Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
When we look at the shelves of a circulating library, groaning beneath that generally despicable class of volumes called fashionable novels, when we take up, only to lay down in disgust, "NOTORIETY, OR FASHIONABLES UNVEILED," "PAVILION, OR A MONTH AT BRIGHTON," "MEMOIRS OF A PEERESS," "MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE," "ALMACK S REVISITED," or some such stuff, we cannot but infer, that it is not the vices or absurdities of what is ignorantly called fashionable life that creates this never-ceasing demand for trash and nonsense, but rather a morbid appetite for vapidity and small-talk, a lady's-maid's curiosity of the secrets of her betters, a servile love of imitating what is unworthy imitation, and of following that which is not worth following, simply because it is supposed that these ridiculous caricatures represent the real life of
The war with the American colonies was preceded by an interval of stupor. The violent ferment which had been stirred in the nation by the affairs of Wilkes and the Middlesex election, was followed, as Burke said, by as remarkable a deadness and vapidity. In 1770 the distracted ministry of the Duke of Grafton came to an end, and was succeeded by that of Lord North. The king had at last triumphed.
HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality and vapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in a manner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of vivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each other perfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in their ordinary apparel.
Nothing, considering the aspirations of Charles Abbott, could have been more ironical than the phase of life he entered upon the acceptance of La Clavel into the party of independence. The entire success of this dangerous arrangement depended on his ability to create an impression, where he was concerned, of unrelieved vapidity.
That such a man should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never been instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing to his ignorance, which oftener induces vanity than modesty; that he was intolerant and bigoted, follows as a legitimate effect of his provincial and contracted habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage of the people; and that one thus constituted, should be permitted, periodically, to pour out his vapidity, folly, malice, envy, and ignorance, on his fellow-creatures, in the columns of a newspaper, was owing to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome adage "that what is every man's business is nobody's business," is exemplified not only daily, but hourly, in a hundred other interests of equal magnitude, as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the community to fancy that whatever is done in their time, is done for their good.
She was a very singular woman; not perhaps in being tolerably ignorant and silly, with an unmeaning face and a foolish, commonplace manner, an average specimen of vacuity of mind and vapidity of conversation, but undoubtedly singular in that she combined with these not un-frequent human conditions a most rare gift of musical and poetical interpretation a gift so peculiar that when she sang she literally seemed inspired, taken possession of, by some other soul, that entered into her as she opened her mouth and departed from her as she shut it.
HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality and vapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in a manner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of vivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each other perfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in their ordinary apparel.
My life, and your life, flowing on thus day by day, is a vapid enough piece of business; but when we think that it must close, a multitude of considerations, not connected with ourselves but with others, rush in, and vapidity vanishes at once. Life, if it were to flow on forever and thus, would stagnate and rot.
"I don't know anything of which one grows so weary as of watering-place life when one has seen much of it," she said. "Its pettiness, its routine, its vapidity, its gossip, all oppress one like a hideous nightmare. I don't think I shall ever go to a watering-place again." "Take care!" said the recumbent.
The eminent criminal novel is taken as a tonic by minds satiated with the vapidity of fashionable fiction. From Lytton's "Paul Clifford," and Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," down to "Merciless Ben, the Hair-Lifter," criminal narrative has been occupied with endowing burglars and murderers with the graces of gentlemen and the moral worth of Christian missionaries.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking