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More "Trifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the German General Staff. These last wishes would, perhaps, have not been impossible of fulfilment, and he did not doubt that his amiable Russian acquaintance would have gladly rendered him this trifling service. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... and myself. I get my horse up sometimes in the afternoon and have a ride in the woods; and I sit here and smoke and write, and rewrite, and destroy, and rage at my own impotence, from six in the morning till eight at night, with trifling and not ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... introduction—excellent in all ways, besides the grace and eloquence. Altogether, the work must set you higher with a high class of the public, and I congratulate you on what is the gain of all of us. Robert has begun a little pencil list of trifling criticisms he means to finish. We both cry aloud at what you say of Guercino's angels, and never would have said if you had been to Fano and seen his divine picture of the 'Guardian Angel,' which affects me every time ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... more so. In short, there was nothing rare, or choice of its kind and within the bestowal of the Hunter's Paradise, which did not, sooner or later, find its way to the hands or feet, to the head or back, or to the selfish little belly of master Sprigg. But these were trifling indulgences compared with others, and would, in all likelihood, have left upon his disposition no other lasting evil effect than to render him overwatchful of his own ease and comfort. What was far worse, he was allowed to say, with ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... literary art; his papers on vowel sounds, his papers in the SATURDAY REVIEW upon the laws of verse, and many a strange approximation, many a just note, thrown out in talk and now forgotten. I pass over dozens of his interests, and dwell on this trifling matter of the phonograph, because it seems to me that it depicts the man. So, for Fleeming, one thing joined into another, the greater with the less. He cared not where it was he scratched the surface of the ultimate mystery - in the child's toy, in the ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frappe!" he said loudly, so that all might hear him give the order. A month in Venice, and he would be able to talk like a native. True, if any Italian spoke to him, he was obliged to shake his head; but that was a trifling matter. ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... magnificent apparatus of bridges, causeways, of uplifted hollows and levelled heights, were constructed at an enormous cost of manual labour and of personal oppression and suffering, and with comparatively a trifling amount of science. But the railroad is the idea of the philosopher embodied by the free and cheerfully accorded toil of the labourer and artizan. When an Appius Claudius or a Marcus Flaminius determined to mark the year of his consulship or censorship by some colossal ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... out of nine chewed tobacco during the night; but they aimed at the windows with great accuracy, and didn't splash me. The amount of sleep I got, however, was naturally very trifling. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... qualify statement to press at once. Announce reconsideration of hasty denial and admit engagement. This is imperative. I am not in mood for trifling. Have wired Paris papers that engagement is settled. Have also wired daughter. The sooner we get together on this the better. Wait for my arrival in Paris." It ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... those under whose tuition he may happen to be, whether parents or governors.—Nature, and the writings of learned men, who from time to time have commented on all that has happened in nature, certainly afford sufficient matter to gratify the most enquiring mind, without descending to such mean trifling inquisitions, as can no way improve itself, and may ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... on my humble bench, And take my simple cheer, And I will tell you, all you ask, With hearty frank good will: A story of no trifling sort, In truth, you have to hear, Yet, like the most of mortal scenes, A ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... sensible of their superior cultivation, and to be even more submissive and respectful. All near relatives, whether by blood or marriage, are directed, whatever their feelings may be, 'to keep up a kindly intercourse by letter, word of mouth, trifling presents, and so forth, treating your husband or wife's connections in company as you do your own, merely introducing a little more ceremony.' Those newly-married couples who go into company to look ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... sash having been let down, the robins had taken the opportunity of building their nest within it; but the servant having closed the window again, the calamity befel the birds which so strongly excited Mr. Stephenson's sympathies. An incident such as this, trifling though it may seem, gives the true key to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... direction. While standing in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke suddenly start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that the occupant had just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the housewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment, which was done. Then he started on the search ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... that everything he had done for William was to be placed to the account of his excessive and unequalled attachment to her, she was exceedingly distressed, and for some moments unable to speak. She considered it all as nonsense, as mere trifling and gallantry, which meant only to deceive for the hour; she could not but feel that it was treating her improperly and unworthily, and in such a way as she had not deserved; but it was like himself, and entirely of a piece with what she had seen before; and she would not allow herself ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... bank-notes of the following amounts: one fifty-pound note, three twenty-pound notes, six ten-pound notes, and six five-pound notes. His object in drawing the money in this form was to have it ready to lay out immediately in trifling loans, on good security, among the small tradespeople of his district, some of whom are sorely pressed for the very means of existence at the present time. Investments of this kind seemed to Mr. Yatman to be the most safe ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... played; I had no companions; I passed my hours in homesickness; I spent the whole night weeping in my bed. I sought to bring before my mind recollections of home, trifling memories of little things, little events. I thought incessantly of all I had left behind there. I became almost imperceptibly an over-sensitive youth to whom the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... slates, etc. I use no assistant; so after a time has elapsed, and when by the performance of other sealed readings, suspicion has been diverted from the tests with the billets, my wife retires on some trifling errand. While out, she opens the envelopes in the basket, prepares the sheet of questions, and places it in the Bible; then she re-seals the questions in envelopes previously marked by me, places them in the sides of the basket, raises the flaps and lowers the ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... succeeded, Dick, though I feel that with a trifling alteration here and there you could have cleared yourself. Now we'll let the painful matter drop for good, unless, indeed, some fresh light is ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... mild attack of jail fever, of which I had doubtless brought the seeds from St. Malo. I kept my bed for a couple of days, being tended with much kindliness by a little old surgeon attached to the garrison. I should not have mentioned this trifling sickness but that it prevented me from witnessing the arrival of a fresh batch of prisoners; so that when I descended on the third day into the courtyard I was mightily surprised to see, at that very instant carrying a bucket of water across from the keep, no other than ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... of woman," he said finally. "And furthermore, they say she got to trifling with magic and prowling about the temples to see if the gods came true. They were afraid she would get them blasted along with her sometime for her sacrilege. I know all this because Aquila declared she attached herself to him in sheer poverty in Ephesus ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... like them, devoted to the view! Thy books are furniture. Methinks 'tis hard That science should be purchas'd by the yard; And Tonson, turn'd upholsterer, send home The gilded leather to fit up thy room. If not to some peculiar end design'd, Study's the specious trifling of the mind; Or is at best a secondary aim, A chase for sport alone, and not for game. If so, sure they who the mere volume prize, But love the thicket where the quarry lies. On buying books Lorenzo long was bent, But found at length ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... against them. The German Government does not hesitate for a moment to send ten thousand of its own people to certain death under enemy guns even though the military advantage of so doing may be relatively trifling. But it dare not order the massacre of ten thousand foreign residents in Berlin. There is some force which makes it sometimes more scrupulous of the lives of its enemy than of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the new occupant, he descended among the silent, thoughtful party who were in possession of the cleared space near the stern. It was now so dark that some little attention was necessary to distinguish faces, even at trifling distances. But, by means of moving among these privileged persons with great coolness and seeming indifference, he soon succeeded in placing himself near ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... that air of graceful trifling which so well became him. 'I should think so. Why, my good feller, do you know what o'clock it is—half-past nine ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? Ben remembered, his ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... you going to turn disobedient?—And in so trifling-a matter as this!—trifling so far as you are concerned. Were it of vital importance to you, you might run counter to me; it is only ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... A.D. 1750; two years later, in Northampton, came Timothy Dwight: both of the best New England breed: Dwight, a grandson of Jonathan Edwards; Trumbull, cousin to kind old Governor Trumbull, (whose pompous manner in transacting the most trifling public business amused Chastellux and the Hussar officers at Windham,) and consequently second cousin to the son of the Governor, Colonel John Trumbull, whose paintings might possibly have added to the amusement of the gay Frenchmen, had they stayed in America long ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Collins' Treasury of Minor British Poetry: though my rule has been to consult these after making my own choice. Yet I can claim that the help derived from them—though gratefully owned—bears but a trifling proportion to the labour, special and desultory, which has gone to the ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... was too feeble for agitation, and seemed only able to go through the time of preparation and parting, by keeping himself as lethargic and indifferent as possible, or by turning matters into a jest when necessarily brought before him. Playing at solitaire, or trifling desultory chat, was all that he could endure as occupation, and the long hours were grievously heavy. His son, though nearly four years old, was no companion or pleasure to him. He was, in his helpless and morbid state, afraid of so young a child, and little ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were given the "Lay," and "The Lady of the Lake." It was my father who first read "Tam o' Shanter" to me, for which I confess I did not care at that time, preferring to take witches and bogies with great seriousness. It seemed as if Burns were trifling with a noble subject. But it was in a summer sunset, beside a window looking out on Ettrick and the hill of the Three Brethren's Cairn, that I first read, with the ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... myself,' writes poor Dr. Morgan, 'the thoughtless and heartless Glorvina trifling with her friend, jesting at his sufferings, and flirting with every man she meets.' He sends her some commissions, but declares that there is only one about which he is really anxious, 'and that is to love me exclusively; to prefer me to every other good; to think of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... November up to about the end of March is a period when growth, both in height and weight, proceeds at a medium rate, reaching neither a maximum nor a minimum; increase in weight is slight, the increase in height, although trifling, preponderating. After this follows a period during which the children show a marked increase in height, while increase in weight is reduced to a minimum. The children constantly lose in weight during this period of growth in height almost as much as they gain in the preceding period. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the courtyard of the Bad Hof, and the gold-chained chamberlain, flanked by two green tubs of oleanders, received him with a gravity calculated to check any preconceived idea he might have that traveling was a trifling affair, or that an arrival at the Bad Hof was not of serious moment. His letters had not yet arrived, for he had, in a fit of restlessness, shortened his route, and he strolled listlessly into ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... words (from my mouth they had been rare of late), pronounced with a slow, firm coldness, as though I were indifferent to the course he might adopt, made him feel how little capable I believed him of vigorous and sustained action, and what trifling trouble I took to make him adopt my views. Dubois, Argenson, and Law had also spoken to him, urging him to take strong measures against the Parliament; the effect of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... risen, and was making ready to depart. Her gloves and riding-whip lay on the table. The afternoon was far spent, and already the shadows were lengthening on the mountain-side. She paid the trifling account, Antonio taking the money with such a deep bow that the smallness of the coin was quite atoned for. He brought her horse ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... to be obtained. We must, therefore, repress that curiosity, which would naturally incline us to watch the first attempts of so vigorous a mind, to pursue it in its childish inquiries, and see it struggling with rustick prejudices, breaking, on trifling occasions, the shackles of credulity, and giving proofs, in its casual excursions, that it was formed to shake off the yoke of prescription, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... made rather a disgraceful exhibition of himself the other day. But as I said then, a man will thrash and swear at a hornet and make an ass of himself, generally, in the operation. The impudent little fool didn't realize what a big matter she was trifling with." ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... means: Christian Science is not sufficiently un- derstood for that. The student of this Science who under- stands it best, is the one least likely to pour into other [10] minds a trifling sense of it as being adequate to make safe and successful practitioners. The simple sense one gains of this Science through careful, unbiased, contemplative reading of my books, is far more advantageous to the sick and to the learner ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... cannot take place to-day; there are various reasons. Question me no further; if Zosia will consent to wait, she may perhaps soon find in me a better man—and a man more worthy of her; perhaps by my constancy I shall gain her affection, perhaps I shall adorn my name with some trifling glory, perhaps I shall soon return to the home of my fathers. Then, uncle, I shall remind you of your promise, then on my knees I shall greet my dear Zosia, and, if she is free, I shall beg her hand; ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... she mounted, though at first its weight had seemed trifling. When she had waved her handkerchief at the turning, and passed out of Miss Portman's sight, it occurred to her that it would be clever to lighten the ruecksack and satisfy her appetite ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... four-and-twenty. I had never been accustomed to sleep more than six or seven hours, and my inclination to sleep was now less than ever. Thus was I reduced to spend half my day in this dreary abode, and in complete darkness. This was no trifling aggravation ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... beware; Dear Ladies, take care— How you play with a lion asleep in his lair: "Mere trifling flirtations"—these arts you employ? Flirtations once led to the siege of old Troy; And a woman was in For the sorrow and sin And slaughter that fell when the Greeks tumbled in; Nor is there a doubt, my dears, under the sun, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... I, and my voice sounded strange even to myself, "I hope you are not trifling;—you never would dare, did you know the state I am in, that I have been in for—oh, so long! But I can't have hidden all my love. Can't you see how my life almost is hanging upon your answer? Jane, do you love me, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... one evening, "Gutman kissed his hand to me. I cannot give him a drink of water, or render him any other trifling service, but he manifests his gratitude by the most extravagant demonstrations. Don't smile; it is too terrible to be buried thus alive before one's time ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to answer, but she would not be refused; and then he mentioned a Jew, of whose honesty he had made undoubted trial, and who, as she was so near being of age, would accept very trifling interest for whatever she ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... note closely how other men did, and so be able another time to acquit himself to her satisfaction. And even her severity was sweet; it implied that he was not to her what other men were, that even in the more trifling accessories of knowledge she would have him to excel. If he had been quite indifferent to her, why should she have taken this trouble? And then that "To-morrow; with pleasure." What did it mean? That though she would not give him her attention to-night, being ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... into ebullitions of mirth and song; on the contrary, I have never known a youth of his age more orderly and decorous. He is kind-hearted and grateful, and evinces his gratitude to the mother of the family and to his benefactress by occasional presents, not trifling when measured by his small emolument of five dollars per week. Just at this time he is confined to his room by indisposition, caused, it is suspected, by a spree on Sunday last. Our gross Saxon orgies would soon be the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hesitation, 'may I ask if you are angry at the trifling manner with which I have spoken of your sister before I knew her to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Clement a pretty dinner enough for such a place as Oxbow Village. He offered him some good wine, and would have made him talk so as to show his lining, to use one of his own expressions, but Clement had apparently been through that trifling experience, and could not be coaxed into saying more than he meant to say. Murray Bradshaw was very curious to find out how it was that he had become the victim of such a rudimentary miss as Susan Posey. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... never to inter your stem deeper than you found it standing; for profound burying very frequently destroys a tree, though an error seldom observed: If therefore the roots be sufficiently covered to keep the body steady and erect, it is enough; and the not minding of this trifling circumstance, does very much deceive our ordinary wood-men, as well as gardiners; for most roots covet the air (though that of the Quercus urbano least of ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... haughty Court of Vienna was mean enough to treat even an ambassador with cold disrespect, was the sole origin of the report. However that might be, Eugene remained for a length of time at Vienna, filling up his inactivity by trifling with many arts and many enjoyments, till at length the War of the Succession, as it was called, breaking out, he was appointed to the command ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... his man to the latter's store, and even inside it, where he made a trifling purchase, and having seen Mr. Grafton enter his private office, the detective paid a visit to Darcy in ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... By overlooking this fact, so many errors have been called forth. The blessings of the Old Covenant which, when considered in themselves, are so important and rich, appear, when compared with the much fuller and more important blessings of the New Covenant, to be so trifling that they vanish entirely out of sight. It is quite similar when, in chap. iii. 16, the Prophet represents the highest sanctuary of the Old Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant, as sinking into entire oblivion in future; when, in chap. xxiii. 7, 8, he describes the deliverance ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... excellent. By the simple process of removing the handle, taking out the dasher, and unshipping the legs—the work, as you perceive, of but a moment—the process of transformation is complete. As to the trifling orifice that the removal of the handle leaves in the lid, it becomes, when the wash-boiler side of this Protean vessel is uppermost, a positive benefit. It is an effective safety-valve. Without it, I am not prepared to say that the boiler would not burst, scattering ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... this tale: First, We should fear the smallest enemy; And second, We may escape great perils, And from a trifling cause ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... generous, so heroic, and so perfectly wise and politic an enterprise. It was to the principles of this confederation, and to no other, that we wished our sovereign and our country to accede, as a part of the commonwealth of Europe. To these principles with some trifling exceptions and limitations they did fully accede. And all our friends who took office acceded to the ministry (whether wisely or not), as I always understood the matter, on the faith and on the principles ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... threw himself carelessly on the bench, letting his staff fall as he did so. And here happened something rather marvelous, though trifling enough, too. The staff seemed to get up from the ground of its own accord, and, spreading its little pair of wings, it half hopped, half flew, and leaned itself against the wall of the cottage. There it stood quite still, except that the snakes ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... sometimes want it in goods?-Sometimes we may take some trifling things on it if we want them, but if not we get it ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... a few notes and trifling alterations, and an additional motto from Gibbon, which you will find singularly appropriate. A 'Good-natured Friend' tells me there is a most scurrilous attack on us in the Anti-jacobin Review, which you have not sent. Send it, as I am in that state of languor which will derive ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the last serious effort to colonise Vinland, and the Saga, while giving no definite cause for this failure upon failure, seems to show that even the trifling annoyance of the Skraelings was enough to turn the scale. Natural difficulties were so immense, men were so few, that a pigmy enemy had all the power of the last straw in a load, the odd man in a council. The actual resistance of American natives to European ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... Athelstane, whose memory was of that petty kind which stores up trifles of all kinds, but particularly trifling offences, "dost not remember how thou didst beard us in the gallery at the tilt-yard? Fight or flee, or compound with the outlaws as thou dost list, ask neither aid nor company from us; and if they rob only such as thee, who rob all the world, I, for ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... that anything which possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition ...
