"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one place, fireth; changed often, it doth nothing. The purest joy we can experience in one we love, is to see that person a source of happiness to others. When you are with the person loved, you have no sense of being bored. This humble and trivial circumstance is the great test—the only sure ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... these objects, nor these objects without man. All the facts in natural history taken by themselves, have no value, but are barren, like a single sex. But marry it to human history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all Linnaeus' and Buffon's volumes, are dry catalogues of facts; but the most trivial of these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illustration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or, in any way associated to human nature, affects us in the most lively and agreeable manner. The seed of a plant,—to ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... given Ransom Vane by the tramp proved but a trivial affair, and immediately on his recovery from the nervous shock into which it had thrown him, the young man came to Grandon and communicated his suspicions ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... "Are you satisfied?" said she as she looked up from washing her cunt by the side of me. "No, it's so quick,—you fetch me so quickly." "That is no fault of mine." She had said so often before. I recollect all these apparently trivial, these various feelings and circumstances, as well as if it were yesterday, for she had ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... is trivial, but it is characteristic. Hawthorne had doubtless remarked the smell of the sour bread, and to him it called up a vivid recollection of some stroll in Rome; for, of all our senses, the smell is notoriously the most powerful in awakening associations. But then what do ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... departments, of Calverly, of Locker-Lampson, of Mr. Andrew Lang, of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. The comic muse, indeed, has marvellously extended her blandishments during the last two generations, and has discovered methods of trivial elegance which were quite unknown to our forefathers. Here must certainly be said a word in favor of those French forms of verse, all essentially lyrical, such as the ballad, the rondel, the triolet, which have been ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... with them. Dane swallowed three or four times and hoped that his superior officer had not noticed that sign of discomfort. Though Van Rycke, in spite of his general air of sleepy benevolence and careless goodwill, noticed everything, no matter how trivial, which might have a bearing on the delicate negotiations of Galactic Trade. He had not climbed to his present status of expert Cargo-master by overlooking anything at all. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... for beads and other trivial ornaments, and for cigar-holders and the mouth-pieces of pipes. It is regarded by the Turks as specially valuable, inasmuch as it is said to be incapable of transmitting infection as the pipe passes from mouth to mouth. The variety most valued in the East is the pale ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the mysterious and sublime Faust who sings the horrible disgust and nothingness of everything; and this crowd are asking themselves anxiously whether Montrose's voice has not changed!" Then he listened, like the others, and behind the trivial words of the libretto, through that music which awakens profound perception in the soul, he had a sort of revelation as to how Goethe had been able to conceive the ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... raised above the daily cares, the troubles, and the sorrows of life. As the drama, with the arts which are subservient to it, may, from neglect and the mutual contempt of artists and the public, so far degenerate, as to become nothing better than a trivial and stupid amusement, and even a downright waste of time, we conceive that we are attempting something more than a passing entertainment, if we propose to enter on a consideration of the works produced by the most distinguished nations in their most ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... selected these gifts, if indeed she had not prepared them with her own hands. A certain delicacy of feeling prevented him from saying as much to her brother, or of even questioning him upon any point, however trivial, as to any matter of a peculiar nature concerning Isabella. Sometimes he longed to ask the boy about the subject, but he could not bring himself to do so; he felt that it would be indelicate and unpleasant to Isabella, and therefore he limited himself to careful inquiries ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... blood for me? How can there enter into the heart of the Christian who believes he has received ineffable and eternal treasures through the Son of God, the inclination to permit his neighbor to suffer a trivial want when he can easily extend relief? Much less would it be possible for the Christian to injure or to do injustice to his neighbor for the sake of shamefully gaining some small advantage. Rather he would reflect: "If I am, through Christ, a child of God and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... half the sweet, trivial things that they said. But I remember how they told us stories of their own babies, and we laughed with them over treasured sayings of long-ago lips, or grieved with them over silences, or rejoiced at glad things that had been. Regardless of ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... teach to his subjects? and what is there that he is not able to render them skilful in learning? I, who of all young women was the most simple-minded, and ordinarily with barely power to loose my tongue, when among my companions, concerning the most trivial and ordinary affairs, now, because of this my affection, mastered so speedily all his modes of speech that, in a brief space, my aptness at feigning and inventing surpassed that of any poet! And there were few questions put to me in response to which, after ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio
... an understanding with him. He strutted off with far more manner than had been his at any time since the arrival of Lanyard, and vented an excess of spirits by berating bitterly an unhappy clown of a waiter for some trivial fault. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... go into the matter again. All I need do here is to recall the fact that, in the United States, alone among the great nations of history, there is a right way to think and a wrong way to think in everything—not only in theology, or politics, or economics, but in the most trivial matters of everyday life. Thus, in the average American city the citizen who, in the face of an organized public clamour (usually managed by interested parties) for the erection of an equestrian statue of Susan B. Anthony, the apostle of woman suffrage, in front of the chief railway station, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... not in the least distressed by Anne's absences. He believed that she was thoroughly enjoying both her own protest and Mrs. Eliott's society. And the arrangement really solved the problem nicely. Otherwise the whole thing was trivial to him. He remained unaware of the tremendous spiritual conflict that was being waged round the person of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that's what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't marry, my dear fellow; don't ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Fontenelle's phrase more nearly than that of the English translator describes Rapin. Though Rapin's erudition was great, he escaped the quagmire of pedantry. He refers most frequently to the scholiasts and editors in "The First Part" (which is so trivial that one wonders why he ever troubled to accumulate so much insignificant material), but after quoting them he does not hesitate to call their ideas "pedantial" (p. 24) and to refer to their statements as grammarian's ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... little experience and less responsibility, and they apparently thought that they were going to transform the land between the rising and setting of the sun. They produced endless ordinances, and scarce a day went by save that a number of new regulations were issued, some trivial, some striking at the oldest and most cherished institutions in the country. The Government was changed from an absolute monarchy to one where the King governed only by the advice of his Ministers. The power of direct address to the throne was denied ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... many a poet and—in later times—many an investigator has set his feet. It would not be worthy of us, whom science and technical ability has raised to so high an intellectual position as explorers of Nature in every field—should we neglect anything however trivial, deeming ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... this time undergoing a great change. There was an end of his old careless acceptance of things. He laughed less and performed apparently trivial actions with an earnestness which had its comical side. And he began to display an appearance of self-respect which seemed ill-justified by his position and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... matters of fact, but in matters of fact of the most familiar, the least animating, and the most unpleasant kind; but he relies for the effect of novelty on the microscopic minuteness with which he dissects the most trivial objects—and for the interest he excites, on the unshrinking determination with which he handles the most painful. His poetry has an official and professional air. He is called in to cases of difficult births, of fractured limbs, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... these technical devices we shall find that there are four kinds of experiences whose records are carefully stored away in our minds. Some were always so far from the center of our attention that we could swear they never had been ours; others, although once present in consciousness, were so trivial and unimportant that it seems ridiculous to suppose them conserved; others never came into our waking minds at all and entered our lives only in special states, such as sleep or delirium or dreams. All these we should expect to forget; the astonishing thing is that they ever ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... part, as a means of fighting the Provisional Government, preached the opposite doctrine, that of sabotage. In every manner possible they encouraged the workers to limit production, to waste time and materials, strike for trivial reasons, and, in short, do all that was possible to defeat the effort to place ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... by what she had been about to say as a trivial thing,—"that I wish what the old woman said was true. I wish it with all my heart. She was like what I think a mother must be to me. I have always been running away to her, ever since you brought me first. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Bethel, Virginia; the ambush of a Union railroad train at Vienna Station; and Lyon's skirmish, which scattered the first collection of rebels at Boonville, Missouri. Comparatively speaking all these were trivial in numbers of dead and wounded—the first few drops of blood before the heavy sanguinary showers the future was destined to bring. But the effect upon the public was irritating and painful to a degree entirely out of proportion to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... is no difficulty about interesting children. The real difficulty is to bore them. Almost any tale will interest a child. It need not be well constructed or thrilling; it may be filled with the most unexciting and trivial incidents, but so long as it carries the mind along at all, it will interest a child. The hunger which intelligent children have for stories is almost inexhaustible. They like to have their stories repeated, and insist that the characters should reappear over and over again, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... out of mere curiosity, I walked down to the offices to ask a trivial question about my baggage. It was easy to turn the talk to other matters connected with the voyage ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... very curious circumstance, showing how sometimes records of