or trouble of any kind had ever come near her, she took Hec's hand and trotted off with her cousin to help in the installation of the ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... enchanted breakfast—never! Not that I can recall even vaguely what we had to eat, or who served it, or how much of the naked truth I related to her in describing the events of the night; I can only declare that it was a singularly light-hearted affair. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... "hindgate" of his wagon, lay it on the ground, and thereon perform the "clog dance," "Irish jigs," the "pigeon wing," and other fantastic steps. Many an evening the Donner Party were prevented from brooding over their troubles by the boyish antics of the light-hearted youth. ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan

... dip into the Doctor without being convinced of this buoyancy of spirit, quickness of fancy, and blitheness of heart. It even vents its exuberance in bubbles of levity and elaborate trifling, so that all but the very light-hearted are fain to say: Something too much of this. Compared with our standard humorists—the peerage, or Upper House, who sit sublimely aloft, like 'Jove in his chair, of the sky my lord mayor'—Southey may be but a dull commoner, one ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... forgotten or decided to ignore the young man who had so curiously mistaken her for another. Beth took occasion to watch her movements, so far as she could, and came to the conclusion that the girl was not acting a part. She laughed naturally and was too light-hearted and gay to harbor a care of any sort in her ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne

... aright, Captain Ellerey," she said, with a radiant smile, "it is not your nature to be frivolous, to catch pleasure as it flies and play with it while the bubble lasts; yet must you school yourself to do so. The light-hearted cavalier and careless lover will not be suspected of any deep design, and it would be well that that should seem your character at Court. More easily will you keep the nearer to our person, for love of pleasure and the gratification of the moment is thought to be our ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... the queerest Christmas Day he ever spent fell in 1883, the year of the great gale. In that year there was cruel trouble, and the number of folks wearing mourning that one met in Hull and Yarmouth, and the other places, was enough to make the most light-hearted man feel miserable. Black everywhere—nothing but black at every turn; and then the women's faces looked so wistful, and the children seemed so quiet, that I couldn't bear to walk the streets. The women would question any stranger that came from the quays, and they ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... the range of their activities, more ignorant of science than their chauffeurs, and of the quality of English people than welt-politicians; contemptuous of school and university by reason of the Gateses and Flacks and Codgers who had come their way, witty, light-hearted, patriotic at the Kipling level, with a certain aptitude for bullying. They varied in insensible gradations between the noble sportsmen on the one hand, and men like Gane and the Tories of our Pentagram ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... I found employment in a mercantile establishment of this little mining town and grew up with the country, as the saying is. I formed new acquaintances and made new friends. Among others, I met William Owen O'Neill. I cannot now remember the exact time or year. Attracted by the light-hearted, cheerful, and dare-devil spirit of this ambitious and cultured young man, I joined a military organization, of which he was then a lieutenant and later the captain, this was Company F of Prescott Grays, National Guard of Arizona. Poor, noble-hearted, generous Buckie—he knew it not, but this was ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann

... Saying which the light-hearted fellow struck a match on the sole of his boot and then applied it to the burner of the receptacle, in which there was enough carbonised hydrogen, stored under strong pressure, for lighting and heating the bullet for 144 hours, or six ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... Wyoming question; feeling ran high. Some of them had friends and relatives among the victims. Yet this man in hiding had tossed me his name to play with, not even asking for my silence, though it was the price of his life, and all in a light-hearted contempt for the curious ways of the 'tony set,' as he would have ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one of the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under such circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed. But it was no use. The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just starting; so was the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey. They rode ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... regret the death from pneumonia of Captain HARRY NEVILLE GITTINS, R.G.A., on Active Service. He was a member of the Territorials before the outbreak of war, and, after serving two years at home, went out to France in August of last year. His light-hearted contributions to Punch will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... nearly due south, bearing slightly westwards till it reaches Honiton. Here it makes a curve still farther to the west, and from Ottery St Mary runs southwards to the sea. In Westcote's day, when the derivations of names were taken in a light-hearted spirit, it was said: 'The river Otter, or river of otters (water-dogs), taking name from the abundance of these animals (which we term otters) sometime haunting and using it.' But the more serious authorities of to-day do not allow that the otters in this river have anything to do with ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket through dark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so much interested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so saturnine and melancholy) that he left his own affairs unmentioned for a while as the woman worked. It was quite a light-hearted recluse this, compared with that he had left ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... presently carrying on an animated conversation about many subjects not connected with the siege of Ladysmith. Now, the major has a remarkably youthful appearance, and when he chooses to assume the devil-may-care manner of a light-hearted subaltern, it fits him easily. Moreover, his shoulder-chains bore no distinctive badge of rank. There was nothing, in fact, to show that he was anything more than a cavalry lieutenant, whom no sense ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... of third-person-singular attitude in our talk, as if we were speaking at each other, which served to block our friendship from becoming anything of value to each other. Naturally I have seen that you are not happy, though there have been moments when you were the very personification of light-hearted ness, and I have known for a long time that the motif of your whole nature is resentment. Believe me, Miss Durwent, if I could be a friend—and I mean that to the last ditch—I should be deeply grateful for ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... away. When he was some rods up the road, down which he had galloped, he set spurs to his horse again and dashed on and out of sight. For a little while nobody spoke. It was Jennie who, as usual, light-hearted ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... The voice and the face were not those that had come to secret life in her heart during the years of his absence. Here was not the laughing boy she had known, with his volatile, Lucifer-like charm of light-hearted recklessness in the face of destiny. Instead, a thinned, shy face rose before her, a face full of awkwardness and dreaming, troubled and absent; a face that one moment appealed by its defenseless forgetfulness, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... guns does it. The silent tomb had a horrible sound to me when I was at home, but it sounds like a welcome now. Anyway, mother, whatever happens you must not worry. Everything is all right when you get right up to it—even death. I just wish I could see you, and make you understand how light-hearted I feel. I never felt better; my only trouble is that you will be worried about me, but just remember that everything is fine, and that ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... not aware of being more light-headed than usual," said Pownal, "but I am certain no one can be in Miss Bernard's company, and not be light-hearted." ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... bird arose, and, singing most sweetly, soared high into the air; and when he had flown away, the almond tree remained as it was before, but the handkerchief full of bones was gone. Marjory felt quite glad and light-hearted, just as if her brother were still alive. So she went back merrily into the house and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... Gradually gross and material occupations will become not only uncraved for or forbidden, but simply and literally repulsive to him. He will take more pleasure in the simple sensations of Nature—the sort of feeling one can remember to have experienced as a child. He will feel more light-hearted, confident, happy. Let him take care the sensation of renewed youth does not mislead, or he will yet risk a fall into his old baser life and even lower depths. "Action and Re-action ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... for Dame Charter. Do what she would, her optimism was growing dim, and what helped to dim it was Kate's gaiety. It did not comfort her at all when Kate told her that she was so light-hearted because she knew that Dickory would bring ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... they made their way out beyond the walls. Even the light-hearted students were sobered by the sight beyond. Thousands of men were engaged on the work of demolition. Where but ten days since stood villas surrounded by gardens and trees, there was now a mere waste of bricks and mortar stretching down ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... more and Ida stood in the broad carriage sweep, with her back to the stately old mansion which had sheltered her so long, and in which, despite her dependency and her poverty, she had known some light-hearted hours. Now, where was she to go? and what was she to do with her life? She stood with the autumn wind blowing about her—the fallen chestnut leaves drifting to her ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... home, for his father felt that it was time that his son should learn how to rule the kingdom which would one day be his. But during his long absence the prince seemed to have changed his character altogether. From being a merry and light-hearted boy, he had grown into a gloomy and thoughtful man. The king knew of nothing that could have produced such an alteration. He vexed himself about it from morning till night, till at length an explanation occurred to him—the young man ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... and I just sat there and stared. When she started in there was a deep frown on her forehead, but as she walked I saw her face clear, and when she had completed the round a dozen times or more, I saw her throw back her head in a light-hearted way, and then she ran into ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... away together, and Christal, who had at last succeeded in apparently involving the light-hearted young collegian within the meshes of her smiles, took consolation in a little quiet drollery with Charley Fludyer; but even this resource failed when Charley ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... read for you with truth the lines of fate as they are written upon your hands.' Agnes was a little startled, or even shocked, by this solemn address; but, in a minute or so, a mixed feeling—one half of which was curiosity, and the other half a light-hearted mockery of her own mysterious awe in the presence of what she had been taught to view as either fraud or insanity—prompted her playfully to insist upon the fullest application of the Hungarian's art to her own case; nay, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... of the principal part of the inhabitants of Polynesia. Indeed, I owned, that had I believed the accounts given in two works we had on board, I should have supposed that the inhabitants had rather suffered than benefited by the advent of missionaries among them, and that from being light-hearted, happy beings, they had become morose, discontented, and inhospitable. I mentioned Kotzebue's "Voyage round the World," in which work the author abuses the missionaries in unmeasured terms, and another by a Mr Beale, the surgeon of a South-Sea whaler, who, in a book full of valuable ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... eyes rises a vision of old Wynter. They used to call him "old," those boys who attended his classes, though he was as light-hearted as the best of them, and as handsome as a dissipated Apollo. They had all loved him, if they had not revered him, and, indeed, he had been generally regarded as a sort of living and lasting joke ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford

... in the splendor of that desert dawn forgot for a time to be desolate. Girl o' Mine stepped smartly in the early cool. He had paid for her breakfast before he tried at poker. He forgot himself, and presently he raised a light-hearted carol to the shuffle, shuffle, shuffle of ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... carriers, whether in the country or in the city. Outside the city they may be seen carrying huge loads on their heads, as happy as possible, not because they are kindly treated or that their work is light, but because it is their nature to be gay and light-hearted, because they, have conceived neither joys nor hopes which may not be gratified at will, nor cherished any ambition beyond their reach, and therefore have not been baffled in their hopes nor ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... thee than I can tell, dear Mary; but still I find that to busy one's self in many ways, and to put on as light-hearted a look as one can muster, is a help to grief. See now poor Elizabeth Tilley. She hath cried herself ill, and must tarry in bed where is naught to divert her grief. Is it not better to keep afoot and be of ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... a background for the light-hearted young Justin which appealed to Bettina's imagination. "Why, how lovely," she said with her eyes shining; "he didn't seem like that to me. ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey

... subjects happy and contented, she was as dignified and demure as any queen might be; but when she had thrown aside her jeweled robe of state and her sceptre, and had retired to her private apartments, the girl—joyous, light-hearted and ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... circumstances; her threats concerning Willy Forrest were the merest bravado. Gessner would have trembled at the knowledge a week ago, but to-night it found him singularly complacent. He listened to Anna's response with the air of a light-hearted judge who condemned a guilty prisoner out of her ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... field, or to dig round a few olive-trees. Many of them have their little domains several miles off, and thither they go daily, accompanied by a child and a pig. The pig is not very fat, and the man and his child are very lean. Still they seem light-hearted and merry. They have plucked some wild flowers by the roadside. The boy is crowned with roses, like Lucullus at table. The father buys a handful of vegetables, and a cake of maize, which will furnish the family ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... I say, Billie, for you are light-headed as well as light-hearted—a sort o' human balloon, ready to go up like a rocket at any time—so that even an or'nary man like me weighs you down. Besides, Oke, he steers better than me and I shoot better than him. Also, I like the hardest work, so I always take ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... was not really so light-hearted. I could not help thinking of what this night might have been if Kennedy had been alive. Indeed, I was glad to take up my white mask, throw a long coat over my outlandish costume and hurry off in my waiting car in order to forget everything that ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... which she kept for the evenings with her children. Cares were thrust away then, to be taken up again as soon as Fanny and Archibald were in bed, and no matter how hard the day had been, she was always cheerful, always gay and light-hearted for the dinner hour by the fireside. Not often had she been too poor to buy a handful of flowers for the table, and never once, except during her illness, had she come home too tired to change to the black silk gown, which ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow



Words linked to "Light-hearted" :   lightsome, lighthearted, cheerful, blithe



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