— Sophist • Plato
... generic nature, through the consent of reason. If, on the other hand, the hurt to which the angry movement tends, is a sin generically venial, for instance, if a man be angry with someone, so as to wish to say some trifling word in jest that would hurt him a little, the anger will not be mortal sin, however long it last, unless perhaps accidentally; for instance, if it were to give rise to great scandal or something ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... but I mean no disparagement to Julia. We cannot have two Agathas, and we must have one Cottager's wife; and I am sure I set her the example of moderation myself in being satisfied with the old Butler. If the part is trifling she will have more credit in making something of it: and if she is so desperately bent against everything humorous, let her take Cottager's speeches instead of Cottager's wife's, and so change the parts all through; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... girl all scarred by small-pox, and our dairymaid, who was blind of an eye, agreed, one fine day, to throw themselves at my mother's feet and accuse the Frenchman of trifling with their ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... this universal defection of the human race, this wide-spread idolatry which has taken possession of the most cultivated and intellectual nations, and threatens to overrun the world and absorb all other idolatries into itself, there appears but a trifling number who maintain the pure light of theism, and preserve the truth of God unsullied for the coming, and it is to be hoped, therefore, for better, ages of the world. And who are these? Jews, Deists, and Unitarians. On these depend the world's ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in little minds, though it should show itself even in this court, it has not made the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon them, just ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the dead boy was duly respected. In some things Mrs. Lincoln was an altered woman. Sometimes, when in her room, with no one present but myself, the mere mention of Willie's name would excite her emotion, and any trifling memento that recalled him would move her to tears. She could not bear to look upon his picture; and after his death she never crossed the threshold of the Guest's Room in which he died, or the Green Room in which he ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Theresa, even in defeat, retained a degree of self-opinionated astuteness. She presented her case effectively. To be discharged, and that in disgrace, to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for that which—with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of fact—could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of judgment, did really sound and seem ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... time there was a King who was so morose and disagreeable that he was feared by all his subjects, and with good reason, as for the most trifling offences he would have their heads cut off. This King Grumpy, as he was called, had one son, who was as different from his father as he could possibly be. No prince equalled him in cleverness and kindness of heart, but unfortunately he was most terribly ugly. He had crooked ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... brilliant, if it bore no searching analysis, and he had his circle of listeners wherever he went. He was a born raconteur, and had proved himself in that particular, and his increasing acquaintance with the stage and the professors of its trifling art helped him ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... replied the captain, a little embarrassed, "You must not be so scrupulous in these trifling matters, or you will never make your way through the world at any rate you will never do for a sailor. The rest of the men make no objections to putting a little money in their pockets, and why should YOU? Even Mr. Adams, the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... circumstances produced a somewhat unfavorable impression in regard to Elizabeth, and there were some instances, it was said, of light and trifling behavior between Elizabeth and Seymour, while she was in his house during the life-time of his wife. They took place in the presence of Seymour's wife, and seem of no consequence, except to show that dukes and princesses got into frolics sometimes in those days as well as other mortals. ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... an effort of art, as what has been done for Bonaparte. The artist had well nigh succeeded in drawing me into a sort of half temptation to bespeak an impression of the medal in gold. "It was but a trifling sum—some twenty louis, or thereabouts. It would look so sharp and splendid in gold! and...." "I thank you much Sir, (replied I) but twenty louis will carry me almost to Strasbourg, whither I am to proceed in about a week ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... On a trifling point of honour, namely, as to whether Ben were a man likely to lie, tortuously, hypocritically, to be elaborately false about the authorship of the Shakespearean plays, it is hopelessly impossible to bring ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... object, but capable of the grossest brutality when that hope ceases. They are unscrupulous in perjury, treacherous, vain and insatiable, passionate in vindictiveness, which they will satisfy at the cost of their own lives and in the most cruel manner. Nowhere is crime committed on such trifling grounds, or with such general impunity, though when it is punished the punishment is atrocious. Among themselves the Afghans are quarrelsome, intriguing and distrustful; estrangements and affrays are of constant occurrence; the traveller conceals ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... of the jaghires. This morning the Vizier came to me according to his agreement, but seemingly without any intention or desire to yield me satisfaction on the subject under discussion; for, after a great deal of conversation, consisting on his part of trifling evasion and puerile excuses for withholding his assent to the measure, though at the same time professing the most implicit submission to your wishes, I found myself without any other resource than the one of employing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the politic Chieftain was desirous to place the example of this young hero under the eye of Waverley, with whose romantic disposition it coincided so peculiarly. But his letter turned chiefly upon some trifling commissions which Waverley had promised to execute for him in England, and it was only toward the conclusion that Edward found these words: 'I owe Flora a grudge for refusing us her company yesterday; and, as I am giving you the trouble of reading these lines, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... above him hung large orange-red paper lanterns with large Chinese inscriptions. At the young merchant's shop over the way, we bought finely cut Chinese tobacco, and a number of Chinese silk satchels, note books, and other things at trifling prices. The young owner I'd like to be able to describe; I don't think I have ever seen such perfection of finish of dress, and even form; his complexion was palest coffee-colour, teeth perfectly ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... approaching to a similarity with what is known to denote an attack, excites apprehension. A pimple, through the medium of the imagination, is transformed into a horrid bubo; a cold or a simple head-ache, however trifling, are attributed to the dreaded malady; and even the firmest mind at such times quails under trifling appearances. In some cases the scene of agony closes in a few hours—even minutes; they fall down and almost immediately ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... relax his stony stare at the sky, and Smith tried to forget how hungry he was by estimating the extent of his vision. He decided that the angle subtended about a hundred and sixty degrees, or almost half a circle; and he further concluded that if his agent possessed a nose, it was a pretty trifling affair, too small to be noticed. It was obvious, too, that the fellow's mouth was located much lower in the face than normal. He ate without showing a single particle of food, ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... nor protect their shrines from spoliation. "Henceforth," says Merivale, "the power of paganism was entirely broken, and the indications which occasionally meet us of its continued existence are rare and trifling. Christianity stepped into its deserted inheritance. The Christians occupied the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... intent, expectant expression in the craggy countenance, that told of the uncertainties of his assumptions; yet the lack of assurance was compensated for by the firm, resolute line of the mouth under the trifling upturned mustache, with its lips at the same time thin and sensual. To be fat and sensual is to appear to mitigate the latter evil with at least a pretence at good humor; to be thin and sensual is ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... his mood, discussing nurses and remedies and domestic arrangements and the like. Elisabeth, however, was distinctly disappointed in Christopher, because he could bring himself down to dwell upon these trifling matters when the Angel of Death had crossed the lintel of his doorway only last night, and was still hovering round with overshadowing wings. It was just like him, she said to herself, to give his attention to surface details, and to miss the deeper ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... of the country of Tenderness (la carte de Tendre) is found in the first part of Clelie (see note 2, page 146); Love-letter (Billetdoux); Polite epistle (Billet galant); Trifling attentions (Petit Soins); Sprightly verses (Jolts vers), are the names of villages to be found in the map, which is a ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... proved to be correct. He turned out to be very trifling, and I was much annoyed by his laziness, his carelessness, and his apparent lack of any sense of responsibility. I kept him longer than I should, on Julius's account, hoping that he might improve; but he seemed to grow worse instead of ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... I never guessed you'd find me here,' answered the magician, 'might seem a mere trifling with language and ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... forty-six parallel lives of the Greeks and Romans. And these were given to the world before the first rosy dawn of modern civilization had risen to the horizon. Without dwelling upon their achievements, Plutarch, with a trifling incident, a simple word or an innocent jest, showed the virtues and failings of his subject. As a result, no other books from classical literature have come down through the ages to us with so great an influence upon the lives of the leading ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... her mind was so much upset that she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any trifling disturbance agitated her. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... for our purpose fully to recognize that actions readily become associated with other actions and with various states of the mind, that I will give a good many instances, in the first place relating to man, and afterwards to the lower animals. Some of the instances are of a very trifling nature, but they are as good for our purpose as more important habits. It is known to everyone how difficult, or even impossible it is, without repeated trials, to move the limbs in certain opposed directions which have never been practised. ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... the domain of the real rather than of the romantic is suggested by the sad accident upon the Princeton. But for the trifling incident which detained President Tyler from the side of his Cabinet officers at the awful moment, the administration of the Government would have passed to other hands. As the law then stood, the ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... work of Pastells on the River Simlao and baptized 1,000 Manbos, whom he induced to found the town of Tudela. He then pursued his work among the Manbos to the south of Verula and founded the town of Patrocinio. He reports that for some trifling reason the town was moved not long after. From 1905 to 1909 I know that the site of the town was changed ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... are taught to place all our art in adorning our outward forms, and permitted, without reproach, to carry that custom even to extravagancy, while our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so long established and industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses, as if it were a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in concert with other women ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... explanation of a Westminster Abbey verger; and he made a fierce attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, and other trifling articles that ornamented the rooms. In this way they went at railroad pace through the suite of rooms and the library, - where the chief thing pointed out appeared to be a grease-mark on the floor made by somebody at somebody else's wedding-breakfast, - and to the chapel, where they admired ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the shot from my gun. Many were wounded, but they were trifling small shot-wounds, which only infuriated them as they saw their prey escaping, and with a rush they came tearing through the water, whirling their clubs above ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... men, he found it too strong, and prudently retired into West Virginia. 2. On the night that the Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan, General Butler, with thirty thousand men, ascended the James River, under the protection of gunboats, and landed at Bermuda Hundred. After some trifling successes, he was surprised in a dense fog by Beauregard, and driven back into his defences with considerable loss. Beauregard then threw intrenchments across the narrow strip which connects Bermuda Hundred with the main land, and, as Grant tersely said, "hermetically ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... of our party. He assured me that it had given him very considerable pleasure to thus devote his morning hours to our service. He trusted that we were satisfied with his efforts, and hinted that, though he should not dream of levying any formal charge, yet some trifling and negotiable memento of us would not be misunderstood or give him the least offence. We rewarded him adequately, thanked him much for all his trouble, and hoped that, when next we visited St. Kitts, his cheerful face might be the first to ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... simplicity, or rather severity, of the sumptuary laws of the period, so far as to allow the use of silks and various-colored apparel, shows the attention of the sovereigns to every circumstance, however trifling, which could affect the minds of the young princes agreeably, and diffuse an air of cheerfulness ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever, without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling; and, though in continual motion, that humanity will ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... require a detailed consideration of the facts of sexual life. That is, however, unnecessary. It is enough to point out certain considerations which alone suffice to invalidate this view. In the first place, it must be remarked that the trifling amount of fluid emitted in sexual intercourse is altogether out of proportion to the emotions aroused by the act and to its after-effect on the organism; the ancient dictum omne animal post coitum triste may not be exact, but it is certain that the effect of coitus on the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... pie, so don't spoil our plans now, for how much more father will enjoy it if his dear little 'wifey' shares the pleasure also. And, by the way, Dick, that reminds me of something that must go in for mother. A few days ago, when I was sitting with father, he directed me to get a trifling gift for mother, but with his old-time humor he said, 'I believe the most acceptable gift that I could make Wifey would be all the receipts of the bills that have come in, for the little woman has worried considerably over the number and amounts. I got in a pretty good check several ...
— Grandfather's Love Pie • Miriam Gaines
... to the necessity, than serve upon such ignoble terms.... I hope what I have said will not be taken amiss, for I really believe, were it as much in your power as it is in your inclination, we should be treated as gentlemen and officers, and not have annexed to the most trifling pay that ever was given to English officers the glorious allowance of soldier's diet, a pound of pork, with bread in proportion, per day. Be the consequence what it will, I am determined not to leave the regiment, but to be among the last men ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... in the seventeenth century that a learned divine of the Church of England was shocked to hear one of his flock repeat the evidence of his pagan beliefs in language which is as explicit as it is amusing; and I shall not be accused of trifling with religious susceptibilities if I quote a passage from a sermon delivered and printed in 1659—a passage which shows not a departure from Christianity either through ignorance or from the result ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... front comprised sundry features extremely well known by reputation to British newspaper readers. I must say that the reality of them was disappointing. The inevitable thought was: "Is it possible that so much killing has been done for such trifling specks of earth?" ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... not write his note at all. He did not know what to say; he did not want to make too much of the incident, for it was really a trifling matter, only worthy of being mentioned in case he had something more important to write about. But he had nothing more important; there was no reason why he should write to Olive during her short stay with ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... taste and understanding, who should find himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an event, apparently of trifling interest. A woman, having her face muffled in a hood, and a cloak drawn completely about her form, advanced slowly up the broad aisle, and took a place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim's faint color varied, his nerves fluttered, ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Rattler choose his own trail up the hill. Though he did not know it, trouble had caught Billy Louise in that same place, and had sent her forward with drooping shoulders and a mind so absorbed that she gave no attention to her horse; but that is merely a trifling coincidence. The thing he had to decide was far more complicated than ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... the flag in its bill. It looked very clever. Every time the bird brought a flag it was rewarded by being fed with some nice food which it liked. It was very pretty to see it. But after all it was a very trifling employment for two grown gentlemen to be engaged in. Even the crowd of ordinary Chinese ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... a leetle more perfect, I think it will go admirably,' said Mr. Sempronius, addressing his corps dramatique, at the conclusion of the hundred and fiftieth rehearsal. In consideration of his sustaining the trifling inconvenience of bearing all the expenses of the play, Mr. Sempronius had been, in the most handsome manner, unanimously elected stage-manager. 'Evans,' continued Mr. Gattleton, the younger, addressing ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... have them to be. But in estimating the value of a lesson of this sort, we must not be carried too far, not be altogether convinced. We may first take into account the temperament of the teacher; we may ask, is his vision perfect? We may indulge in a trifling diagnosis on our own account. And in an examination of this sort we find that Schopenhauer stands the test pretty well, if not with complete success. It strikes us that he suffers perhaps a little from a hereditary taint, for we know that there is an unmistakable predisposition ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... three hundred weight of turtle in a day, besides fowls and other necessaries; and in the evening of the 13th, having nearly completed our wood and water, Mr Banks went ashore to take leave of his majesty, to whom he had made several trifling presents, and at parting gave him two quires of paper, which he graciously received. They had much conversation, in the course of which his majesty enquired, why the English did not touch there as they had been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... much—some six inches or so—of my wristbands and shirt-sleeves; and when I looked at myself in the glass I found that there was a well-defined ridge of loose cloth running across the back from shoulder to shoulder. With these trifling exceptions, however, I thought the suit fitted me fairly well, and I hastened down- stairs to exhibit myself to my sister Eva. To my intense surprise and indignation she no sooner saw me than she burst into an uncontrollable ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to render those trifling services which it was usual to ask from holy folk and sometimes from magicians. Before the coronation ceremony the nobles and knights had been given gloves, according to the custom. One of them lost his; he asked the Maid to find them, or others asked her for him. She did not promise ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... all the peoples, nations, and races: Peace be with you! This is to acquaint you that one came to us who is not of our nation and of our land, an Amalekite, the son of great ancestors, and his name is Haman. He made a trifling request of me, saying: 'Among us there dwells a people, the most despicable of all, who are a stumbling-block in every time. They are exceeding presumptuous, and they know our weakness and our shortcomings. They curse the king in these words, which are constantly in their mouths: "God ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... specially careful of the edges, to prevent its burning. Gradually the mixture will begin to turn colour. As soon as this turn of colour is perceptible take out half and put it in a basin. This is the white roux, viz., flour cooked in butter but not discoloured beyond a very trifling amount. Keep the stew-pan on the fire, and go on stirring the remainder, which will get gradually darker and darker in colour. As soon as the colour is that of light chocolate remove the stew-pan from the ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... That aught external to the living mind 550 Should have such mighty sway! yet so it was), A weight of ages did at once descend Upon my heart; no thought embodied, no Distinct remembrances, but weight and power,— Power growing under weight: alas! I feel 555 That I am trifling: 'twas a moment's pause,— All that took place within me came and went As in a moment; yet with Time it dwells, And grateful memory, as ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... ventured. Yet I must complete these verses that I have begun so that the Muses may cease to entice me further. Oh, if only wisdom, the mistress of the four sages of old, would lead me to her tower whence I might from afar view the errors of men; I should not then honor one so great with a theme so trifling, but I should weave a marvelous fabric like Athena's pictured robe ... a great poem on Nature, and into its texture I should weave your name. But for that my powers are still too frail. I can only offer these verses on which I have spent many hours of my early school-days, ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... sigmoid flexure to perform its function as a final normal receptacle; and this in turn upon the rectum, which depends on the sphincter ani. The colon does not appear to possess any digestive powers, though it is capable of absorbing substances. Its function is not only to receive and forward the trifling residue of food which escapes digestion and absorption, but chiefly to excrete, through its own minute glands, the waste of the system coming ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... like the scraping of the leg of an overall against a sage-brush, and yet it was so trifling, so indistinct, that a field mouse might have made it. But somehow Smith knew, he was sure, that something human had caused it; and as he listened for a recurrence of the sound, the conviction grew upon him that there ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... easy it was to affix their signatures to promissory notes and to mortgages on their lands or cattle, their horses, sheep, crops, and chattels. Of course there was a little interest to be paid on the indebtedness, but as it was merely a trifling one and a half per centum per month or eighteen per cent yearly, it was of no consequence. And it was so easy to pay your debts. Just think of it, people bought everything they needed and longed for at the store and paid for it by ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... poor for one's self,' said the anxious youngster; 'but whether one ought to be poor, when money is to be honestly made, and at only a trifling risk, though by ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... across the table with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works, there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus it comes about that when one pulls his life or his string ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... serious. "I shall consider the matter carefully, and with all the wisdom and forethought I can find in my brain. This matter was left to me as a trust, and I'm not taking it lightly, I can tell you. This purchase of a house is a permanent move, not a trifling, temporary question. And unless the place is the very right place,—righter than any other place,—why, we don't want ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... iron arguments that Christians used. I saw, for instance, the thumb-screw, two little innocent looking pieces of iron, armed with some little protuberances on the inner side to keep it from slipping down, and through each end a screw, and when some man had made some trifling remark, for instance, that he never believed that God made a fish swallow a man to keep him from drowning, or something like that, or, for instance, that he didn't believe in baptism. You know that is very wrong. You can see for yourself the justice of damning a man if his ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners. Certainly what one is, is of far greater importance than what one appears to be. A knowledge of etiquette is of course essential to one's decent behavior, just as clothing is essential to one's ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... this manner the contamination of a numerous nation, a trifling amount of foreign blood admixture would appear to be indelible, and the disturbance, at any moment, capable of computation by the ascertained degree of dilution that has taken place. But it must not be forgotten that there is another agency at work, energetically ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... anxious-looking, with only seconds to spare. For Maggie Brown was said to be the third richest woman in the world; and these solicitous gentlemen were only the city's wealthiest brokers and business men seeking trifling loans of half a dozen millions or so from the dingy old lady ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... principal object of the quarrel, American independence, and the advantage our government and reputation would derive from seizing the first favourable opportunity, did not appear to me sufficiently promoted by those immense preparations for trifling conquests, and those projects conceived in the expectation of peace; for no person seriously believed in war, not even when it was declared, after the hundredth injury had induced Spain to enter into those co-operations which finally terminated ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... deep truth when he said that "the measure of a poet is the largeness of thought which he can bring to any subject, however trifling." Certainly Mrs. Dargan brings this largeness of thought to her subject. Has the significance of the plough ever before been so brought out? She makes one feel that there should be a plough among the constellations. What are the chairs and harps and ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... good I do; but when by a cold penury I blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, whatever I have done has been general and systematic. I have never entered into those trifling vexations and oppressive details that have been falsely and most ridiculously laid to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... our life in the Vimy sector would not make interesting reading as it was a quiet time. The enemy shelling was not heavy and was confined to a few favourite spots. At night he sent over a few gas shells, but never in great numbers, and the damage done was trifling. On the other hand, night after night he received thousands of shells of all sizes from our gunners, especially from 6-inch howitzers, and ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... their subsistence." No less criminal and dangerous is the disposition of those who misspend their precious moments in reading romances and play-books, which fill the mind with a worldly spirit, with a love of vanity, pleasure, idleness, and trifling; which destroy and lay waste all the generous sentiments of virtue in the heart, and sow there the seeds of every vice, which extend their baneful roots over the whole soil. Who seeks nourishment from poisons? What food is to the body, that our thoughts and reflections are to the mind: ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... repose in a chair. A single blanket constituted his sole covering at night. In spite of all this, he grew daily better and stronger, and his spirits revived. Hitherto, no visiters had been permitted to see him. As the time when his identity had to be proved approached, this rigour was, in a trifling degree, relaxed, and a few persons were occasionally admitted to the ward, but only in the presence of Austin. From none of these could Jack ascertain what had become of Thames, or learn any particulars concerning the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... eight to nine hundred feet. I am inclined to believe that it is attributable less to inaccuracy of observation than to the very imperfect instrument made use of by Rivero. Maclean's observations, with some trifling exceptions, correspond with mine. He used one of Fortin's barometers, and I one of Lefevre's, which, prior to my departure from Europe, had, during several weeks, been regulated at the observatory in Paris. Unluckily, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... 18,287 tenants. He has now been ten years in the office, during which 'the rents have been paid without murmuring or complaints worth noticing.' 'The pressure of legal remedies for these rents has been very little used; the number of evictions absolutely trifling; and of between 400 and 500 receivers, who collect these rents, not one has ever been assailed, or interfered with, or threatened in the discharge of his duty, as far as I have been able to discover; and I am the person to whom ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... me, my dear," uttered the governess; "I sit in my room every evening from eight to half-past, and I am then at liberty to see a pupil on any subject which is not trifling. Nothing but lessons are spoken of in lesson hours, Hester. Ah, here comes Miss Good. Miss Good, I should wish you to place Hester Thornton in the third class. Her English is up to the average. I will see Mdlle. Perier about ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... clearly understood, would require a degree of credulity not often to be met with in the pecuniary transactions of mankind, and little reconcilable with the usual sharp-sightedness of avarice. Reflections of this kind may have trifling weight with men who hope to see realized in America the halcyon scenes of the poetic or fabulous age; but to those who believe we are likely to experience a common portion of the vicissitudes and calamities which have fallen ...
