"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... occurred about this time, he slightly resented a piece of marked incivility on the part of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick, who had married the Princess Eliza of Denmark; but it is not likely that so trivial an affair, if it were known at court, could have called down upon him the ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... and, be it great or small, he applies the highest of all motives to this matter. 'For ye know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich yet for your sakes He became poor.' The trivial things of life are to be guided and shaped by reference to the highest of all things, the example of Jesus Christ; and that in the whole depth of His humiliation, and even in regard to His cross and passion. We have here set forth, as the pattern to which the Christian life is to be conformed, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... better to be done than childishly to pout at the conqueror; that is, I could not recognize that his weapons were good, and that I should seize and destroy him with them. In short, for want of a definite principle of action I have drifted at random, my life without plan—I have been a mere trivial man ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... ban of her great secret purpose she had ceased to regard men and women except as they could be turned into the instruments of her will. And her use for them was over. As for their merely human character and experience—Toni saw through these at once. And it all seemed to her futile and trivial in the fierce reflection of those infernal fires through which she had had ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... me to express the satisfaction we felt on landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana. The inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial in comparison with those that are suffered under a burning sky, surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched in a canoe, without the possibility of taking the least bodily exercise. In seventy-five days we had performed a passage of five hundred leagues (twenty to a degree) on the five ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... he carried a lady from Putney in such a night as this, and she bade him lie down by her, which he did, and did give her content, and a great deal more roguery. Home and found my girl knocking at the door (it being 11 o'clock at night), her mistress having sent her out for some trivial business, which did vex me when I came in, and so I took occasion to go up and to bed in a pet. Before I went forth this morning, one came to me to give me notice that the justices of Middlesex do meet to-morrow at Hicks Hall, and that I as one am desired ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... for more than a certain fixed and relatively short time entirely without food or air. Dr. Buckland tried a number of experiments upon toads in this manner—experiments wholly unnecessary, considering the trivial nature of the point at issue—and his conclusion was that no toad could get beyond two years without feeding or breathing. There can be very little doubt that in this conclusion he was practically correct, and that the real fine old crusted ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... be disappointed in the child when he comes home next year." It would be difficult to determine how much of this was true; Miss Emily was aggravated and, although she would never have confessed to so trivial a matter, the perpetual worship of Rose—"the ugliest thing you ever saw"—was irritating her. The days followed, then, when Angelina was constantly in her aunt's company, and to neither of them was this ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... times an insupportable ennui in listening to the confessions of people who had never learned either to think or to feel with any degree of distinctness, and whom his most fervent exhortations could not lift above the most trivial interests of a mere animal life. He was weary of the childish quarrels and bickerings of the monks, of their puerility, of their selfishness and self-indulgence, of their hopeless vulgarity of mind, and utterly discouraged with their inextricable labyrinths of deception. A melancholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... night in accomplishing the engirdlement of the Flying Fish, could have heard and understood the airy way in which the fact of their close proximity was dismissed by the baronet as a matter of the most trivial importance, they would have been intensely disgusted. Happily for their dignity they were blissfully unconscious of it; and whilst Sir Reginald and his companions were luxuriating in the bath, and afterwards ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... air, as one might say, that you are engaged in experimental chemical work for the Government, and I should have thought, and hoped, that this would occupy your mind to the exclusion of such trivial affairs as servants' love-making. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... Congress of the United States, a part of their powers under the commission were, it seems, of a commercial nature. They were authorized, in the most ample and undefined manner, to form a commercial treaty with America on the spot. This was no trivial object. As the formation of such a treaty would necessarily have been no less than the breaking up of our whole commercial system, and the giving it an entire new form, one would imagine that the Board of Trade would have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to be acquainted with matters quite at variance with his ministry. The cura possesses the language, resides in the village, has the means of the confessional, [104] and when he wishes there are but few matters, even the most trivial, that can be hidden from him. On the contrary the alcalde, not having any of these advantages, can have knowledge of but few things, if the parish priest does not communicate them. I shall quote here what father Fray Manuel del Rio ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... voice sweet nature's sweetest tunes Sang the glad song of twenty cloudless Junes. Her raiment,—nay; go, reader, if you please, To some sage Treatise on Antiquities, Whence writers of historical romances Cull old embroideries for their new-spun fancies; I care not for the trivial, nor the fleeting. Beneath her dress a woman's heart was beating The rhythm of love's eternal eloquence, And I confess to you, in confidence, Though flowers have grown a thousand years above her, Unseen, unknown, with all my soul I ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... he statesman or hod-carrier. What difference, if an honest heart beat beneath a laborer's hickory shirt, or one of fine linen? 'One hand, if it's true, is as good as another, no matter how brawny or rough.' Mary, do not think the trivial affairs of the home beneath your notice, and do not imagine any work degrading which tends to the betterment of the home. Remember, 'Who sweeps a room as for Thy law, makes that and ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... cottage door. The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean floor, The willows in the meadow, and the free Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me; Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come no more? Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when common men Are busy with their trivial affairs, Having and holding? Why, when thou hadst read Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, Why art thou silent! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... For many reasons it was useless, he rapidly decided, to try and surprise them as they boarded; there was a better and surer way. And, as always, he attended to every little detail—details that to others might have seemed trivial—of ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... hearers. Perhaps Molire wished not only that the general public should be prepared to find instructions and warnings for married men, but also that they who were wont to regard the theatre as injurious, or at best trivial, should know that he professed to educate, as well as to entertain. We must count the adoption of similar titles by Sheridan and others amongst the tributes, by imitation, to ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... comes for you to perform, and the audience have proposed subjects and invented cases for discussion, you should get rid of the difficult ones by calling them trivial, and complain that there is nothing in this selection that can really test a man's powers. When they have chosen, do not hesitate a moment, but start; the tongue is an unruly member; do not attempt to rule ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... there, in the utter darkness. Neither, now, would have the advantage. He had been a fool to leave one of the doors without its double lock, of some sort. He had once been told that it was always through the more trivial contingency that ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... now excited only sorrow and regret. Having gazed on the chateau and its lovely scenery, till the banks again closed upon them, her mind became too much occupied by mournful reflections, to permit her to attend to the conversation, which Madame Cheron had begun on some trivial topic, so that they soon travelled in ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... about the way He did His work at the beginning; a world which went wrong so early and so easily was anything but "very good," although He pronounced it to be so according to the Genesis writer. Besides, why should a trivial act of transgression have sent it all wrong? We take leave of our common ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... those who, whenever they were urged of old to be rid of their Wantonness, or drunkenness, or avarice, would say: "God is merciful, and better than His word; He will never damn his own creature upon a cause so trivial." But here they yelped blasphemy, asking: "Where is that mercy boasted to be infinite?" "Silence, ye whelps!" said a huge, crabbed devil who heard them, "Silence! would he have mercy who did nought to obtain it? Would ye that ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the perverted reverence with which they regarded the words and even the letters, and the very shapes of the letters, in which their sacred books were written. Their perversions of the law of God, their subtle refinements of interpretation, their trivial conceits, their false and misleading comments and inferences, all certainly tended to encourage the hypocrisy which our Lord rebuked, and against which St. Paul contended. But we still see something of the same spirit in the attempt to maintain ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... because I have discovered how nearly our nation and the whole world escaped horrors beside which those of The Leader's actual regime would seem trivial. Give me reasons, arguments, proofs beyond question, which I can put into my report on his career! I must demonstrate beyond question that psi ability did not cause his ascendancy! Help me to contrive a lie which will keep anyone, ever, from dreaming that psi ability can be used ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It was about this time that some one slipped that ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... the gravest fault in this poem is the frequent intermixture, as in these two lines, of trivial thoughts and circumstances with those of a ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... sustains;—then with protended spear Checks his approaching jaws. Furious he strives To wound the harden'd steel;—on the sharp point He grinds his teeth: now from his poisonous mouth, Began the blood to flow, and sprinkling ting'd The virid grass; but trivial still the hurt; For shrinking from the blow, and twisting back His wounded neck, the stroke he still prevents Deeper to pierce, by yielding to its force. But pushing arduous on, Agenor's son, Fix'd in his throat the steel;—and the sharp point Forc'd through ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... anything heretic or infidel in her replies on religious subjects, and only getting candid common sense in return for their suspicions, her judges turned to the idea of satanic inspiration and support. But it proved equally useless. Her patriotism shone clear above every trivial ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... at St. Navier and the North, there was little thought of French or English; the sheer problem of existence there drowned other considerations. He would, he thought, go out in the spring ... leave Myrtle Forge with its droning anvil, the endless, unvaried turning of water wheel, and the facile, trivial chatter in and about the house. David Forsythe, back from England in the capacity of master of fluxing metals, might acquire his, Howat's, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... better than Dr. Bowdler did. He does not Bowdlerise who uses pumice to a blot, but he who rubs the copy into holes wherever he can find an honest letter with a downstroke thicker than becomes a fine-nibbed pen. A trivial play of fancy in one of the pieces in this volume, easily removed, would have been as a dead fly in the pot of ointment, and would have deprived one of Lucian's best works of the currency to which ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but I would not consent to make a question of a momentous fact which is no longer to be considered as a subject for trivial discussions, but to be acted upon with silent promptitude. It signifies nothing that wise and experienced practitioners have sometimes doubted the reality of the danger in question; no man has the right to doubt it any longer. ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... them in those markets where slaves were known to fetch the highest price. This was a recognised trade, but it exposed the Phoenicians to the danger of reprisals, and made them objects of an undying hatred. When on these distant expeditions they were subject to trivial disasters which might lead to serious consequences. A mast might break, an oar might damage a portion of the bulwarks, a storm might force them to throw overboard part of their cargo or their provisions; in such predicaments they had no means of repairing the damage, and, unable to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... says Dowd. "It was a remarkable experience. Weird, you might say. You see, it was the last day of our stay in Florida; our last foursome of the season. We had been losing steadily for several days, Ellins and I. Not that the stakes were high. Trivial. Dollar Nassau, with side bets. I'd been off my drive again and Ellins had been putting atrociously. Anyway, we had ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... "On trivial occasions any initiated man may personate Ukuku or issue commands for the family. On other occasions, as in Shiku, to raise prices, the society lays ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... city—existent, immortal, and waiting to be revealed—you and I may belong to-day. 