the most trivial and insignificant things come down to us from ancient times in a clear and certain form, while all that is really important to know is involved in doubt and obscurity—that the household expense-book of Anne at Middleham is still extant, showing all the little items of expense ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... foolishness, the strangest thing of all. Lazarus thinks that his curer was God himself who came and dwelt in flesh among those he had made, and went in and out among them healing and teaching, and then died. "It is strange, but why write of trivial matters when things of price call every moment for remark? Forget it, my ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... is all, the form cannot a second time be galvanized into life. Pastoral, relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... could." That was high praise. She had brought her best to her Lord. Perhaps some of us make too much of our little acts and trivial sacrifices. Little things are acceptable if they are really our best. But Mary's deed was not a small one. The ointment she brought was very costly. She did not use just a little of this precious nard, but poured it all out on the head and feet of Jesus. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... of serious history connected with these letters which I was the first I think to discover. They were intended to satirise the trivial scraps brought forward in Mrs. Norton's matrimonial case—Norton v. Lord Melbourne. My late friend, "Charles Dickens the younger," as he used to call himself, in his notes on Pickwick, puts aside this theory altogether as a mere unfounded ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... are asked what did you then, when all the world was red, And some shall say, "I fell in France," and some, "I mourned my dead;" With all the brave assembled there in glory long to live, How trivial our lives shall seem who had but gold ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... cap in hand. The clergyman said no more. He was one of those sensitive men who often know instinctively whether or not their words find response in the heart of the hearer, and to whom it is always a pain to say anything, even the most trivial, which awakes no feeling ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... opportunity Erskine had ever enjoyed of speaking to Gertrude at leisure and alone. Yet their conversation had never been so commonplace. She, liking the game, played very well and chatted indifferently; he played badly, and broached trivial topics in spite of himself. After an hour-and-a-half's play, Gertrude had announced that this game must be their last. He thought desperately that if he were to miss many more strokes the game must presently end, and an opportunity which might ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized world to be trivial and positively bad, or whether the significance which this civilized world attributes to the works of Shakespeare was itself senseless. My consternation was increased by the fact that I always keenly felt the beauties of poetry in every form; then why ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... is the basis of this book: on this basis, which is poetic, a spiritual motive, the whole creation is raised, and the book is destined to be more than an occasional account of travel or an amusing but trivial display of wit and fancy. It is a poem, and a poem, as ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... and "Dead Souls." One reveals an extraordinary power of condensation: the other an infinite expansion. One deals with heroes and mighty exploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and the most trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; the other a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the most brilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of the Romantic spirit—Aspiration; the other looks at life through an achromatic lens, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author. 'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like Cato, a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial, nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness of ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... a God, to Him there can be nothing mean and nothing great. The most trivial things must be equal under His regard as the most august. All-powerful, omniscient, and omnipresent, He must encompass all things, and pervade all things. Ignorant of nothing, forgetting nothing, despising nothing, He ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the Association he also delivered his well-known lecture to working men "On a Piece of Chalk," a perfect example of the handling of a common and trivial subject, so as to make it] "a window into the Infinite." [He was particularly interested in the success of the meeting, as his friend Hooker was President, and writes to Darwin, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... so as to prove to my enemies that they were powerless to disturb my peace of mind. Study became my refuge and consolation; and I plunged into work with the energy of despair. I should probably still live at Sainte-Marthe now, had it not been for a trivial circumstance. One day I had a quarrel with my most determined enemy, a girl named Anais de Rochecote. I was a thousand times right; and I would not yield. The superior dared not tell me I was wrong. Anais was furious, and wrote ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... is true, for the publication of my reply in the July number were a little later re-opened by Dr. Adler, on receiving advice from a legal friend of his own that to publish it would be his wisest course; but he himself broke them off on a trivial pretext, after receiving contrary advice from Dr. Royce's counsel, together with a copy of the legal protest sent to me personally. Thus Dr. Royce himself, recalling his original consent, procured the ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... widely diffused and plentiful mineral, and seems to belong almost equally to all geological formations. 2. Eagle cents issued in 1858 are of no value to collectors, because they lack rarity. 3. Your exchange is too trivial. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... captain's stand-point, the confusion had a very grave aspect; while from that of the seamen, it was a matter of trivial consequence. The commander was mortified to find the discipline so weak; and he could have no confidence in himself or his crew until his orders were promptly obeyed. He was thinking only of the welfare of the ship and her crew. He had no intention of punishing the students, when he suggested the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... said he, waving his hand at me; "I am only beginning. Those are trivial cases of alteration. Surgery can do better things than that. There is building up as well as breaking down and changing. You have heard, perhaps, of a common surgical operation resorted to in cases where the nose has been ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... as Bert it presented itself as a series of incidents, some immense, some trivial, but collectively incoherent. He never had a sense of any plain issue joined, of any point struggled for and won or lost. He saw tremendous things happen and in the end his world darkened to disaster ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... At the confessional Leonora opened her heart to the priest. It is probable that he communicated with the governor. De Soto's indignation was thoroughly roused. He summoned the culprit before him. Tobar, deeming his offense a very trivial one, without hesitation acknowledged it, thinking, perhaps, that he might receive some slight reprimand. He was not a little surprised when the governor said ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... discuss them further," she responded, with an effort at smiling ease. "Evidently you do not appreciate that to the majority of the strong women of the country whose husbands have been sent to Washington as members of the Government social interests seem trivial compared with the great public questions they are required to consider. These women doubtless feel little inclination for fashionable and—or—frivolous festivities, and find an occasion like this better suited to their conception of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. Such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. But in little stories, which record the domestic incidents of familiar ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... highest duty. To have the best nations, the free and civilized nations, disarm and leave the despotisms and barbarisms with great military force, would be a calamity compared to which the calamities caused by all the wars of the nineteenth century would be trivial. Yet it is not easy to see how we can by international agreement state exactly which power ceases to be free and civilized and which comes near the line of barbarism or despotism. For example, I suppose it would be very difficult to get ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... daughter of Xixona, our dearest Rebecca was no more dead than you and I; and it was in his rage and fury against Ivanhoe that Isaac told that cavalier the falsehood which caused the knight so much pain and such a prodigious deal of bloodshed to the Moors: and who knows, trivial as it may seem, whether it was not that very circumstance which caused the destruction in Spain of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away as he spoke he might have observed that her fingers tightened their grip of the pearls almost convulsively, as if to break the rope. It was a gesture slight and trivial, yet arguing perhaps vexation. But Tremayne did not see it, and had he seen it, it is odds it would have conveyed no ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... broken; but, despite these manifest facial defects, and notwithstanding the squalor of his surroundings, a very high collar and a red necktie gave him the unmistakable air of the cheap dandy. Again I gave a civil evasion to the girl's trivial question, and as I did so her companion, looking over her frowzy pompadour, stared at me with insolent familiarity. I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... why not read good healthy stuff, which will be of permanent use to you in your journey through the world? Why devour garbage when rich meats are constantly about you? 'To stuff our minds with what is simply trivial, simply curious, or that which at best has but a low nutritive power, this is to close our minds to what is solid and enlarging and spiritually sustaining.'[27] Look at it which way you will, the man who purposely neglects the great books deliberately ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Coniers—they advanced southward, and began to appear formidable to the Government. Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, was ordered by Edward to march against them at the head of a body of Welshmen; and he was joined by five thousand archers, under the command of Stafford, Earl of Devonshire. But a trivial difference about quarters having begotten an animosity between these two noblemen, the Earl of Devonshire retired with his archers, and left Pembroke alone ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... quite often. He was always amusing, always agreeable, interested in all sorts of things, ready to give his undivided attention to any sort of a problem, no matter how trivial, to consider it attentively, and to find for it a fair and square deliberate solution. This is exceedingly comforting to the feminine mind. He taught Gringo not to "jump up"; he found out what was the matter with the Gold of Ophir cutting; he discovered ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died; with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith—but why all this of what he saith? Why write of trivial matters, things of price Calling at every moment for remark? I noticed on the margin of a pool 280 Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, Aboundeth, very nitrous. It ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... we take shame to ourselves for admitting that there are points which, after all, we do not comprehend. They may be trivial; but in making up testimony, it is the little things which have weight. Trifles light as air are confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ, and confutation no less strong. When, as a proof of Nat's ardor in the pursuit of knowledge, we are told