— The Federalist Papers
... "We have a very trifling game here," answered Utgard-Loki, "in which we exercise none but children. It consists in merely lifting my cat from the ground; nor should I have dared to mention such a feat to the great Thor if I ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... this trifling war to an end when they became involved in a formidable struggle with their old enemies the Gauls. Since the conquest of the Senones in B.C. 289, and of the Boii in B.C. 283, the Gauls had remained quiet. The Romans had founded the colony of Sena after the subjugation ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... martinet though he was, would hardly, I think, have inflicted such a punishment on Cecily, who was a favourite of his, had he known the real nature of that luckless missive. But, as he afterwards admitted, he thought it was merely a note from some other girl, of such trifling sort as school-girls are wont to write; and moreover, he had already committed himself to the decree, which, like those of Mede and Persian, must not alter. To let Cecily off, after her mad defiance, would be to establish ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... great men of a time. There is Captain Nathaniel Lyon,—name with the fateful ring. Nathaniel Lyon, with the wild red hair and blue eye, born and bred a soldier, ordered to St. Louis, and become subordinate to a wavering officer of ordnance. Lyon was one who brooked no trifling. He had the face of a man who knows his mind and intention; the quick speech and action which go with this. Red tape made by the reel to bind him, he broke. Courts-martial had no terrors for him. He proved the ablest of lieutenants to the strong civilian who was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to put a penny into the hands of the man at the crossing in Downing-street. It is anticipated, from this trifling circumstance, that sweeping measures will be introduced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Then: "Would you come?" he asked, with a certain roughness, as though he suspected her of trifling. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Government here, and I think I can promise you some very substantial help in return for the information you have given us. But I want you to turn your thoughts back to the night you spent by the railroad. Can you remember anything further about it, however trifling, which you have not ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no trifling proof of friendship, indeed," answered Miriam; "I should think there were three hundred stairs ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... managed to complete the voyage in a month—Charles Dickens sailed in a vessel which took twenty-two days for the trip, and she was a steamer, no less! For all practical purposes England and America are now one country. The trifling distance of 3,000 miles across the Atlantic seems hardly worth counting, according to our modern notions; and the American gentleman talks quite easily and naturally about running over to London or Paris to see a series of dramatic performances or an exhibition of pictures. When ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... bone constructed the whole animal, so an accurate knowledge of a man's whole character may be attained from a single characteristic act; that is to say, he himself may to some extent be constructed from it, even though the act in question is of very trifling consequence. Nay, that is the most perfect test of all, for in a matter of importance people are on their guard; in trifles they follow their natural bent without much reflection. That is why Seneca's remark, that even the smallest things may be taken ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... number of 'twelve' here. The Apostles and their supernatural gifts, the patriarchs as founders of Israel, have been thought of as explaining the number, as if these men were founders of a new Israel, or Apostolate. But all that is trifling with the story, which gives no hint that the men were of any special importance, and it omits the fact that they were 'about twelve,' not precisely that number. Luke simply wishes us to learn that there was a group of them, but how many ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... prospects of speedy independence, the obstacle which his mother's secret threw in their way, and his inability to guess any means which might unravel the mystery, and hasten his and her deliverance. The disgrace once removed, he thought, all other impediments to their union would be of trifling importance. ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... which sums up our slightest human affairs with an exactitude which at the least is amazing. Twenty-five years ago I did a great wrong to a human creature who was innocent, and who absolutely trusted me. There is no crime worse than this, yet it seemed to me quite a trifling affair,—an amusement—a nothing! I was perfectly aware that by some excessively straightlaced people it might be termed a sin; but my ideas of sin were as easy and condoning as yours are. I never repented it,—I can hardly say I ever thought of it,—if I did I excused myself quickly, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... had an insatiable curiosity, he was forever making questions and researches. He wished me to relate to him all the most trifling incidents of my life in America, Virginia, and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... effect this purpose. A courier had arrived at Aleppo from Hillel, apprising Adam Besso that the Queen of the Ansarey had not only refused to give up the prisoners, but even declared that Eva had been already released; but Hillel concluded that this was merely trifling. This parleying had taken place on the border; the troops were about to force the passes ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... following me," the man went on, in a sharp voice. "Whoever it is I warn him he had better come no further. If it's money you're after I'll tell you I am armed, and I'll not hesitate to shoot. If it's a beggar I have nothing for you. If it is anyone else I warn him I will stand no trifling. I will say nothing to you, and if you follow me you do so at your peril. Be warned in time and go back. You must not meddle in this affair, whoever you are. I shall protect myself if I ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... on the bachelor hearth once more; Loveland in his usual quiet mood and Chance smarting from a recent wound. He had begun to feel that his position was almost secure with Miss Leigh, but that day, on the occasion of a picnic at which he had amused himself by trifling with a silly young girl, he was amazed, mortified, and hurt by receiving the cold shoulder when he proffered his company to Miss Leigh on ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... produces it is the disordered fancy of a fine intellect hopelessly warped by the contemplation of human misery and humanitarian sympathy with human distress. All economic discussion is worthless if tainted by human sympathy. The surplus value in production is trifling and seems large only because concentrated in comparatively few hands. The surplus of ages is concentrated in the structures which we see all about us, and in the commodities ready or partly ready for consumption and which will disappear in a short time. The annual accretions are small for an ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... the account of this Affair just as I had it from Mr. Gore, but I must own it did not meet with my approbation, because I thought the Punishment a little too severe for the Crime, and we had now been long Enough acquainted with these People to know how to Chastise Trifling faults like this without taking ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... nature of this conception would require a detailed consideration of the facts of sexual life. That is, however, unnecessary. It is enough to point out certain considerations which alone suffice to invalidate this view. In the first place, it must be remarked that the trifling amount of fluid emitted in sexual intercourse is altogether out of proportion to the emotions aroused by the act and to its after-effect on the organism; the ancient dictum omne animal post coitum triste may not be exact, but it is certain that the effect ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the next day, Christmas-eve, the tree was to be lighted. On the twenty-third of December, a little while before the hour for story-telling, Hermy came home, and exhibited to his brothers the trifling presents, which he had chosen: an eraser for his father, a lead-pencil for his mother, a bag of nuts for his grandmother, and similar trifles which, though insignificant in themselves, had nevertheless exhausted his little store of savings. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... bridge into the narrow saloon. He was clad in yellow pajamas, his bare feet in native sandals, and he held a well pipe-clayed topee in one hand. He was impatient at the delay of the passage-junk coming down from up-river, with her possible trifling cargo, her possible trifling deck-passengers, of which the little steamer already ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in that way at all. You see, before the first marriage, each couple, from the humblest peasantry to the highest royalty, must submit to a mental examination. If they are marrying for any reason at all other than love, such as any thought of trifling in the mind of the man, or if the woman is marrying him for his wealth or position, he or she is summarily ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... simple enough, but requires much practice. The good driver should understand his horse well, and turn his curves gently and slowly; he must know how to harness and unharness a horse, and be ready to mend any trifling disarrangement if there is ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... little any of those whom he had hitherto met with. They were so wild that it was impossible to carry on any trade with them, or any sustained intercourse. What they appeared to esteem above everything else were fish-hooks, knives, and all articles in metal, attaching no value to all the trifling baubles which up to this time had served for barter. Twenty-five armed men landed and advanced from four to six miles into the interior of the country. They were received by the natives with flights of arrows, after which the latter ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... there really was matter for congratulation. None of them was ill, and all were having a most delightful and quite unexpected three weeks' holiday in idyllic surroundings. Their arms, to be sure, had "taken," and were more or less sore, but that was a trifling inconvenience compared with the pleasures of living in Camp. There was no anxiety to be felt about Joyce, she had the disease very slightly, and was being treated with such extreme care that her face would not be marked afterwards. It ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... (1786-1869), Baron Broughton, was committed to Newgate for two months in 1819 for his anonymous pamphlet, A Trifling Mistake. This was a great advertisement for him, and upon his release he was at once elected to parliament for Westminster. He was a strong supporter of all reform measures, and was Secretary for War in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... ever saw. And he had a most singular, squeaky sort of a voice, with a kind of a nasal twang to it, which if heard once could never be forgotten. He was an old friend of my father's, and had been his legal adviser (so far as his few and trifling necessities in that line required) from time immemorial. And for a year or so prior to the outbreak of the war my thoughts had been running much on the science of law, and I had a strong desire, if the thing could be accomplished, to sometime be a ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... played with my Lord hide two cards in the roll of his stocking. Pacolet immediately stole them from thence; upon which the nobleman soon after won the game. The little triumph he appeared in, when he got such a trifling stock of ready money, though he had ventured so great sums with indifference, increased my admiration. But Pacolet began to talk to me. "Mr. Isaac, this to you looks wonderful, but not at all to us higher beings: that nobleman has as many good qualities as any man of his order, and ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... made a number of suggestions from which I gathered that if the whole thing were altered, my idea of the background altogether changed, the figures differently posed, the effect of light and shade diametrically reversed, and a few other trifling alterations made, the thing might possibly be hung on the top line. Ma foi, I feel altogether crushed, for I had really flattered myself that the sketch was not ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... their trifling weight Through all my frame a weary aching leaves; For long I struggled with my hapless fate, And stayed and toiled till it was dark and late— Yet these ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... on the 11th of February. "The anxiety and disappointment," he said, writing to M. Eynard from Portsmouth on the following day, "which I experienced in regard to the steam-vessels and other means that were to have been placed at my disposal are trifling, when compared to the distress I have felt at finding my only remaining hope of rendering effectual service to Greece destroyed by the impossibility of inducing the Greek seamen to submit to the slightest restraint on their inclinations, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... be had in any thing like the plenty we expected, from the account given of this country by the natives of Senegal, who, being themselves extremely poor, consider that to be a large quantity which we think very trifling. The Negroes value their gold as a very precious thing, even at a higher rate than the Portuguese, yet we got it in barter very reasonably for things of very small value. We continued here eleven days, during which the caravels were continually resorted to by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... defend themselves and their self-respect from the consequences of that indulgence. Men are of harder stuff. Some of them can escape into the intellectual life; many preserve only their practical cunning and, for the rest, are insensible and stupid and fill their lives with small pleasures and trifling discontents, and feed their conceit with success or failure ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... the ship was both by her weight and by her anchors, she fairly trembled at times with the violence of the blast. Had she been dependent only upon her anchors and her own unassisted weight—which the reader will remember was very trifling notwithstanding her immense dimensions—she would infallibly have been whirled away like a bubble upon the wings of the gale. The highly-compressed air, however, held her securely down upon her icy bed, and, beyond imparting an occasional tremor, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... "I will have no trifling," said Mrs. Baines. "What did you go out for, and without telling me? If you had told me afterwards, when I came in, of your own accord, it might have been different. But no, not a word! It is I who have to ask! Now, quick! I can't wait ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and yet couldn't afford to buy candles. He could only hurry. But Balzac's way of hurrying was all his own; it was a sternly methodical haste, and might have been mistaken, in a more lightly-weighted genius, for elaborate trifling. The close tissue of his work never relaxed; he went on doggedly and insistently, pressing it down and packing it together, multiplying erasures, alterations, repetitions, transforming proof-sheets, quarrelling with editors, enclosing subject within ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... accustomed to being fired over by friendly artillery and impressed with the fact that the artillery should continue firing upon the enemy until the last possible moment. The few casualties resulting from shrapnel bursting short are trifling compared with those that would result from the increased effectiveness of the enemy's infantry fire were the friendly artillery ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... on the other. The work of Lessing in this respect had no great results. We to-day see in his theological writings the most important contribution to the understanding of the earliest history of dogma, which that period supplies; but we also understand why its results were then so trifling. This was due, not only to the fact that Lessing was no theologian by profession, or that his historical observations were couched in aphorisms, but because like Leibnitz and Mosheim, he had a capacity for appreciating the history of religion ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... Island to catch fish, and a disagreement taking place between two of the natives, about some trifling affair, the particulars of which I did not learn, one of them took a spear belonging to the other, and after breaking it across his knee, with one half of it killed his antagonist, and left him. The parents of the man killed, being present, laid him out ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... is afraid to undertake things, shrinks from responsibility, exaggerates the difficulties that may be in the way; hence the floods of tears, or outbursts of temper, with which nervous children will greet the suggestion of any task or duty, however trifling. If the nervous individual has reached that stage of maturity when she realizes that she is not merely "naughty," but sick, then this same process applies itself to her disease. She is sure that she is going to die, that another attack like that will end in paralysis; as a ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the remembrance of at least one correction more emphatic than pleasing proves that he was not like Eli of old, who had wayward sons and restrained them not. In the multitude of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no caricatures of good men, no trifling with things of eternity. His laughter was not the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children of the community knew him; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming down the lane, shouted, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... abbe but we do not mind these little egaremens in our country, and I neither had leisure nor inclination to interfere with her arrangements. Satisfied with her sincere friendship for me, I could easily forgive a few trifling infidelities, and nothing had disturbed the serenity or gaiety of our establishment until this unfortunate expose which I was obliged to make, and to prove the truth of in her presence, viz. that I had been a barber. Her pride revolted at the idea of having ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... moment her intention was changed, and her subsequent action was determined in her by a trifling event, one of those events which teach the world to believe in Fate. A door, the door of Mrs. Birchington's flat, clicked behind her. Someone ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... treachery was in agitation against us. As the chiefs of Cholula had refused to wait upon him, Cortes sent some soldiers to a great temple close to our quarters, with orders to bring two of the priests to him as quietly as possible. They succeeded in this without difficulty; and, having made a trifling present to the priests, he inquired as to the reason of the late extraordinary conduct of the Cholulan chiefs. One of these who was of high rank, having authority over all the temples and priests of the city, like one of our bishops, told Cortes that he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... to laugh at this American amusement; yet I doubt whether this paper will have a single reader that may not apply the story to himself, and recollect some hours of his life in which he has been equally overpowered by the transitory charms of trifling novelty. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Balder; in the Wabanaki tale it is a ball of down or a rush. The Chippewas change it, like savages, to a substantial root and a black rock, thereby manifesting an insensibility to the point of the original, which is that the most trifling thing may be the cause of the ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... now in Syracuse, and he had made his way into the city, not alone, not by stealth, but at the head of an army, and before the very eyes of the enemy. Weeks must have elapsed between the departure of Gylippus from Leucas, and his arrival at Syracuse; and during all this time, with one trifling exception, Nicias made no effort to oppose his progress. Prudent men might well have regarded the enterprise of Gylippus as a wild and desperate adventure; and such it must have proved, but for the astounding blindness and ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... that. Now, I have a trifling favor to ask of you—something concerning the laboratory. Will you please ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... blonde—who on earth, could she be?—and did not seem the least chilled in the stiff and frosted presence of his mother, but was genial and playful even with that Spirit of the Frozen Ocean, who received his affectionate trifling with a sort of smiling, though wintry pride and complacency, reflecting back from her icy aspects something of the rosy tints of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... antiquary of considerable learning, research, and industry; but his temper was sour and jealous, and, throughout his whole and long literary career, from 1782 to 1814, he appears to have been embroiled in trifling disputes and immaterial vindications of ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... and, in spite of the well-known proverb about looking such a gift in the mouth, got a witty little snub for his pains. "He is no doubt a good steed at bottom," Erasmus gravely confesses, "but it must be owned he is not over-handsome; however he is at any rate free from all mortal sins, with the trifling exception of gluttony and laziness! If he were only a father confessor now! he has all the qualities to fit him for one—indeed, he is only too prudent, modest, humble, chaste, and peaceable!" Still, admirable as these characteristics are, he is not quite the nag one ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... was of no importance, Merriman was a little intrigued, and he looked more closely at the vehicle. As he did so his surprise grew and his trifling interest became mystification. The lorry was the same. At least there on the top was the casting, just as he had seen it. It was inconceivable that two similar lorries should have two identical castings arranged in the same way, and at the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... Ladies, take care— How you play with a lion asleep in his lair: "Mere trifling flirtations"—these arts you employ? Flirtations once led to the siege of old Troy; And a woman was in For the sorrow and sin And slaughter that fell when the Greeks tumbled in; Nor is there a doubt, my dears, under the sun, But they've led to the sack of more cities than one. I would we were all ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... In the event of our having to give two representations, the time at our disposal was so very short that, for all the rehearsals, we had but ten days before us. And since we were concerned not with a light comedy or farce, but with a grand opera, and one which, in spite of the trifling character of its music, contained numerous and powerful concerted passages, the undertaking might have been regarded almost as foolhardy. Nevertheless, I built my hopes upon the extraordinary exertions which the singers so willingly made in order to please me; for ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... more than three years ago. The whole business has remained as great a mystery as ever. But my attention has once or twice been caught by trifling incidents, which have caused me to more than suspect that the wild tale told by that murdered native had in it at least the elements of truth; and which have even led me to wonder if the trade in ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... exciting herself over every hand's turn, and was that thing which had happened last night—which, now that it was over, caused her heart to beat a trifle too fast, and brought that tired, that very tired feeling into her sensitive frame—was that indeed but a trifling thing? Thank God—oh, thank ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... seem trifling to some; but to me no answer in my life ever brought more intense relief. For this reason I have reserved it, as the final testimony of ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... body in the perfection of its grace and movement, we have no business to take away its limbs, and terminate it with a bunch of leaves. Or rather our doing so will imply that there is something wrong with us; that, if we can consent to use our best powers for such base and vain trifling, there must be something wanting in the powers themselves; and that, however skilful we may be, or however learned, we are wanting both in the earnestness which can apprehend a noble truth, and in the thoughtfulness which can feel a noble fear. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... rise; this was really trifling with the dignity of the municipality. But the consul laid his hand on the official's sleeve, and, opening an American atlas to a map of the State of New York, said to the prisoner, as he placed the inspector's hand on the sheet, "I see you know the names of the TOWNS on the Erie and ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... to mention there's a trifling reward for his capture," cried Shotbolt, popping his head from under the cloth. "If we take him, I don't mind giving you a share—say a fourth—provided you ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ventured near And bent their lowly heads in fear. Then Kumbhakar[n.]a glared with eyes Still heavy in their first surprise, Still drowsy from his troubled rest, And thus the giant band addressed. "How have ye dared my sleep to break? No trifling cause should bid me wake. Say, is all well? or tell the need That drives you with unruly speed To wake me. Mark the words I say, The king shall tremble in dismay, The fire be quenched and Indra slain Ere ye shall break ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... who grew more angered as the hours passed on and Cloudeslee was not taken, now cried aloud: "Why do we waste time trifling here? The man is an outlaw and his life is forfeit. Let us burn him and his house, and if his wife and children will not leave him they shall all burn together, for it is their ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... a great staple of the country. Yet they don't export much after all. In fact the foreign commerce is comparatively trifling. Chestnuts and olives are raised in immense quantities. The chestnut is as essential to the Italian as the potato is to the Irishman. A failure in the crop is attended with the same disastrous consequences. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... the camp, Wallenstein immediately demanded to know the success of his mission; and when informed by Illo of its failure, he broke out into the bitterest complaints against the court. "Thus," said he, "are our faithful services rewarded. My recommendation is disregarded, and your merit denied so trifling a reward! Who would any longer devote his services to so ungrateful a master? No, for my part, I am henceforth the determined foe of Austria." Illo agreed with him, and a close alliance was ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... up in this business and resolved, nevertheless, to get to the bottom of it, he wandered aimlessly about the streets. His brain was seething with irritation; and he tried to adjust his ideas a little and to discover, among the chaotic facts, some trifling detail, unperceived by all, unsuspected by Lupin himself, that might lead him ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... impulse within him to resent this as trifling, he resisted it, and judicially considered her allegory. "That is to say"—he ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... no more to flee, but rather encouraged to stay through his courteous dealing) gave commandment that his men should take nothing away with them, saving only a couple of white dogs, for which he left pins, points, knives, and other trifling things, and departed, without taking or hurting anything, and so came aboard, and hoisted sails ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... showed gold, and every one of them was soon claimed from mouth to source. Every night I heard the clattering hoofs of the stampeders for some new gulch, starting in the utmost secrecy to gain the first right for themselves and friends. A trifling hint induces these stampedes. A wink from one old miner to another, and hundreds mounted their horses to seek some inaccessible mountain fissure. The more remote the diggings, so much the greater the excitement. Half the people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... be expected, that the traditions of the Eastern tribes, collected as they have occasionally been previous to their extinction, are trifling and absurd; and why so? because, driven away to the east, and finding other tribes of Indians, who had been driven there before them, already settled there, they have immediately commenced a life of continual ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... the schooner. Our cruise together has been a short one, it is true, but it has been long enough to enable me to become personally acquainted with you individually, and to discover both your good and your bad qualities. The latter, I am pleased to say, have been so few and so trifling that they are not worth further mention, whilst the former have been so conspicuous as to render me anxious for a continuance of the connection between us. And this brings me to my final statement, which is that the admiral has been pleased to announce his intention of commissioning ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... she slept like a top. She made the best of her difficult lot. Her keen sense of humour enabled her to get amusement out of every vexatious circumstance. Sometimes things went wrong, and she found herself with no money at all; then her trifling possessions found their way to a pawnshop in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, and she ate bread and butter till things grew brighter. She ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the truth that there are no international controversies so serious that they cannot be settled peaceably if both parties really desire peaceable settlement, while there are few causes of dispute so trifling that they cannot be made the occasion of war if either party really desires war. The matters in dispute between nations are nothing; the spirit which ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... course, his frequent quibbles and plays upon words, his verbal conceits and affectations, his equivoques and clinches. Many of these are palpable sins against manliness; not a few of them are decidedly puerile; the results of an epidemic of trifling and of fanciful prettiness. Some critics, it is true, have strained a point, if not several points, in defence of them; but it seems to me that a fair-minded criticism has no way but to set them down as plain blemishes and disfigurements. And our right, nay, our duty to call them such is fully approved ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... would amply repay him for a few years of patience. He did not indeed cease to correspond with the Court of Saint Germains; but the correspondence gradually became more and more slack, and seems, on his part, to have been made up of vague professions and trifling excuses. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... service "of the tabernacle" were to have "all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance." But this was a small part of their compensation. There were beside perquisites, especially those connected with the sacrifices which the people were constrained to make on the most trifling occasions; as, for example, whenever they became unclean, through some accident, as by ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... I am, from my peculiar standpoint. The other day a friend of mine—an upright, just, worthy man, no one more so—was telling me of a shocking instance of our national corruption. He had just got home from Europe, and he had brought a lot of dutiable things, that a customs inspector passed for a trifling sum. That was all very well, but the inspector afterwards came round with a confidential claim for a hundred dollars, and the figures to show that the legal duties would have been eight or ten times as much. My friend ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... victim? And has He ever interfered? He it is who created the sexes and placed between them the strong attraction that often works more evil and misery than good; and what barrier has He ever interposed between woman and man, her natural destroyer? None!—save the trifling one of virtue, which is a flimsy thing, and often breaks down at the first temptation. No, my dear Princess; the 'Eternal God,' if there is one, does nothing but look on impassively at the universal havoc of creation. And in the blindness and silence of things, I cannot recognize an Eternal ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... closed over every member of the Godfrey family who were among the English pioneer settlers of Acadia, and the history of their lives might have slept with them, but for a trifling circumstance. The old documents referred to and copied in the foregoing chapters, are greatly defaced, and time is completing their destruction. Many of them are scarcely legible, and it required the utmost ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... back an amount of coin of the same nominal value, but only four-fifths of the weight of metal. By this contrivance the treasury gained seventy-two millions of livres, and all the commercial operations of the country were disordered. A trifling diminution of the taxes silenced the clamours of the people, and for the slight present advantage the great prospective ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... so elevates all things with its exaltation and clothes them with its glory, that nothing vain, nothing trifling, can be found within its range. He who opposes himself to a single fact thus of necessity opposes himself to the whole onward and upward current, and must fall. We have heard of Thor, who with his magic ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... remained in question a trifling sum of money which a Mr. Liar loudly demanded in payment of an "affair of honour." This, however, he seemed little likely to obtain, seeing that an elderly uncle by marriage of Christian's, whose name was Office, was as eager and affable and frank about the sum as he was bent ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... he could look into the face of the man who held him. His spirits dropped. It was no weak, trifling face such as J. Jervice exhibited. A hard, rough look—a cruel, remorseless look—a mean, ugly look—all these things he read in ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... wife and thirteen children, and with a stipend of L20 per annum, increased only by a few trifling surplice fees, I will not impose upon your understanding by attempting to advance any argument to show the impossibility of us all being supported from my church preferment: But I am fortunate enough to live in a neighbourhood where there ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... dearest, that I outstep the bounds of matronly modesty by this airy philandering with my young Lord Rochester, or that my serious Fareham is ever offended at our pretty trifling. He laughs at the lad as heartily as I do, invites him to our table, and is amused by his monkeyish tricks. A woman of quality must have followers; and a pert, fantastical boy is the safest of lovers. Slander itself could scarce accuse Lady Fareham, who has had ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... We should expect ransom for a friend. A professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a trifling percentage of his princpal's ransom if he will honor us by ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... affection. I therefore voluntarily absented myself from her. It is true, my brother was more amiable than I but the excess of her fondness for him, made her blind even to my outward good qualities. It served only to discover my faults, which would have been trifling had proper care been ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... he clung to his present position. The editor would be away ten weeks. He would have ten weeks in which to try himself out. Hope leaped within him. In ten weeks he could change Cosy Moments into a real live paper. He wondered that the idea had not occurred to him before. The trifling fact that the despised journal was the property of Mr. Benjamin White, and that he had no right whatever to tinker with it without that gentleman's approval, may have occurred to him, but, if it did, it occurred so momentarily that he did not notice ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... as if you consented to it would strip your honour from you, and leave you naked." "Let me know the point," said Claudio. "O, I do fear you, Claudio!" replied his sister; "and I quake, lest you should wish to live, and more respect the trifling term of six or seven winters added to your life, than your perpetual honour! Do you dare to die? The sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle that we tread upon, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies." "Why do you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... then to see his mother coming towards him, to hear from afar the rustle of her gown, to await her, to kiss her, to talk to her, to listen to her gave him such keen emotions that often a slight delay, a trifling fear would throw him into a violent fever. In him there was nought but soul, and in order that the weak, debilitated body should not be destroyed by the keen emotions of that soul, Etienne needed ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... quite sure," replied Sylvia. Each new, trifling incident reassured her, and went to lighten her heart. Here was home and welcome, whatever had been ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... adjourned, there was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes; it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing Mr. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... were trifling, but you bade me tell them. We had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil, all the way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick mistress.... The former engaged me in a discourse for full twenty miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... almost everything else under heaven, the subject of love was tabooed between them. Once for all Maud had said her say on that point, and Arthur could say nothing unless he said as much as she had said. For the same reason, there was never any approach to flirting between them. Any trifling of that sort would have been meaningless in an intimacy begun, as theirs had been, at a point beyond where most ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... throughout our human life. I affirm it without a shadow of qualification, that chance has no place whatever in the responsible formation of character, and the formation of character is the decision of destiny. Beware, then, lest in playing with this ignis fatuus of chance you are trifling with law, for law will not ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... "A trifling task," the attorney smiled easily. "All ready for your signature, too. You sign there, the second line. ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... astonished to find that Russians knew what passports were. Also that I always supposed that foreigners conferred a great benefit on a country by spending their money in it; but that if I could not be admitted, that was an end of it; it was a matter of very trifling consequence, indeed, for we really did not care twopence whether we saw Russia or not; a country more or less made very little difference to such travellers as ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Hills, but of trifling height, were seen in wavy lines upon the horizon. Their profile, muffled by the heavy mist, was defined but vaguely. The monotony, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... feared the dirtiness of copper and earthenware; others again were annoyed at being obliged to imitate an ungrateful fashion, all the merit of which would go to the inventor. It was in vain that Pontchartrain objected to the project, as one from which only trifling benefit could be derived, and which would do great injury to France by acting as a proclamation of its embarrassed state to all the world, at home and abroad. The King would not listen to his reasonings, but declared himself willing to receive ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... ourselves harshly," she continued. "I have myself been often led by an idle temptation into what at first appeared but a trifling wrong, but which looked far more serious later. Had I acted with the greater knowledge, I had ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... circumstances of life spring from apparently trifling events. In the case of Mary, this accidental meeting with the Countess and her daughter proved the beginning of the painful circumstances of this story. But God overrules all events, and this tale gives abundant proof that all things work together ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... from the absorbing of the idea of the Oneness of Life, and the Expansion of the Self. The Candidate is urged not to be in too much of a hurry. Development must not be forced. Read what we have written, and practice the Mental Drills we have given, even if they may appear trifling and childish to some of you—we know what they will do for you, and you will agree with us in time. Make haste slowly. You will find that the mind will work out the matter, even though you be engaged in your ordinary work, and have forgotten the subject for the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the little trials as well as the great, and that He has commanded us to 'let patience have her perfect work.' I fear it is a lack of the spirit of forgiveness that makes it so difficult for us to bear these trifling vexations with equanimity. And you must remember too, dear, that the Bible bids us be courteous, and teaches us to treat others as we ourselves would wish to ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... finger-prints, of which ten were forgeries made with a single stamp, it would be easy to pick out the ten forged prints by the fact that they would all be mechanical repetitions of one another; while the genuine prints could be distinguished by the fact of their presenting trifling variations in the position ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the topic to be himself, but it was not so, or at least not directly so. It was only himself as related to the scolding he had given Miss Rasmith for trifling with the innocence of Boyne, which she wished Miss Kenton to understand as the effect of a real affection for her brother. She loved all boys, and Boyne was simply the most delightful creature in the world. She went on to explain how delightful he was, and showed a such an appreciation ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Marianna and Lines to Edith will probably be republished in another volume. From the letters of Madame Ossoli in Parts II. and III. no omissions have been made other than verbal, or when pertaining to trifling incidents, having only a temporary interest. Nothing in any portion of the book recording my sister's own observations or opinions has been omitted or changed. The reader, too, will notice that nothing affecting ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... first half of the sixteenth century are a race apart. Three generations of pedantic erudition and of courtly or scholastic trifling had separated the men of letters from the men of action, and had made literature a thing of curiosity. Three generations of the masked Medicean despotism had destroyed the reality of freedom in Florence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... exactly in its accustomed place; we like things to happen exactly at their appointed times; we like everything to be usual, orderly, punctual, methodical, to a hair's breadth, to a minute. It distresses and upsets us if it is not so. For instance, to take a very trifling matter, a thrush has built its nest year after year in the catkin-tree on the lawn; this year, for no obvious reason, it is building in the ivy on the garden wall. We have said very little about it, but ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... The inhabitants deposed Alexander White, the Sheriff of Tryon county, who had, from the first, made himself obnoxious. The first shot, in the war west of the Hudson, was fired by Alexander White. On some trifling pretext he arrested a patriot by the name of John Fonda, and committed him to prison. His friends, to the number of fifty, went to the jail and released him; and from the prison they proceeded to the sheriff's lodgings and demanded his surrender. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... but I confess that this was regarded as a work of genius. The ordinary man in training eats only about twice as much as any sane person, or perhaps a little more; and as, of course, the system needs recuperating under the great strains that are put upon it, this trifling excess has ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... uniform and depended not upon the quality of the land or upon the individual seigneur but upon what was usual in the district; moreover, under the French law, no matter how valuable the land became, the rent could not be increased and, though so trifling, it was rarely required until the settler's farm had begun to be productive. Sometimes in a single year Nairne would put as many as twenty brawny young fellows on his land to hew out homes for themselves. Each of them got a tract of about one hundred ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... thunder: 'If I had been here, I would have stood by that figure with a mallet and smashed the head of any man that raised a finger against it. What is the world coming to when a mere life weighs more in the balance than the most trifling material expression of eternity? ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... the last relapses of the invalid, his mind had become extremely gloomy, and Maurice, who had hitherto tenderly loved him, was suddenly wounded by him in an unexpected manner about a trifling subject. They embraced each other the next moment, but the grain of sand had fallen into the tranquil lake, and little by little the pebbles fell there, one after another...All this was borne; but at last, one day, Maurice, tired of the pin-pricks, spoke of giving up the game. That ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... and that of orator are not far apart—it is all a matter of expression. The first requisite in expression is animation—you must feel in order to impart feeling. No drowsy, lazy, disinterested, half-hearted, preoccupied, selfish, trifling person can teach—to teach you must have life, and life in abundance. You must have abandon—you must project yourself, and inundate the room with your presence. To infuse life, and a desire to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... my quiet meal at the Black Bull Inn, which poor Branwell Bronte had so often frequented, I stopped to make some trifling purchases at a stationery store, and casually asked the proprietor—a small, delicate-looking man, with a bright eye and a highly intellectual countenance—if he remembered the Bronte sisters. It was a fortunate question, for he knew them well, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... he exclaimed, without any trace of disturbance in his voice. "And what a sense of humour! Strange that a trifling circumstance like this should affect it. Meekins, burn some more of the powder. The atmosphere down here may be salubrious, but I am unaccustomed ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... several instances. Another example is where he speaks of Quintus Curtius, the historian, when he is thinking of Mettus Curtius, the self-sacrificing equestrian. Little inaccuracies of this kind did not concern him much; he was a wholesale dealer in illustrations, and could not trouble himself about a trifling defect in ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... good Lord, At many times I brought in my accompts, Laid them before you, you would throw them off, And say you sound them in mine honestie, When for some trifling present you haue bid me Returne so much, I haue shooke my head, and wept: Yea 'gainst th' Authoritie of manners, pray'd you To hold your hand more close: I did indure Not sildome, nor no slight checkes, when I haue Prompted you in the ebbe of your estate, And your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... an immediate resurrection of the almost moribund Congress of Vienna. The squabbling, arguing, trifling plenipotentiaries of the powers had burst into gigantic laughter—literally, actual merriment, albeit of a somewhat grim character!—when they received the news of Napoleon's return. They were not laughing at Napoleon but at themselves. ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... fair hair, and the Misses Conroy, who were of the same sort of age, were not so well favoured by nature; but that was no reason why Joan should have told them that they were a plain-headed pair, and Nancy that they had spoilt the whole show, when some trifling dispute arose between them at the close of a long day's enthusiastic friendship. The Misses Conroy, though deficient in beauty, were not slow in retort, and but for the fine clothes in which all four were attired, it is to be ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... life. Why is home not felt to be a vocation? Why cannot a girl welcome some tiresome commission or fidgeting rule of her mother's, as much as if it were imposed by some Mother Superior? Ought not the trifling duties to be fuel to her burning desire for her nobleness of life, instead of dust to choke it? You can ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... carried his new gun to church if services happened to be held on a week day. Finally the negro had grown up and had compassed his ambition: he could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, was a white man except for a trifling difference in color; and he could kill more birds, too, three times as many. It was merely a change from the old order to the new in which a dark-skinned "sportsman" had taken the place in plantation life of the dear old "Colonel" of loved memory. The negro had exacted his price ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... in this place a trifling mistake, either in Messala, the speaker, or in the copyists. Crassus was born A.U.C. 614. See s. xviii. note [f]. Papirius Carbo, the person accused, was consul A.U.C. 634, and the prosecution was in the following year, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... and coal that followed it, the car had so protected him that he was not seriously hurt. Had his mule started forward the heavily loaded car must have run over and killed him. Fortunately Harry was too experienced a miner to allow such a trifling thing as a blast to disturb his equanimity, especially as the two false starts already made had placed him at some little distance from it. To be sure, he had shaken his head at the flying bits of coal, and had even kicked out viciously at one large piece that fell near ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... might have returned with any over-fatigue, unless it had been recognized, taken at its worth, and simply dropped. Any one can think of example after example in his own individual experience, when he has suffered unnecessary tortures through the regarding of trifling things, either by himself or by some one near him. With many, the first instance will probably be to insist, with emphasis and some feeling, that they are ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... (2) How trifling is our knowledge! Yet fewer people will assent to the lack of knowledge, for many think they know a good deal. As in the times of Socrates, it is only the wise man who knows he knows nothing. And yet ...