'We have a strong city.' You may lay hold of life either by the side of it which is transient and trivial and contemptible, or by the side of it which goes down through all the mutable and is rooted in eternity. As in some seaweed, far out in the depths of the ocean, the tiny frond that floats upon the billow goes down and down and down, by filaments ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... continually administered, in the manner described, from Friday evening at nine o'clock until Monday morning at nine. This treatment lasted sixty hours, and sixteen ounces of chloroform were used. No injurious effects, however trivial from the treatment adopted, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... other things, an account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be plunged for boiling—all this joined to the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... made use of the same searching analytical observation that had so quickly taught him the secret of the ax-swing. He knew that each of the things he saw, no matter how trivial, was either premeditated or the product of chance. If premeditated, he tried to find out its reason for being. If fortuitous, he wished to know the fact, and always attempted to figure out the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... casting off their lovers. He had too much respect for his own heartiness of love to believe himself unworthy of Mary; that mock humble conceit did not enter his head. He thought he did not "hit Mary's fancy"; and though that may sound a trivial every-day expression, yet the reality of it cut him to the heart. Wild visions of enlistment, of drinking himself into forgetfulness, of becoming desperate in some way or another, entered his mind; ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sins in respect of unclean food and the like, and improper speeches, etc., they are of two classes, viz., those committed consciously and those that are committed unconsciously. All sins that are committed consciously are grave, while those that are committed unconsciously are trivial or light. There is expiation for both. Indeed sin is capable of being washed away by (observance of) the ordinances spoken of. Those ordinances, however, have been laid down only for believers (in God) and those that have faith. They are not for atheists or those that have no faith, or those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... that feeling, Charles Holland; I can fully understand it. I do not blame you for it—it is a most natural one; but when you know all, you will feel with me how necessary it must have been to my peace to seize upon every trivial circumstance that can help me to a belief in my ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... at last hear her natural voice, her original sweet and attractive voice, to which the music is beginning to return, shily and timidly, my heart overflows with joy. But, two minutes after, she is again bawling out her most trivial remarks, with a cheerful unconcern that disarms my wrath. Then I plead for silence as I would for mercy, draw her down upon my lap, take her head in my arms and nurse her as I ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... is no use denying that there IS something on my mind. And yet it is such an absurd business that I hesitated to bother you about it. On the other hand, although it is trivial, it is undoubtedly queer, and I know that you have a taste for all that is out of the common. But in my opinion it comes more in Dr. Watson's ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... man's image but God's. It is incorruptible, and the soul may trust it safely; it will serve her beyond the stars. But it cannot give us friends, or the embrace of a lover, or the touch of children, for with our fellow mortals it has no concern. It cannot even give the joys we call trivial—fine weather, the pleasures of meat and drink, bathing and the hot sand afterwards, running, dreamless sleep. Have we learnt the true discipline of a bankruptcy if we turn to such coinage as this? Will it really profit us so much ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... very apex of popularity, while he, with his ten years initiation, had not yet developed brains enough, in the estimation of the Ashcroft people, that would justify them in placing in his charge the management of the most trivial social affair. What had he done that this measure should be constantly graduated out to him? Well, things would be different. He would "can" personality and take up the "big mitt" of public things. But how was ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... into English), indicate his impatience at the trivial wants and necessities which interrupt his creative work and take his thoughts from his compositions. Instances of bad grammar in his letters are frequent, when dealing with ordinary topics. In no sense a polished man, he could, however, when the occasion required it, assume in his grammar ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... college. Naturally, we were all in favor of the idea. We all agreed that we wanted something besides Shakespeare for a change, but no one could suggest anything else. We wanted something really representative, and the majority of these plays for amateurs are rather trivial. Finally, Sara Emerson suggested that the play be written by a member of the senior class. There was a general protest, and Elizabeth Wade asked Sara if she would mind writing it. Rather unkind in her, wasn't it?" asked Emma, with a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... forgotten that only a few years before he had been a cheap little ticket-seller grateful for a bow from any actor who had ever had his name up. Crossley insisted that he was not a victim of folie de grandeur, that, on the contrary, he had become less vain as he had risen, where he could see how trivial a thing rising was and how accidental. ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Kandar did not die in battle. It may never come. If it does, it will come as a vague rumor, as an idle tale, as absurd gossip about a fleet whose home planet may not even be remembered when the tales are told. There will be trivial stories about a fleet which abandoned the world it should have defended, and fled so far that its enemies did not bother to follow it. If the tale reaches Mekin, it may not be believed. It may not ever be linked to ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... present instance; and I was filled with chagrin and disgust at the thought of how simple an accident had sufficed to mar and defeat what might otherwise have proved a perfect surprise to Mendouca and his crew. Still, although I could not conceal from myself the fact that this apparently trivial accident had placed the attacking party at a woeful disadvantage, by warning their antagonists of the intended attack, and thus putting them on the alert, I had seen enough of British pluck to hope that even yet, despite all, it might ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... dangers and hardships really commenced; again they were obliged to take to the fields, feeling their way along blind paths and cart-tracks that could scarcely be discerned in the darkness. The most trivial obstacle sufficed to drive them a long way out of their course. They squeezed through hedges, scrambled down and up the steep banks of ditches, forced a passage for themselves through the densest thickets. Jean, in whom a low fever had developed under the drizzling ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... fellow-traveler. Shivering in the sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of departure were in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy bewilderment of thought, and a helpless suspension of feeling. The events of the night confused themselves hideously with the trivial circumstances passing before her eyes in the courtyard. She started with the sudden terror of the night when old Mazey re-appeared to summon her out to the cart. She trembled with the helpless confusion of the night when the veteran cast the eyes of indulgence on her ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... previous to his "Excursion," is there any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie beyond the grave—and the many holy and awful feelings in which on earth these hopes are enshrined and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... convincing. Just then—this was early in 1863—news came to him that the old pilot he had wounded by his satire, Isaiah Sellers, was dead. At once the pen-name of Captain Sellers recurred to him. That was it; that was the sort of name he wanted. It was not trivial; it had all the qualities—Sellers would never need it again. Clemens decided he would give it a new meaning and new association in this far-away land. He ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... own waking self, for instance, my half-asleep self is almost a personality of genius. He can create visions that the waking self can remember, but cannot originate, and cannot trace to any memory of waking impressions. These apparently trivial things thus point to the existence of almost wholly submerged potentialities in a mind so everyday, commonplace, and, so to speak, superficial as mine. This fact suggests that people who own such minds, the vast majority of mankind, ought not to make themselves the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... crowd think kindly or clearly about any subject under the sun? I fancy not. My own real idea of the character of the various mobs that see the rabbits die is such that I could not venture to frame it in words. The sport is so mean, so trivial, so purposeless, that I should go a long way to avoid seeing it now that ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... stairs, and it was not until she was gone that he remembered that she did not know the body of her husband had been found—sewed in a sack and at the bottom of the river. Young husbands have been known to quarrel with their wives over matters as trivial as bedroom wall-paper; they have even been known to leave home for several days at a time when angry; in extreme cases they have even been known to seek death at their own hands; but it is not at all usual for a ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... occasions, I had no opportunity of making any observations on the manners and customs of our neighbours. Occasionally Mrs. Tod mentioned them in her social chatter, while laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... man to know concerning either God or himself is so plain, that he that runs may read. In answer to such like cant, for it is nothing more,—a cant produced by the most profound ignorance, and frequently attended with the most deplorable envy, I ask, is then the Delphic precept, KNOW THYSELF, a trivial mandate? Can this be accomplished by every man? Or can any one properly know himself without knowing the rank he holds in the scale of being? And can this be effected without knowing what are the natures which he surpasses, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... he could not but note how soon the tragedy of the preceding night seemed forgotten. Some bemoaned the loss of money or valuables; a few, more fortunate, related how they had outwitted the robbers and escaped with trivial loss, but only an occasional careless word of pity was heard for the young stranger who had met so sad a fate. So quickly and completely does one human atom sink out of sight! It is like the dropping of a pebble in the sea: a momentary ripple, that ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... to spend a moment before her mirror, there to arrange her dress, the plaiting of her hair—perhaps the expression of her face—all things that to men may appear trivial, but to women important—even in the hour of sadness and despair. No blame to them for this. It is but an instinct—the primary care of their lives—the secret spring ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... excited contempt and laughter only. Eight hundred Degrees of one kind and another were invented: Infidelity and even Jesuitry were taught under the mask of Masonry. The rituals even of the respectable Degrees, copied and mutilated by ignorant men, became nonsensical and trivial; and the words so corrupted that it has hitherto been found impossible to recover many of them at all. Candidates were made to degrade themselves, and to submit to insults not tolerable to a ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... derived; consequently, if a document has been analysed upon fifty different slips, the same references must be repeated fifty times. Hence a slight increase in the amount of writing to be done. It is certainly on account of this trivial complication that some obstinately cling to the inferior note-book system. Again, in virtue of their very detachability, the slips, or loose leaves, are liable to go astray; and when a slip is lost how is it to ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... heart was torn and bleeding, after the death of her only child, her thoughts were taken off herself by the necessary duty of providing mourning garments for herself, her husband, and the slaves. This trivial task had at least helped her to forget for a few hours the bitterness of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expenditures of society on its trivial pleasures at a time when men and women are out of work and children are crying for food is a cruel and ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... sent them hunting the enemies of mankind: they were bent to the chase, scenting the game, knowing the infinite meaning of their hunt and the glory of victory. Mary Cresswell had listened but a half hour before her world seemed so small and sordid and narrow, so trivial, that a sense of shame spread over her. These people were not only earnest, but expert. They acknowledged the need ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... lay there the rough loft and its straw seemed to pass away, for the background of his mental picture to become the park and grounds about the old Hall, on one of the old sunny days when he and Scarlett had had a quarrel about some trivial matter, and were gazing threateningly at each other after uttering dire words, and were declaring that everything between them was quite at an end, and that they were never going to speak ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... tasks; I'll not abandon One of these—nay pride, my health; Every trivial or grand one Is a noble ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... the saddest commentary of the truth of what I am saying," snarled the old scientist. "How can a person know the worthwhile things when he stores his mind with such trivial—you know far too much of such things, ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... not much spare time left in which to stamp and post it, so we took leave of the owner of the pop-shop. He was now very unwilling to let us go. He did not ask another question about his mother, but he was consumed with trivial curiosity about us. Once again he alluded to Biddy. We were standing outside, and his eye fell upon the row of ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... If this trivial instance has been dealt with at such length it is because, for one reason, it is typical of the foundation of so many of the Borgia legends, and, for another, because when history has been carefully sifted for evidence of the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... needs to be quite as fully considered. "Many men of genius have written worse scrawls than I do," said a boy at Eugby, when his teacher remonstrated with him for his bad penmanship; "it is not worth while to worry about so trivial a fault." Ten years later, when he had become an officer in the Crimea, his illegible copy of an order caused the loss of many ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... one. We cannot walk with another unless we are agreed. The lapse of friendship is often due to this, that one has let the other travel on alone. If one has sought pleasure, and the other has sought truth; if one has cumbered his life with the trivial and the petty, and the other has filled his with high thoughts and noble aspirations; if their hearts are on different levels, it is natural that they should now be apart. We cannot stay behind with the camp-followers, and at the same time fight in the van with the heroes. If we would keep our ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... conception of justice that we should be dealt with, as if we had all along had a clear knowledge of the fact thus carefully concealed from us. What should we think of the justice of a father, who gave his son every reason to suppose that a trivial fault would only be visited by a box on the ear; and then, years afterwards, put him on the rack for a week ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... chair-backs to remind me of the graveyard. I can still remember the sombre aisles of that house, the vault-like shadows, the magnificent window curtains that blotted out the windows. Life was too trivial for such things. She never knew she tired of them, but she did. That was the secret of her temper, I think; they engendered her sombre Calvinism, her perception of the trashy quality of human life. The pretence that they were the accessories to human life ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... masses of metal, or bands of leather, which moved stiffly through ranges comparatively short, there is to-day employed a medium which may traverse 186,400 miles in a second, and with resistances most trivial in contrast with ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... that he retained in his memory very slight and trivial, as well as important things. As an instance of this, it seems that an inferiour domestick of the Duke of Leeds had attempted to celebrate his Grace's marriage in such homely rhimes as he could make; ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of roving robbers. At times they threatened towns on the coast, and at others they attacked ships on mid-ocean; and they seem to have followed their lawless pursuits at will. When caught, there was little delay in bringing them to trial and securing a conviction; and trivial technicality in forms played no part in reaching results. At times there were multiple executions, and in the community there was no morbid sentimentality shown for the miserable wretches. Not the least of their torture was sitting in the meeting-house on the Sunday before execution ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... was lying. That was evident to the guard. At the same time he did not want to be placed in the position of disobeying orders against making trivial arrests. He knew by the color of the liquid it was not ginger ale. A brilliant thought came to him. He would test the beer and thus have the evidence. But here a difficulty was encountered. While the rule prohibiting employees ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... renewed his slumbers on the edge of a volcano whose ominous rumbling the Southern heart had heard and interpreted aright. He was too near to catch the true import of the detonations of those subterranean forces which were sounding, week after week, in the columns of the Liberator. They seemed trivial, harmless, contemptible, like the toy artillery of children bombarding Fort Independence. Garrison's moral earnestness and enthusiasm seemed to the Boston mayor like the impotent rage of a man nursing memories of personal ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... to some happiness and a certain indulgence and the 'droit de temperament,' means something and need not always be selfish. If you do not think this, then there is only the other extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... years in India—as if that mattered! When will people recognise that the truths of democratic policy are independent of time and space? Liberalism is a category, an eternal mode of thought, which cannot be overthrown by any trivial happenings. I am sick of the word 'facts.' I ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... no doubt, but beyond that not much. In painting, after all, there is in the less important details something of the craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is not mechanical is often trivial enough. I don't wonder, now," he added, with a suspicion of a twinkle in the eye, "if you imagine that one comes down here in a fine frenzy every morning to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... dignified form at present known to us, and with them also it accompanies a lapse of ordinary consciousness, at least to the extent that circumstances of time and place and daily life become insignificant and trivial, or even temporarily non-existent; but the notable thing is that a few persons, not of genius at all, are liable to an access of something not altogether dissimilar, and exhibit a kind of lucidity or clairvoyant perceptivity, which, though doubtless of ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... Involuntary laughter. When the pleasure arising from new combinations of words and ideas, as in puns; or of other circumstances, which are so trivial, as to induce no voluntary exertion to compare or consider their present importance or their future consequence; the pleasure is liable to rise into pain; that is, the ideas or sensual motions become exerted too violently for want of some antithetistic ideas; in the same ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... indifferently. This sort of thing did not appeal to East Houston Street sensibilities, and there was no applause at the end. The girl essayed a few bars of her second number, a popular air in trivial waltz time, but with even poorer success. Then she broke down altogether and retired distressfully. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... drawers would be out with trays of foam-headed tankards to moisten those importunate throats. The ale-drinking, the rude good-fellowship, the heartiness, the laughter at discomforts, the craving to see the fight—all these may be set down as vulgar and trivial by those to whom they are distasteful; but to me, listening to the far-off and uncertain echoes of our distant past, they seem to have been the very bones upon which much that is most solid and virile in this ancient race ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... stirred so hot a strife that Oswiu was prevailed upon to summon in 664 a great council at Whitby, where the future ecclesiastical allegiance of his realm should be decided. The points actually contested were trivial enough. Colman, Aidan's successor at Holy Island, pleaded for the Irish fashion of the tonsure, and for the Irish time of keeping Easter: Wilfrid pleaded for the Roman. The one disputant appealed to the authority of Columba, the other to ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... is a good one to follow in bedroom pictures; no "rogue's gallery" of photographs, no useless, meaningless, and trivial pictures, but just a madonna or two, perhaps a photographic copy of some old master, with a favorite illuminated