— Memoranda Sacra • J. Rendel Harris
... canvass. Even if the statement were founded in fact, it furnishes no argument in favor of excluding women from the exercise of the franchise. It is the denial of the right of which they complain. There are multitudes of men whose vote can be purchased at an election for the smallest and most trifling consideration. Yet all such would spurn with scorn and unutterable contempt a proposition to purchase their right to vote, and no consideration would be deemed an equivalent for such a surrender. Women are more sensitive upon this question than men, and so long as this right, deemed by them ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... certain stipend for the purchase of clothes. In the hospital at Lyons, (which forty or fifty years ago, was the only hospital in France which was not in a barbarous state), there are about 150 of these Sisters, wearing a uniform dress of dark worsted, and remarkably clean. They receive the trifling sum of forty francs a year for pocket-money, and sit up one night in each week; the following is a day of relaxation, and the only one they have. During the siege of Lyons, when cannon-balls passed through the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... a week from Christmas, he had occasion to ride to Helston on some trifling affair. For half a week a blizzard had whirled about the coast, and he had been kept chafing indoors what time layer upon layer of snow was spread upon the countryside. On the fourth day, the storm being spent, the sun came forth, the skies were swept clear of clouds ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... therefore be with peculiar interest that he would visit the Isle of Man which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was an Irish-speaking land, but in 1855 was at a stage when the language was falling fast into decay. What survived of it was still Irish with trifling variations in the spelling of words. 'Cranu,' a tree, for example, had become 'Cwan,' and so on—although the pronunciation was apparently much the same. When the tall, white-haired Englishman talked to the older inhabitants who knew something of the language ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... let me keep you," said Bertha, with a glance towards Allchin, who was making parcels at the back of the shop. "I only want some—some matches, and one or two trifling things." ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... attack on Verdant, who had lagged behind, and was short-sightedly peering at the celebrated "Charles the First" of Vandyck, as though he had lingered in order to surreptitiously appropriate some of the tables, couches, and other trifling articles that ornamented the rooms. In this way they went at railroad pace through the suite of rooms and the library, - where the chief thing pointed out appeared to be a grease-mark on the floor made by somebody at somebody else's wedding-breakfast, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... a stately room, with handsome furniture, all arranged with stiff propriety, needing the trifling signs of a woman's presence to give grace ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... English livings, by opening a mart for the disposal of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, and by encouraging appeals from every ecclesiastical jurisdiction to the Papal court. No grievance was more bitterly felt than this grievance of appeals. Cases of the most trifling importance were called for decision out of the realm to a tribunal whose delays were proverbial and whose fees were enormous. The envoy of an Oxford College which sought only a formal licence to turn a vicarage into a rectory had not only to bear the expense and toil of a journey ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... memory that will linger. Another picture, queerly disproportionate in the anger it excites, is that of the fruit garden in a great country house, with its wealth of famous old peach and pear trees still in place along the walls, but every one methodically sawn through. By comparison a trifling crime, but somehow I may forget other things more easily. One would welcome the revised judgment of Dr. SOLF upon this particular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... tone that implied that all trifling would be useless the cabman cried: "Hey up, hey up, Cocotte!" and his mare pricked up her ears and quickened her pace, so that the Rue de Choisy was speedily reached. Then it was that Lecoq ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... misunderstood; let me not be accused of trifling with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning—I will only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from mad excesses which must have ended ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... freight the ships on their periodical visits from the fatherland. No interruption of the friendly intercourse carried on with the Indians took place, but, on the contrary, the whites were abundantly supplied by the natives with food and most other necessaries of life, without personal labor and at trifling cost. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... truth. I was not very comfortable; I was wet to the skin, and my bran-new uniform, upon which I so greatly prided myself, was just about ruined. But it was then too late for the oil-skin to be of the slightest benefit to me; and, moreover, I did not choose that those men should think I cared for so trifling a matter as ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... endure his sufferings, he called out to his daughter. The marquise went to him. But now her face showed signs of the liveliest anxiety, and it was for M. d'Aubray to try to reassure her about himself! He thought it was only a trifling indisposition, and was not willing that a doctor should be disturbed. But then he was seized by a frightful vomiting, followed by such unendurable pain that he yielded to his daughter's entreaty that she should send for help. A doctor arrived at ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... something. These meetings were enlivened solely by Gounod's pedantic zeal, who with unflagging and nauseating garrulity executed his duties as secretary, while Auber continually interrupted, rather than assisted the proceedings, with trifling and not always very delicate anecdotes and puns, all evidently intended to urge us to end the discussions. Even after the decisive failure of Tannhauser I received summonses to the meetings of this ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... them wonderful," replied the Demon, lightly. "He really knows little more than yourself about the laws that control electricity. His inventions are trifling things in comparison with the really wonderful results to be obtained by one who would actually know how to direct the electric powers instead of groping blindly after insignificant effects. Why, I've stood for ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... the success of his schemes demanded his presence elsewhere. Almost as soon as he had finished his dinner he rose, saying to Berthier and me, "I am tired: let us be, gone." He went round to the different tables, addressing to the company compliments and trifling remarks, and departed, leaving at table the persons by whom ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... here two divisions of tents, there being eleven where we landed, and five more about half a mile to the northward. By the time we reached the tents we were surrounded by a crowd of men, women, and children, all carrying some trifling article, which they offered in barter, a business they seemed to understand as well, and to need much more than their countrymen to the southward. We were, of course, not backward in promoting a good understanding by means of such presents ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... terribly in the process. So, although Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there were many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the floor, my thoughts were employed about the events of a month before. So few things happened at Knowl out of the accustomed routine, that a very trifling occurrence was enough to set people wondering and conjecturing in that serene household. My father lived in remarkable seclusion; except for a ride, he hardly ever left the grounds of Knowl; and I don't think it happened twice in ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of delay, the exchange of notes between the Allied statesmen and the German delegates, in a vain endeavor on the part of Germany to secure modification of the terms—efforts resulting in only trifling changes—the treaty was signed by delegates from all the Allied powers (except China) and Germany, June 28, 1919, five years to a day after the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Serajevo. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... bestowed upon him a title of nobility, and crowned heads "addressed him in language of the most exaggerated compliment." Buffon's conduct and conversation were marked throughout by a certain coarseness and vulgarity that constantly appear in his writings. He was foppish and trifling, and affected religion though at ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the patronage of the Government the framers of the Constitution do not appear to have anticipated at how short a period it would become a formidable instrument to control the free operations of the State governments. Of trifling importance at first, it had early in Mr. Jefferson's Administration become so powerful as to create great alarm in the mind of that patriot from the potent influence it might exert in controlling the freedom of the elective franchise. If such could have then been the effects ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... ludicrous: she must be taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable influence, utterly alien to himself, his birth, his training, he had deliberately and persistently questioned her, prolonged a trifling encounter unjustifiably, whirled her away, literally; and now that he had found no suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he should deliver this extraordinary and self-assumed charge to civil authority. It would have been almost as ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... shelter of his moustache and beard, at thought of the many times he had saved her slumbering form from collision against the woodwork of the train. But, with the courtesy of his kind, he forebore to discomfort her by mention of such trifling details. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... believe that there is some connection between the two classes of facts. This is especially the case as regards colour; and Mr. Darwin has collected a body of facts which go far to prove that colour, instead of being an altogether trifling and unimportant character, as was supposed by the older naturalists, is really one of great significance, since it is undoubtedly often correlated with important constitutional differences. Now colour is one of the characters that most usually distinguishes closely ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Catharine. "And we may drive about, the same way we took the other morn. I will show you the same spot where he stood and bowed so handsomely, and made so little of the fight with the robbers the night before, as though 'twere trifling enough; and made so little of his poverty, as though he were owner ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... fit supplement to the preceding one; notwithstanding its absurdity, however. It is inserted merely to show that this mode of trifling was not unknown to the Orientals. It is taken from the Mostatraf, where a great number of similar productions on various ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... the spoils of the sacred temple, and bringing in his train such thousands upon thousands of captives, that it had seemed as though all Palestine was being emptied into Rome. Compared with such exploits, those of Sergius were of trifling importance. But it now entered little into the minds of the people to make these comparisons. Whatever had been done in past time by other commanders, was not worth considering at present. Whoever might have been renowned before, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... work, she tried to shake off her disappointment at Harney's non-appearing. Some trifling incident had probably kept him from joining them at midday; but she was sure he must be eager to see her again, and that he would not want to wait till they met at supper, between Mr. Royall and ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... say, three cents. After paying my fare and finding that I still had money left, I lunched at St. Cloud in the open air at a trifling expense. I then took a bottle of milk from my pocket and quenched my thirst. Traveling through France one finds that the water is especially bad, tasting of the Dauphin at times, and dangerous in the extreme. I advise those, therefore, who wish to be well whilst ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... on her face. Surely she could not believe me fool enough to reproach her for such a harmless bit of pleasantry; she did not see anything serious in that sadness which I felt; but the more trifling the cause, the greater the surprise. At first she thought I, too, must be joking; but when she saw me growing paler every moment as if about to faint, she stood with open lips and bent body, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... disordered fancy of a fine intellect hopelessly warped by the contemplation of human misery and humanitarian sympathy with human distress. All economic discussion is worthless if tainted by human sympathy. The surplus value in production is trifling and seems large only because concentrated in comparatively few hands. The surplus of ages is concentrated in the structures which we see all about us, and in the commodities ready or partly ready for consumption ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... self-sacrifice." (Haven't you corked all that down yet!) "Such cares and anxieties as he has, he conceals from me with scrupulous consideration as long as possible"—(Gad, I should be a fool if I didn't!)—"while I am ever sure of finding in him a patient and sympathetic listener to all my trifling worries and difficulties."—(Two f's in difficulties, you little fool—can't you even spell?) "Many a time, falling on his knees at my feet, he has rapturously exclaimed, his accents broken by manly emotion, 'Oh, that I were more worthy of such a pearl among women! With such a helpmate, I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling, amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... brought this trifling war to an end when they became involved in a formidable struggle with their old enemies the Gauls. Since the conquest of the Senones in B.C. 289, and of the Boii in B.C. 283, the Gauls had remained quiet. The Romans had founded the colony of Sena after ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... will at Somerset House[491] (January 9, 1614) of Thomas Arden, of Hornsey, gentleman, who seems to have been connected with this family. After trifling legacies, he leaves his lease in Cheshire of Melton Farm to his dear and well-beloved sister, Ann Ardern. "Executors, my beloved sister Anne Arderen, ever faithful friend, and Richard Drape of Hornsey gent."—proved January 17, 1614. But another similar will of ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... absolutely discarded the minor considerations, and acted solely upon the grand one. I can well remember, that, when other persons urged upon him cumulative reasons for any course of action, whether in politics, or morality, or trifling personal matters of the day, he indignantly cast aside all such makeweights, and insisted upon the one sufficient motive. I mention this the more explicitly because the opposite course is the most common, and some who did not sympathize ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Capricious Lover: or, No Trifling with a Woman" is likewise laid in Spain, the atmosphere of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... sir, on my humble bench, And take my simple cheer, And I will tell you, all you ask, With hearty frank good will: A story of no trifling sort, In truth, you have to hear, Yet, like the most of mortal scenes, A mass of good ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... approbation. I commit to thee the country of Babylonia in trust, that it may, by thy care, be preserved free from robbers, and from other mischiefs. I have kept my faith inviolable to thee, and that not in trifling affairs, but in those that concerned thy safety, and do therefore deserve thou shouldst be kind to me." When he had said this, and given Asineus some presents, he sent him away immediately; who, when he was come home, built fortresses, and became great in a little time, and managed things with ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... occupy the place next his bust? And where are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have a better right in the family row than Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakespeare's dust; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave (though the prohibition makes it tempting), and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to imply that Shakespeare's grave ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... show yourself so proud? Of having dared to say what you thought? That is civic courage, and, like military courage, it is a mere result of imprudence. You have been imprudent. So far so good, but that is no reason for praising yourself beyond measure. Your imprudence was trifling; it exposed you to trifling perils; you did not risk your head by it. The Penguins have lost that cruel and sanguinary pride which formerly gave a tragic grandeur to their revolutions; it is the fatal result of the weakening of beliefs and character. Ought ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... replied Annie, yet she recognized the difficulty of that phase of the situation. It is just such trifling matters which detract from the dignity of extreme attitudes toward existence. Annie had taken an extreme attitude, yet here were the butcher and the grocer to reckon with. How could she communicate with them in writing without appearing absurd to the verge of insanity? ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... serpentine course of the Kingani a little, we crossed a small bitter rivulet, and entered on the elevated cultivation of Kiranga Ranga, under Phanze Mkungu-pare, a very mild man, who, wishing to give no offence, begged for a trifling present. He came in person, and his manner having pleased us, I have him one sahari, four yards merikani, and eight yards kiniki, which pleased our friend so much that he begged us to consider his estate our own, even to the extent of administering his justice, should any Mzaramo ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... he rejoined. "Take, however, my assurance that nothing you say here shall, without your own consent, be used elsewhere. It is no light gratification, no trifling advantage to me, to find one man who has neither fear nor interest that can induce him to lie to me; to whom I can speak, not as sovereign to subject, but as man to man, and of whose private conversation my courtiers and officials are not yet suspicious or jealous. ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... else. In simple words, without malice, with a sad smile on her lips, she drew the monotonous gray sketch of sorrowful days. She enumerated the beatings she had received from her husband; and herself marveled at the trifling causes that led to them and her own inability to ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... master, and adds: "As he stepped forward at the close of a recitation, and delivered the short Latin presentation-address, I thought him to be a god." This fascination is hard to be explained. The great seriousness of Horner's character may in part account for it. He could not bear trifling on important subjects, and could not help frowning on all jests which were not more wise than witty. The calm determination, the unvarying earnestness of his character, may aid in explaining it. From a boy, he never swerved from great purposes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... attainment of the highest end by Jiva not with their physical eyes but with the eye of the scriptures, for they that are themselves emancipated cannot be said to behold the emancipation of another. This is grave trifling for explaining the use ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... your life twice already, but the time is past for any more trifling. Now you've got to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... finished his work in his mother's garden, and was all ready for a little amusement. So the two went up together, and enjoyed themselves highly for a long time. But at last arose one of those trifling disputes, in which little boys are so apt to indulge. Pretty soon there were angry words, then (Oh, how sorry I am to say it!), Tom's wicked passions got the mastery of him, and he beat little Dick severely. Tiger, who must have been ashamed of his master, pulled hard at his coat, and whined ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... often made for those in her condition. The strong man smiles half contemptuously at the efforts of one who is feeble to lift a trifling weight. Still, he is charitable. He knows that if the man has not the muscle, all is explained. So material are the conceptions of many that they have no patience with those who have been enfeebled in mind, will, and courage. Such persons ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... say, Lucia, exactly how it occurred, but it had been accepted by a publisher here, and I was going to make one or two trifling alterations in it to please him, and so I had it back. Well, then, as I say, something happened, and the thing ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... family." Mr. Hawkins, however, was an antiquary of considerable learning, research, and industry; but his temper was sour and jealous, and, throughout his whole and long literary career, from 1782 to 1814, he appears to have been embroiled in trifling disputes and immaterial vindications of ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... suspended the Assembly of New York on its refusal to provide quarters for English troops, and resolved to assert British sovereignty by levying import duties of trivial amount at American ports. The Assembly of Massachusetts was dissolved on a trifling quarrel with its Governor, and Boston was occupied for a time by British soldiers. It was without a thought of any effective struggle however that the Cabinet had entered on this course of vexation; and when the remonstrances of the Legislatures ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... have means, and do not desire [to share in the paternal estate], he shall be separated, something trifling being given to him.[177] A distribution by a father in smaller or larger shares, if in accordance with the ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... that "Erasmus knew many things which it would have been well for Luther to have known." Erasmus would not have called Copernicus "an old fool," or have answered him by appealing to Joshua. Erasmus would not have seen a special providence in the most trifling accidents. Erasmus would not have allowed devils to worry him. Above all, Erasmus would not have pursued those who were heretics to his doctrine with all the animosity of a Papal bigot. Such differences induced ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... thereby interfering with the effect of Fraeulein Maedel and Herr Paulus's vocal efforts. She was captured, however, and brought to reason and good behaviour by the threat of having her name crossed off the programme. With these two trifling exceptions, the performance was most creditable, the artistes were warmly received and enthusiastically applauded,—in one or two ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... however, are always trifling. The reader will allow that in each case we have a clear, intelligible text: a text that allows Chaucer to be read and enjoyed without toil or vexation. For my part, I hope there is no presumption ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cold and cloudless morning, and our party met at breakfast with faces as bright as the sun. Gifts were exchanged between the parents and children, the brothers and sisters—gifts, trifling in themselves, but dear from their association with the cherished givers. It was an endearing sight to see the venerable parents receiving from their children testimonies of that affectionate consideration ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... came on the run. Something in Persis' voice made him aware that the occasion did not admit of trifling. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... hire by a philosophical rhymer, who had only heard of another sex; for they turn the mind only on the writer, whom, without thinking on a woman but as the subject for his task, we sometimes esteem as learned, and sometimes despise as trifling, always admire as ingenious, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... passage of laws by any one legislature of the empire, which might bear injuriously on the rights and interests of another. Yet this will not excuse the wanton exercise of this power, which we have seen his Majesty practise on the laws of the American legislatures. For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his Majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was, unhappily, introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... correction more emphatic than pleasing proves that he was not like Eli of old, who had wayward sons and restrained them not. In the multitude of his witticisms there were no flings at religion, no caricatures of good men, no trifling with things of eternity. His laughter was not the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but the merry heart that doeth good like a medicine. For this all the children of the community knew him; and to the last day of his walking out, when they saw him coming down the lane, shouted, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... ascription of malevolence to the world of spirits is by no means universal. In West Africa the Mpongwe believe in local spirits, just as do the Eskimo; but they are regarded as inoffensive in the main; true, the passer-by must make some trifling offering as he nears their place of abode; but it is only occasionally that mischievous acts, such as the throwing down of a tree on a passer-by, are, in the view of the natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri. So too, many of the spirits especially concerned with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... not go so far. The hard conditions of existence there were not propitious to the rise of a purely scholarly school or to theoretic discussion. Scientific centres were entirely wanting, and the censor permitted no trifling with the subject of religion. A new movement, realistic and utilitarian in the main, began to take shape, first in the form of a protest against the unsubstantial ideals of the Hebrew press and Hebrew literature. In 1867, Abraham Kowner, an ardent ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... sensual bliss is all the nation knows. In florid beauty groves and fields appear, Man seems the only growth that dwindles here. Contrasted faults thro' all his manners rein; Though poor, luxurious; though submissive, vain; Though grave, yet trifling; zealous, yet untrue; And e'en in penance planning sins anew. All evils here contaminate the mind, That opulence departed leaves behind: For wealth was theirs, not far remov'd the date, When commerce proudly flourish'd thro' the state; At her command the palace learn'd to rise, Again the long ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... a portrait so much resembling bellicose and conquering Prussia, the sharp eye of Ardant du Picq had recognized clearly the danger which immediately threatened us and which his deluded and trifling fellow citizens did not even suspect. The morning after Sadowa, not a single statesman or publicist had yet divined what the Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Line had, at first sight, understood. Written before the catastrophes of Froeschwiller, Metz and Sedan, the fragment seems, in ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... strive for variety, pauses, emphasis; let him be actor enough to simulate the feeling of spontaneous composition as he talks, yet no matter how successful he may be in his attempts there will still be slight inconsistencies, trifling incongruities, which will disturb a listener even if he cannot describe his mental reaction. The secret lies in the fact that written and spoken composition differ in certain details which are present in each form in spite of the utmost care to weed ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... holds that the real essence of things is to be regarded from the point of view of actual practical experience of the thing, which unifies within it some general as well as some special traits, which has been existing from past times and remain in the future, but yet suffer trifling changes all the while, changes which are serviceable to us in a thousand ways. Thus a "book" has no doubt some general traits, shared by all books, but it has some special traits as well. Its atoms are continually suffering some displacement ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... Gospel and its author is well known. Dr. Tillotson observes "The descriptions which Virgil makes of the Elysian Fields and the Infernal Regions fall infinitely short of the majesty of the holy Scriptures when describing heaven and hell, so that in comparison they are childish and trifling;" and yet, perhaps, he had the most regular and best governed imagination of any man, and observed the greatest decorum in his descriptions. "There are I know," said the elegant Joseph Addison, "men of heavy temper and without genius, who can read the words of Scripture ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the sea, and on this account, by the counsel of old Nerkingoak, his sister Killatsiak was ordered to be burnt to death. Abraham, while striking fire for this purpose, slightly wounded his finger; but trifling as the hurt appeared, it brought him to his miserable end. Moses was shot by Tuglavina. Timothy was likewise assassinated. When Tuglavina touched at Hopedale, being asked, "Where is Moses?" he coolly answered, "He is lost." "Where is he lost? is he gone over the sea?" was next asked. "No! ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... had traveled as many times from Texas to the Dodge City and Abilene points of shipment as some of our travelers to-day have journeyed across the Atlantic—and he thought just as little about it. More than once he had made the trifling journey from the Rio Grande to Montana, before the inventive individual who supplied fences with teeth had made such excursions impossible. Sheriff Tom had seen many war-bonneted Indians looming through the dust of trail herds. Of the better side of the Indian he knew little, nor cared to learn. ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... lady and wheeled his horse. She replied by a nod, indifferent enough; but as he turned, her eyes instantly went back to him, and a pleasant thoughtful look passed over her face, which betrayed at least a trifling interest in the stranger, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... These Anas, as Garin learned later, were happy little creatures, each one choosing some mistress or master among the Folk, as this one had come to him. They were content to follow their big protector, speechless with delight at trifling gifts. Loyal and brave, they could do simple tasks or carry written messages for their chosen friend, and they remained with him until death. They were neither beast nor human, but rumored to be the result of some experiment carried out eons ago ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... manners so readily acquire,—their irrepressible confidence and self-conceit,—their love of shewing off, and attracting attention, give really a stage effect to many of their serious actions, and to almost all their trifling conversation and amusements. Hence, a stranger is particularly struck with the uniform excellence of the comic acting on the French stage; all the inferior parts ate sustained with spirit, and originality, and discriminating judgment; all the actors are at their ease, and a regular genteel comedy ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... writes poor Dr. Morgan, 'the thoughtless and heartless Glorvina trifling with her friend, jesting at his sufferings, and flirting with every man she meets.' He sends her some commissions, but declares that there is only one about which he is really anxious, 'and that is to love me exclusively; to prefer me to every other good; to think of me, speak of me, write ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... these topics cannot easily enter into conversation, where Quakers are. Indeed, nothing so trifling, ridiculous, or disgusting, occupies their minds. The subjects, that take up their attention, are of a more solid and useful kind. There is a dignity, in general, in the Quaker-conversation, arising from the nature of these subjects, and from the gravity and decorum ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... therefore, I may venture to offer you the proposed emendation as rigorously fulfilling all the requirements of the text, while at the same time it necessitates a very trifling literal disturbance of the old reading, since by the simple change of the letters naw into ded, we convert "runaways'" into "rude day's," of which it was a very ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... done in a somewhat startling way (premeditated, as I found out afterwards). One evening I was playing at whist, one of my opponents being a momentarily discarded lover of my young lady; I thought he was looking very distrait; however, things went off quietly enough for some time, till on some trifling question arising concerning the rules of the game, the young man suddenly and quite gratuitously insulted me most grossly, ending his insolent conduct by throwing his cards in my face. This was more than I could put up with, so I called him ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... savages spread themselves through the villages and entered the dwellings. They were apparently, as usual, entirely unarmed, though it afterwards appeared that they had concealed weapons. They brought corn, beans, and other trifling articles for sale. ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... pudding.' Other servants have reported that the Queen would have made 'an admirable poor man's wife.' We used to hear how the young princesses had to smooth out and roll up their bonnet strings. By these trifling side-lights we discern a vigorous, wholesome discipline, striving to counteract the enervating influences of rank and power, and their attendant flattery and self-indulgence. 'One of the main principles observed ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... "In conversation, trifling occurrences such as small disappointments, petty annoyances, and other everyday incidents, should never be mentioned to friends. If the mistress be a wife, never let a word in connection with her husband's failings ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and not a little wisdom; at any rate a direction for which she would all her life be thankful. It would have been surprising if her presence in the doctor's house had not after some time made changes in it, but there was no great difference outwardly except that she gathered some trifling possessions which sometimes harmonized, and as often did not, with the household gods of the doctor and Marilla. There was a shy sort of intercourse between Nan and Mrs. Graham's grandchildren, but it was not very valuable to any of the young people at first, the country ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... criticizing without knowing anything about war methods; and there were many small jealousies. All this disheartened him greatly; he felt that it would be disastrous if slavery, dishonor, ruin, and the unhappiness of a whole world should result from trifling differences between ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... the history of the poem, that the subtle thoughts which it evolves were the topic of discussion at one of my conversazioni; and on that very night Chickson told me he had forty-five lines written on the subject. The knowledge of that trifling circumstance lends additional interest ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... scene first. A study. Of a kind Half cell, half salon, opulent yet grave; Rare books, low-shelved, yet far above the mind Of common man to compass or to crave; Some slight relief of pamphlets that inclined The soul at first to trifling, till, dismayed By text and title, it drew back resigned, Nor cared with levity to vex a shade That to itself ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... affairs, decisive, combative, whose only reflection upon his interior economy was a morbid concern in the vagaries of his stomach. Yet the two never met without a mutual pleasure, taking a genuine interest in each other's affairs, and often putting themselves to great inconvenience to be of trifling service ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... oak," snarled the Deacon. "As I was telling th' young lady, there ain't no better built house anywheres 'round than this one. Andrew Bolton didn't spare other folks' money when he built it—no, sir! It's good for a hundred years yet, with trifling repairs." ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... woman, "can I with a clear conscience keep in my possession so valuable a picture, for which we paid but such a trifling ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... waste is so very trifling, especially with brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian, fruitarian, or even an eater of pork, without positive violence to practical physiology. There is this further very practical consideration, that when Nature is so fairly dealt with that she ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... these details, they serve to show what value was then ascribed even by men of real respectability to trifling princely favors. The unction with which Chiabrera relates them, warming his cold style into a glow of satisfaction, is a practical satire upon his endeavor to resuscitate the virtues of antique republics in that Italy. To do this was his principal ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the air of one who exaggerates his interest in a trifling topic for the sake of conversation. He was beginning to be surprised at his own powers ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... possible. When these occurred in the midst of the figure subjects, and if they did not offer too stubborn a resistance to the chisel, they were simply worked over; otherwise the piece was cut out and a new piece fitted in, or the hole was filled up with white cement. This mending process was no trifling matter. We could point to tomb-chambers where every wall is thus inlaid to the extent of one quarter of its surface. The preliminary work being done, the whole was covered with a thin coat of fine plaster mixed with white of egg, which hid the mud-wash ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... beef or mutton intended for the table has been boiled, will also, with small additions and skilful flavoring, make an excellent soup at a trifling expense. ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... the town drawn in, Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win: But what unequal hazards do they run! Each time they write they venture all they've won: The Squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone. This author, heretofore, has found your favour, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... questioned Moira and myself. My story was the simple one that I had outlined, and I must say that Moira played up well to my lead. She was naturally upset at what she had gone through, and the sergeant, I fancy, made allowance for this, and attributed any trifling discrepancies between our two stories to this fact. He was one of the politest officials it has ever been my lot to deal with, and he carried out his duties in a way that made me his debtor for ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... or rather Romance of Charlemagn) concerning the Origins of the Word Frank, viz. That whoever contributed Money towards the Building of St. Denis's Church, should be called Francus, that is, a freeman, is not worthy of being remembred, no more than all the rest of his trifling Works; stuft'd full of old ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... platforms, varying from two to eight feet in height. The costume of Napoleon consists of a blue dress coat with a buff breast, eagle buttons, buff vest and knee breeches, top boots, spurs, sash, side arms, black chapeau, and gray overcoat. The horse which Napoleon rides can be made of wood, at a trifling expense. Minute explanation in regard to its construction will be found in the tableau of "Washington's entrance into Portsmouth." The costume of the officers consists of as rich military suits as can be procured. The soldiers should wear a showy military suit ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien,—without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had done anything yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... extraordinary in the English army. Promotion with us goes with birth and influence, not merit and brave deeds. Maurice has distinguished himself in many a hotly-contested field; yet now, in his old age, he draws a trifling pension, and is glad to be enrolled in the police force of Melbourne, where better pay and ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... enliven the scene not a little. The water is very deep and the navigation secure, so that ships of seven hundred tons may come up to the town; but these noble harbours on the coast of Ireland are only melancholy capabilities of commerce: it is languid and trifling. There are only four or five brigs and sloops that ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... sure that Mrs Crossland was a concealed Papist long before she suspected the young man. And when, at last, both threw the mask off, they had her fast in their toils. She was strictly warned never to talk with me except on mere trifling subjects; and she had to give an account of every word that had been said when she returned. If she hid the least thing from them, she was assured it would ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... return of his fever and forced him to go immediately to bed, where they administered hot drinks and toast soaked in scalded milk. He lay awake a long time, somewhat fatigued and excited. In his feeble condition and in the monotony which his life had assumed of late the trifling experience of the afternoon took on the full proportions of an adventure. He thought it over again and again, but finally fell asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once, just at dawn, and lay looking through his window at a rosy cloud which reposed upon an infinite depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... daughters of the clergyman, gives us some weight,' said Helen; 'besides that, what each person does, however trifling, is of ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to pronounce on such a point than Mr. Gosse. The scene at the beginning of Act ii., and the gossip of the pages in Acts ii. and iii., are certainly very much in Day's manner. The merciless harrying of the word "kind" at the beginning of Act v. reminds one of similar elaborate trifling in Humour out of Breath; and the amoebaean rhymes in the contention between Gemulo and Silvio (Act i.) are, in their sportive quaintness, as like Day's handiwork as they are unlike Lilly's. In reading the pretty echo-scene, in Act iv., the reader will recall a similar scene in Law ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... her, both are put to death; unless it is proved that force has been used against the woman, in which case the man only is punished. Theft is always punished capitally, both in India and China, whether the theft be considerable or trifling; but more particularly so in the Indies, where, if a thief have stolen even the value of a small piece of money, he is impaled alive. The Chinese are much addicted to the abominable vice of pederasty, which they even number among the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... his newly found relative to his daughter and to Mr. Lawrence Belford, and then bade him draw up to the table for breakfast. The young man made the motions suitable for such an occasion, and then he turned to pay his expressman. This trifling incident deserves record as happily illustrating ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... pay attention to her evident ill-humour. I was aware that Dr. Brayle watched me furtively, and with a suspicious air, and there was a curious feeling of constraint in the atmosphere that made me feel I had somehow displeased my hostess, but the matter seemed to me too trifling to consider, and as soon as the conversation became general I took the opportunity to slip away and get down to my cabin, where I locked the door and gave myself up to the freedom of my own meditations. They were at first bewildered ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... could overcast the light, But could not add a night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; One star alone shot forth a spark To prove thee—not Eternity. That beam hath sunk—and now thou art A blank—a thing to count and curse Through each dull tedious trifling part, Which all regret, yet all rehearse. One scene even thou canst not deform— The limit of thy sloth or speed When future wanderers bear the storm Which we shall sleep too sound to heed. And I can smile to think how weak Thine efforts shortly shall be shown, When all the vengeance ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... "almost. It's that trifling little difference that does it. It is so small that it is almost imperceptible; but still it is enough to make our steel worth half as much ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... pelagos anthoun nekrois]. A criticism, shallow in human nature, however deep in Campbell's Rhetoric, has blamed him for making persons, under great excitement of sorrow, or whatever other emotion, parenthesize some trifling play upon words in the very height of their passion. Those who make such criticisms have either never felt a passion or seen one in action, or else they forget the exaltation of sensibility during such crises, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... how you took a sick man over into the Pannikin wilderness on a two-months hunting trip last fall and made a well man of him, Ford," he said. "Any man who can shoot as straight as you do wouldn't be sitting here telling me lies about a trifling little matter involving the expenditure of a beggarly thirty-five millions. But to come down to earth again: you haven't shifted any considerable part of the burden, you know. I can do this bit of routine work; but the main thing is up to you, just as it was ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... for playing at some childish game; you chide me, says the youth, for a trifling fault. Custom, replied the philosopher, is no trifle. And, adds Montagnie, he was in the right; for our vices begin in infancy."—Home's Art of Thinking, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... surprised," he once said to him, by no means amiably, "that after so solemn an event, you are capable of such superficial trifling." ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Board, Common Council, Court of Aldermen, and the Royal Academicians after discovering, respectively, some trifling sources of dissatisfaction, wreck their several establishments, and finally march along the Thames Embankment towards Westminster, singing, alternately, the "Marseillaise" and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... will all come right, Mr.—my dear boy!" she said. "My sister has one weakness, an abnormal sensitiveness to public opinion. She thinks constantly what people will say of this, that, or the other trifling thing, and in that way perpetually loses sight of the realities of life. There is a great deal of good in her that you have never seen because for the moment she is absolutely obsessed by her objection to your name and ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... played with, and the labor of composition is no trifling matter. It demands the keenest mental activity, the most profound mental concentration. It demands consecration. The composer thinks and works in tones, in an ideal realm, far removed from the realities of the external world. His business ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works, there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... girl's love is any thing but a preservative, if it shall yield her, in any aspect, other than such pure and delicate thoughts as she would not scruple to whisper in her mother's ear, or to ask God's blessing on at night. Should there be any circumstance or incident, however seemingly trifling and unimportant, in her reminiscences, which nevertheless keeps recurring to the mind with a slight twinge of regret—a feeling that it would have been just as well had it never happened—then is love a dangerous companion. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... for the Sheriff's posse, and of course I could only agree. Though the State seems bent on treating us somewhat meanly, we are, I believe, still loyal citizens, and I feel quite sure you will overlook any trifling inconvenience the arrival of the prisoner ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... or Cairo,—yearning for Monreale or Venice,—but this is not our affair, and, under the protection of the Empress Virgin, Saint Bernard himself could have afforded to sin even to drunkenness of colour. With trifling expense of imagination one can still catch a glimpse of the crusades in the glory of the glass. The longer one looks into it, the more overpowering it becomes, until one begins almost to feel an echo of what our two hundred ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... complied with, the Colonel requested permission to receive the report of Bothwell, who was now in attendance, and with whom he spoke apart for a few minutes. Major Bellenden took that opportunity to say to his niece, without the hearing of her grandmother, "What a trifling foolish girl you are, Edith, to send me by express a letter crammed with nonsense about books and gowns, and to slide the only thing I cared a marvedie about into ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... silly I, all thriving arts refuse, } And all my hopes, and all my vigour lose, } In service of the worst of jilts a muse. } * * * * * Oft I remember, did wise friends dissuade, And bid me quit the trifling barren trade. Oft have I tryed (heaven knows) to mortify This vile and wicked bent of poetry; But still unconquered it remains within, Fixed as a habit, or some darling sin. In vain I better studies there would sow; Oft have I tried, but none ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... imperfection, and also manifested her regret at not being able to take the article under such circumstances, for she had intended it as a bridal gift to a young friend of hers, and would have felt deeply mortified if the discovery had been made after the presentation. After a few more trifling purchases, she turned away, and Guly restored the rejected piece of work to its place, and put the box upon the shelf. As he turned round, his eye fell upon the face of his employer, who stood bolt upright on the opposite side ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... established principles of science? If we grant the Newtonians a plenum, they still cling to attraction of all matter in some shape. If we confine them to a vacuum, they will virtually deny it. Is not this solemn trifling? How much more noble would it be to exhibit a little more tolerance, seeing that they themselves know not what to believe? We do not offer these remarks as argument, but merely as indications of that course of reasoning by which ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... convict, and justice was often cheated because there was no alternative between virtually condemning a man to death and letting him go free; it was also held that the country paid in recommittals for its overseverity; for those who had been imprisoned even for trifling ailments were often permanently disabled by their imprisonment; and when a man has been once convicted, it was probable he would never afterwards be long off ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the position of observer. Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way as his society friends of the other night had dissected the fellow—"smart"; and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to induce to the performance of good and kind actions, however humble or unimportant these actions in themselves may be. If God does "not despise the day of small things," neither should we; and one act of kindness by a child, however trifling, will most assuredly prepare the way for another. This circumstance also shews the impropriety of attempting to magnify faults, when perhaps no fault was designed; and the evil consequences, as well as the injustice, of refraining to commend ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... which the vilest liquors are sold at ten cents a drink. The profits of the business are very great, not counting the receipts of the bar, which are in proportion. The expense of fitting up and conducting such an establishment is trifling. One of them accommodates nearly two hundred lodgers per night, which at ten cents per head, would be a net receipt of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... of that morning, it had quite passed out of her little head in the usual way of such trifling unpleasantnesses which go so frequently to make up the tally of childhood's days. Jamie had no understanding of it. His Vada was with him again, hectoring, guiding him as was her wont, and, in his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the country of Tenderness (la carte de Tendre) is found in the first part of Clelie (see note 2, page 146); Love-letter (Billetdoux); Polite epistle (Billet galant); Trifling attentions (Petit Soins); Sprightly verses (Jolts vers), are the names of villages to be found in the map, which is a curiosity in ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... gates, I saw Montrecour borne in, wounded. The spirit of the insulter was in him still. He ordered the soldiers to bring his litter near me, and in a voice faint through pain, but bitter with baffled revenge, he murmured—'Countess, you shall not have long to indulge in your caprices. My hurts are trifling. You are still in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Neither white hairs nor wrinkles can at once claim influence in themselves: it is the honourable conduct of earlier days that is rewarded by possessing influence at the last. Even things generally regarded as trifling and matters of course—being saluted, being courted, having way made for one, people rising when one approaches, being escorted to and from the forum, being referred to for advice—all these are marks of respect, ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... picture-books, and so forth, down to the cups and balls, and copy-books, which they have cast off within a month or two, each labelled with the owner's name, and the date of deposit. No year goes by without leaving behind some memento of each of them, or even without my laying aside there some trifling articles of dress that they have worn. It is a fancy of my brother's. He says that others may claim their after-years, but their childhood is his own,—all of it that is not mine,—and he must keep it for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... 'You have been trifling with me till now!' he exclaimed, his face flushing. 'You did not play your best in the first ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... been impartial and scientific, this trifling difference might easily have been overcome and the dangers of reckless breeding insisted upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious dramatization of human ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... been softer, the knock of some possible lady visitor. She had no intention of admitting any feminine eyes to detect this carefully covered up indigence. Besides, it was Monday. There is no sense in trifling with bad luck. The reception of Monday callers is a source of misfortune never known to fail, save in rare cases when good luck has already been secured by smearing the front walk or the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
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