quotation—something to help and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... just a few miscellaneous reminiscences, many of them no doubt trivial, but they may perhaps be not entirely devoid of interest, when it is remembered that they are the impressions and recollections of one who was then a boy of ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... who's dreadfully neglected by her husband; that's Mademoiselle Cecile, the butcher's daughter, a girl that no one will marry because she's scrofulous." In this way she could have continued jerking out biographical scraps for days together, deriving extraordinary amusement from the most trivial, uninteresting incidents. However, as soon as eight o'clock struck, she only had eyes for the frosted "cabinet" window on which appeared the black shadows of the coterie of politicians. She discovered the secession of Charvet and Clemence by missing their bony silhouettes ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... reforming. But within the law there was ample room for "efficient" men to acquire more money than their salaries, and they naturally grasped their opportunities, as did the general officers. Freke, whom Isabelle disliked, with her trivial woman's prejudice about face and manners, embodied a Device,—in other words he was an instrument whereby some persons could make a profit, a very large profit, at the expense of other persons. The A. and P. 'was friendly to Freke.' The Pleasant Valley Coal Company never wanted cars, and it ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... least effort to him, any more than it is to a baby to be innocent. It is his spontaneous act, and a baby is not more unconscious in its innocence. I never knew such loftiness, so simply borne. I have never known him to stoop from it in the most trivial household matter, any more than in a larger or more public one." [Footnote: J. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... rebel ranks, by decimating the Union army; and here you have it in a tangible form. I am informed that Judge Attocha was a rebel captain. He is a rebel still, and in the exercise of this authority is banishing your soldiers for trivial military offenses, in irons, with forfeited wages; for which their families ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Professor Forbes's work (we had almost said epic poem) on 'Glaciers.' Even an agricultural writer, if he have a real insight in him—if he have anything of that secret of the piu nel' uno, 'the power of discovering the infinite in the finite;' of seeing, like a poet, trivial phenomena in their true relation to the whole of the great universe into which they are so cunningly fitted; if he has learned to look at all things and men, down to the meanest, as living lessons written with the finger of God; if, in ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... German tongue. It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner. I am lost in a linguistic swamp. It is necessary to employ one man to talk to another. The commisionnaire does not understand more than half I say. What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow? The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble. I desired some blotting-paper. I went to a little stationery shop. I said, "Paper! paper! fuer die blot, you know. Ich bin Englisher—er: ink no dry; what you call um? Vas? vas? Hang it!" They took ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... would have done had she been her own natural self, and not in the strange, dreamy, broken-down state, which seemed to take interest in nothing. Still, she felt some interest in seeing Dr. Grey appear, though but in a trivial thing, rather different from what she had at first supposed him. And when, after an interval of awful silence, during which Miss Gascoigne looked like a brooding hurricane, and Miss Grey frightened out of her life ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... least sure that that soil would not be taken from him, and that in giving part of his time to his master, he was at liberty to enjoy the rest according to his fancy. The farmer afterwards became proprietor of the soil he cultivated, and master, not only of himself, but of his lands; certain trivial obligations or fines being all that was required of him, and these daily grew less, and at last disappeared altogether. Having thus obtained a footing in society, he soon began to take a place in provincial assemblies; and he made the last bound ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... commonest design, and degraded by their gilded shops, wide-fuming, flaunting, glittering, with apparatus of eating or of dress. Splendor of palace-flank and goodly quay, insulted by floating cumber of barge and bath, trivial, grotesque, indecent, as cleansing vessels in a royal reception room. Solemn avenues of blossomed trees, shading puppet-show and baby-play; glades of wild-wood, long withdrawn, purple with faded shadows of blood; sweet windings and reaches of river far among the brown vines and white ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... relates, evinced, as he thought, that even then he preferred to aggravate his fault rather than consent to suppress any part of the truth, an effort which had been unnatural to his mind. His fanciful, yet striking illustration may open our inquiry. "This trivial passage," the little story alluded to, "I have mentioned now, not that I think that in itself it deserves a relation, but because as the sun is seen best at his rising and his setting, so men's ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... regrets were fast becoming too much for him, he left the humble kitchen and went up-stairs. But not to sleep. Locking the door (something he never remembered doing before in all his life), he began to handle over his clothes and other trivial belongings. Choosing out a certain strong suit, he laid it out on the bed and then went to a bureau drawer and drew out an old-fashioned wallet. This he opened, but after he had counted the few bills it contained he shook his head and put them all back, only ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... dangerous gulf by distracting their attention from their altercation to a consideration of their plans for the immediate future. Accustomed to frequent arguments in which more hair than blood is wasted, the apes speedily forget such trivial encounters, and presently Chulk and Taglat were again squatting in close proximity to each other and peaceful repose, awaiting the moment when the ape-man should lead them into the village ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... What need more trivial ills to quote, The freshly-furnished house that shines, The coxcomb's fashionable coat, Both brushed and polished "to the nines," Both yielding to some fatal flaw; A crack; a fiend who plays the flute; Both, both examples of the law Of Rift ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... without really knowing what these doctrines are. He sneers at the doctrines and practices of religion, because he cannot refute them. He speaks with the utmost gravity of the fine arts, the fashions, and even matters the most trivial, and he turns into ridicule the most sacred subjects. In the midst of his own circle of fops and silly women, he utters his shallow conceits with all the pompous ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... be guilty of such sacrilege?" he cried. "It is this cursed habit of yours of using God's name upon every trivial occasion that makes our enemies think us a nation of hypocrites! Back ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... them for that. A great deal depends on the safety of that boat. In fact, if you come to think about it, you will see that whatever grievance you may have, it is, after all, a very trivial one compared with the burden that weighs on me just now, and I should much prefer not to have anything to do with disputes between the passengers until we are out of our ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... according to my conception and in strict accordance with my deeply thought-out principles, and with such tools as I find most simple and most suitable for the work I have to do, then do so, and I shall feel highly honoured and very proud; but, if a lighter, more trivial creation will, or would satisfy your (craving I will not call it, that suggests pertinacity, a great end being in view), say, passing fancy, then I would rather see vacant the place occupied by you, as in such an one I should take no interest whilst speaking or working, just as ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of God and unblessed, and that the world is so hopelessly bad that it must be wholly renounced. On the contrary, it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom, and the most trivial of our occupations and the most transient of our joys and sorrows find their place in the divine order. It is not necessary to endorse Renan's idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to believe that for Jesus all life, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... counsel of M. de Pibrac, who acted the part of a double dealer, telling me that I ought not to pardon an affront offered by such a mean fellow, but insist upon his being dismissed; whilst he persuaded the King my husband that there was no reason for parting with a man so useful to him, for such a trivial cause. This was done by M. de Pibrac, thinking I might be induced, from such mortifications, to return to France, where he enjoyed the offices of president and ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... said, 'Why, Helen, you don't mean that, do you?' and I said I certainly did. We parted rather stiffly. It was his last evening at home, and I had put on the frock in honor of it. He wrote as soon as he reached London, and referred to the dress again. He said such trivial things should never be permitted to come between two people who loved each other. I returned that it was not trivial, but a matter of principle, which I should support. John, it actually parted us. Actually parted us! ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... like a hermit crab in his college in Oxford. Lately he had a bad breakdown, and was ordered an immense rest and change; so now he has ventured out to blink at the universe beyond Carfax and the High, I expect he will find us shamelessly trivial and ignorant. How his eyes will open when they look upon this glaring world and behold some glaring facts! I shall invite Miss Maitland to join our party; she is of a nice suitable age, and I shall pair her off with Martin; we will take George's durwan, as courier, for he has Upper ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... proficiency from his casual acquaintance with vaqueros and small traders that he was glad to leave the matter in his young kinsman's hands. Again, by one of those illogical sequences which make a lifelong reputation depend upon a single trivial act, Clarence's social status was settled forever at El Refugio Rancho by his picturesque diversion of Flynn's parting gift. The grateful peon to whom the boy had scornfully tossed the coin repeated ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the marvels of nature. It is a point comparatively trivial that this genus includes the largest of orchids ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... you one of those vistas, or anses, with colonnades of cocoa-palm—at the end of which you see smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro cabins (cases);—or merely picture to yourself one of the most ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to make a dash for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of fruits, and running along the shore to get to market; —and illuminate ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... eyes the happenings of that morning were trivial, they were far-reaching in their importance to Georgina, for they gave her three memories—Jeremy's teeth, the Towncrier's bell, and her own name on the porringer—to make a deep impression ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... are the Alpine landscapes which create A fund for contemplation;—to admire Is a brief feeling of a trivial date; But something worthier do such scenes inspire: Here to be lonely is not desolate, For much I view which I could most desire, And, above all, a lake I can behold Lovelier, not dearer, than our ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the trials undergone by the Ladysmith staff were the heliograms from the Tugela and the constant surprises of the dchiffrage. Sometimes pessimistic, sometimes the reverse and frequently trivial, there was scarcely an occasion on which they were helpful. The troubles of the relieving force ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... and your father's signature genuine." He folded the paper, slipped it in its envelope and returned it to her. "There is one thing now which I must most earnestly caution you against. Do not sign any paper, no matter who wishes it or orders it—no matter if it is the most trivial household receipt. Do not write any letters yourself, or notes to any one, even to Mr. Hamilton; you understand they might be intercepted. If anyone wishes you to sign a paper relating to the matter of your father's estate, say you cannot do so until you have shown it in private to Mr. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... suggestion, Mr. Wyatt. Put the money in your billbook, hand it to the stakeholder, and let him give it, unopened, to the winner. Of course, you will first take out your other money. There is no need for them to know that more than a trivial sum is at stake. We do not want to ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... rite and husband and wife are equal.—Nothing like this teaching had been practiced in the pagan world. Woman was simply the servant, the creature, of man. She was to do his bidding, and might be divorced for trivial cause, or for none. Man was supreme and his will was law. The home in the Christian sense did not exist, because the husband and ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... as a great anthropologist. He works on a big scale; no one in any department of research, not even Darwin, has employed a wider induction of facts. No one, again, has dealt more conscientiously with each fact; however seemingly trivial, it is prepared with minute pains and cautious tests for its destiny as a slip to be placed under the anthropological microscope. He combines, so to speak, the merits of Tintoretto and Meissonier.... That portion of the book which is concerned with totemism ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... and became, Bonaparte always called the other Consuls about him before proceeding with the most trivial measure. The Legislative Corps did not exercise much influence during his reign, but he signed no decrees of any kind without first discussing them with the Council of State. This Council, composed of the most enlightened and learned men of France, prepared laws, ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... remember it is a woman speaking to you, and things which you will count silly and trivial mean very much to her. There was one night last June—only last June! To think of it! So little while ago there was no Mlle. Celie—" and, as Hanaud raised his hand, she said hurriedly, "Yes, yes; I will control myself. But to think of ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... and love, in store for Mary. Selina prayed that it might prove so;—but she prayed with tears in her eyes, and trembling in her soul! For where are the destinies of persons thus exquisitely organized—thus full of love and loveliness—thus readily swayed to joy or sorrow, by the trivial incidents of life—characterised by what the world calls happiness—such happiness, I mean, as is enjoyed by the serene and the prudent, the unexcitable, the unaspiring! Miss Stanley foresaw only too truly, that the best days likely to be enjoyed by her sister, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... worth pausing over, worth deliberation:—all this poetry, yes! poetry, surely, of their alternate work and play; light and shade, call it! Had it been, after all, a life in itself less commonplace than theirs—that life, the trivial details of which their Horace had touched so daintily, gilded ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... surprising what trivial ideas and memories, such as tags of old songs, or anecdotes more or less appropriate to the occasion, will run in our heads when we are anxious about anything, and are forced to remain in inactivity. All the time certain lines of Sir Walter Scott would worry Green, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... other making love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much of his time on the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no detail is too trivial to interest.—Your affectionate Aunt, ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... civilization. If France in the sixteenth century be tried by this criterion, the conclusion is inevitable that for her the age of barbarism had not yet completely passed away. The catalogue of crimes to which death was affixed as the penalty is frightfully long; some of them were almost trivial offences. A boy less than sixteen years of age was hung for stealing jewelry from his master.[74] On the other hand, with flagrant inconsistency, a nobleman, Rene de Bonneville, superintendent of the royal mint, for the murder of his brother-in-law, was ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... calm and liquid green, the colour of peace. Here I encountered another friend, a retiring man of letters, who lives apart from the world in dreams of his own. He is a bright-eyed, eager creature, tall and shadowy, who has but a slight hold upon the world. We talked for a few moments of trivial things, till a chance question of mine drew from him a sad statement of his own health. He had been lately, he said, to a physician, and had been warned that he was in a somewhat precarious condition. I tried to comfort him, but he shook his head; and though he ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the change which Edwin's character had undergone. As to Edwin Drood himself, "purified by trial, strengthened though saddened by his love for Rosa," Edwin would have been one of those characters Dickens loved to draw—a character entirely changed from a once careless, almost trivial self, to depth and earnestness. "All were to join in changing the ways of dear old Grewgious from the sadness and loneliness of the earlier scenes" in the story, "to the warmth and light of that kindly domestic life for which, angular though he thought himself, his true and genial nature ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... was far from "all right"—very far from it. It was no trivial thing, that letter; they never had been trivial things, those letters of hers, that involved so often a matter of life and death—as this one now, perhaps, as her actions would seem to indicate, involved life and death more urgently than any that had gone ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... see an enemy approaching give warning to the others by a peculiar cry. In several of the species this cry resembles the syllables 'seek-seek' repeated with a hiss. Others bark like 'toy-dogs,' while still other kinds utter a whistling noise, from which one species derives its trivial name of 'whistler' among the traders, and is the 'siffleur' of the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... done,—placing them all together on a plate and serving one to each at the table. This dainty way, however, would hardly make a bad article good, and no one would crave a berry of ancient firkin butter. For, as trivial a matter as it seems, this single condiment of food, one has only to encounter it in a strong, cheesy state to feel it among the most important things in the cuisine. Then one suddenly discovers that butter is in everything. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... connecting link of the whole, that which was entrusted to Brigadier-General Perryn, did not perform its allotted part, by crossing the river at Cools. The consequence of this was that the victorious columns were left insulated, and would have been exposed to no trivial danger, had the enemy felt a sufficient reliance upon their own strength to incite them to act with the requisite promptitude and vigour. Painful, therefore, as it was to retire before a routed foe, the British troops were compelled to ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... each of these inspections he had to brush aside the calcined portion of the letter, once so warm and beautiful with love, but changed to something that seemed to him a semblance of his own heart just then,—black, trivial, and empty. ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... footsteps upon the gravel at the far side of the garden, but he did not raise his head. His interest in the trivial incidents of everyday life appeared ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the Germans." Like Eckermann, the other beloved friend of Goethe, he possessed the power of eliciting the great poet-philosopher's dicta on all imaginable topics. Zelter wrote to Goethe on anything and everything, trivial and otherwise, but his letters never failed to educe strains of the most illuminating comment. The "Letters to Zelter" were published in Berlin in 1833, and the following epitome is ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Green and then down Grafton Street. Though his eyes took note of many elements of the crowd through which he passed they did so morosely. He found trivial all that was meant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to be bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to invent and to amuse and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task. The problem of how ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... ten or twelve slaves and freedmen rushed into the room in trepidation, almost in terror, so savage was the temper of the lord whom they served, and so merciless his wrath, at the most trivial fault ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... coping with big human problems, such emotion may seem trivial, but it was perhaps this constant forced endurance that kept one up, made one almost supersensitively sentimental. Little things grew to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... Fortitude thus is a two-sided virtue, moderating two opposite tendencies: while Temperance is one-sided, moderating Desire alone. Life, rationally considered, bears undoubtedly a high value, and is not to be lightly thrown away, or risked upon trivial or ignoble objects. The brave man is circumspect in his ventures, and moderate in his fears, which implies that he does fear somewhat. He will fear superhuman visitations, as the judgments of God. He will dread disgrace, and still more, sin. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J. |