that he walked ten miles after ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the strokes of fate we have curiously trivial demonstrations. Lorne met Hesketh's eye with the steadiness of a lion's in his own; the unusual thing he did was to take his hands out of his pockets and let his arms hang loosely by his side. It was as tragic a gesture of helplessness as if he had ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... negligence. and made even their last efforts seem only the exuberances or flowering-off of a mind capable of higher excellencies, but unambitious to attain them. There was nothing to alarm or overpower. On whatever topic she touched, trivial or severe, it was alike en badinant; but in the midst of this sportiveness, her genius poured itself forth in a thousand delightful fancies, and scattered new graces and ornaments on every object within its sphere. In its wanderings from the trifles of the day to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... number of women who are nervous, which means they have not control of their nerves, but let them run away with them. Sometimes this is shown in palpitation of the heart, headache, backache, and many other disorders. There may be a tendency to cry at trivial things, or a feeling of having "the blues." The cause usually can be found in uncongenial surroundings or occupation, loss of friends, or real or fancied troubles. Whatever the cause, it should be removed, if possible, and measures taken to restore the worn out nerves that are crying ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial. ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... health; and it is not my custom to give passages to total strangers, especially when by so doing I should run the risk of embroiling myself with the Spanish authorities, with whom I have no quarrel. No, Senor, you must pardon my seeming churlishness in refusing so apparently trivial a favour, but I decline to associate myself in any way with the quarrel between your country and Spain. I have the honour to bid ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... edifice, varied with uncorresponding masses: and the mind of the Italian we find similarly irregular, a thing of various and ungovernable impulse, without fixed principle of action; the Englishman's, regular and uniform in its emotions, steady in its habits, and firm even in its most trivial determinations. ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... more successful in now and then starting a great bore;[I-13] and the others, having left all their own ordinary affairs and subjects of interest at home, were glad to make a matter of importance of the most trivial occurrence. A mighty poet, said the former class—who could it possibly be?—All names were recited—all Britain scrutinized, from Highland hills to the Lakes of Cumberland—from Sydenham Common to St. James's ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... to me to say, in his case: "You can speak with supreme excellence; sing with considerable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require clear speech; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves? Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... with the facts of vertebrate comparative anatomy, the distinguishing characteristics of the primates seem to be trivial in nature. It is surprising to find how insignificant are the details to which appeal must be made in order to draw a line between our own division of mammalia and the others. It is well to review them as they are given in the standard text-books of comparative anatomy. Primates are ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the old-time 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 ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... under-robes, Euryale secretly rejoiced at the accident. She remembered that when her 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... places, and the interchange of results by telegraph, would put the weather, as it were, in our power, by betraying its ambushes before it is ready to give the assault. At first sight, nothing seems more drolly trivial than the lives of those whose single achievement is to record the wind and the temperature three times a day. Yet such men are doubtless sent into the world for this special end, and perhaps there is no kind of accurate observation, whatever its object, ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... have chosen, to permit so mean a thing as you to live. As for the old fool beside you, who thought to stay my power with his box of tricks—his gas-box is already being analyzed by my chemists, and in a few hours the trivial secret will ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... question, specially presented by an illegal body, under electoral arrangements made by its new officers,—which officers not only receive, but count the votes, and make the returns,— while all the rest is merely unimportant and trivial. It is just the sort of sovereignty for which Louis Napoleon provided when he wished to procure a popular sanction for the numberless atrocities of the coup-d'etat of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... immensely improved during the next twenty years. Education has almost banished drunkenness from Germany; and had England no drunkenness, no thriftlessness, no reckless multiplication, our social miseries would be comparatively trivial. ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... lines of Caleb's face, and his absorbed and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the trivialities about him. But, trivial things, invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... moment with thoughts which seemed to mark him a century beyond his compeers; "purchased by that single moment of suffering called death. It is mine, my beloved, and shall be thine; and oh, when we meet there, how trivial will seem the dark woes and boding cares of earth! I have told thee the vision of my vigil, Agnes, my beloved; again I have seen that blessed spirit, aye, and there was no more sadness on his pale brow, naught, naught of earth—spiritualized, etherealized. He hovered ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... to the last of the opinions of Confucius which I shall make the subject of remark in this place. A commentator observes, with reference to the inquiry about recompensing injury with kindness, that the questioner was asking only about trivial matters, which might be dealt with in the way he mentioned, while great offences, such as those against a sovereign or a father, could not be dealt with by such an inversion of the principles of justice [5]. In the second Book of the Li Chi there is the following passage:— 'With the slayer of ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... quiet directness of manner. He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech without the usual lowering of the voice. And it is just that small drop of half a tone that invites further confidence. In such small matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by such trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived. The man or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers to the listener's opinion, and usually receives it. The manner with which Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... journal is that which contains the discussion of the politics of the day. In America three-quarters of the enormous sheet which is set before the reader are filled with advertisements, and the remainder is frequently occupied by political intelligence or trivial anecdotes: it is only from time to time that one finds a corner devoted to passionate discussions like those with which the journalists of France are wont ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... their return from Brighton that he broke out, first on some trivial occasion, and cursed her aloud. He said he hated the sight of her pale face, for it always reminded him of ruin and misery; that he had the greatest satisfaction in telling her that he was utterly ruined; that his father was dead, and had ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... that her master should appear at such time as seemed most opportune for her purposes. And how must every unconscious action, every innocent saying have been noted down in the tablets of that crafty mind! What explanation, indeed, could be given of those trivial caresses now so surely magnified and distorted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... help or strength, when the whole heart leaps to the lips, or pleads dumbly, in its great need. Notwithstanding all teachings to the point, it never really occurred to her that God had as quick and sympathetic an ear for a little prayer of few words over some trivial worry, given silently in the busy kitchen, or on the crowded street, as He had for those when she knelt down at night, and absently asked for her daily bread, and to forgive as she was forgiven, and then get properly into bed and refrained ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... he ran from Bethany, and offered himself to betray his Master to them, if they would give him a considerable reward. They agreed for thirty pieces of silver.' In a case so memorable as this, nothing is or can be trivial; and even that curiosity is not unhallowed which has descended to inquire what sum, at that era of Jewish history, this expression might indicate. The bishop replies thus:—'Of what value each piece was, is uncertain; but their own nation ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... opinion had long been a subject of amicable dispute between them: but, Latterly, the contest was getting to be too important to admit of trivial discussions on the part of Marmaduke, whose acute discernment was already catching faint glimmerings of the important events that were in embryo. The sparks of dissension soon kindled into a blaze; and the colonies, or rather, as they quickly declared themselves, THE STATES, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... longest I've ever spent. Sometimes she seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her grandfather, the garden, or her cats—all sorts of inconsequent, trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind—never once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked the time.... Each hour she grew visibly weaker. John Ford sat by her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound; sometimes she rubbed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and anxious to allay her fears. The incident was by no means trivial, as he knew. Passengers on the great transatlantic steamers are safeguarded by every possible means; and the fact that he had been attacked in the few minutes that the deck lights had been out of order pointed to an espionage that was both close ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... save. It's whether we can save any! How dirty lace curtains get! It must be the soft coal—yes, it is a life and death struggle—I must see to Ariadne's underwear. It is too warm for these sunny days.—Oh! Oh! Paul and I have quarreled! And what about! About such sickeningly trivial things—how badly 'Stashie dusts! There are rolls of dust under the piano—but I thought people only quarreled—quarreled terribly—over great things: unfaithfulness, cruelty, differences in religion! Oh, if I only now had a religion, a religion which would—Yes, Ariadne; but ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... found himself quite unexpectedly upon the high road to Red Chief's Crossing. Cass knew by the lurid cloud of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had passed. He had already reached that stage of superstition when the most trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or corroboration of his imaginings. Thus abstracted, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... I should have preferred his waiting for more favourable weather. He accomplished much under the circumstances, but would have done more in better weather. I am afraid he was anxious to get back to the ball. This is a bad time for such things. We have too grave subjects on hand to engage in such trivial amusements. I would rather his officers should entertain themselves in fattening their horses, healing their men, and recruiting their regiments. There are too many Lees on the committee. I like all to be present at ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... the day when I loved you. It was so small, and cramped, and selfish, before—and life was so hard, and stupid, and purposeless. To live, to sleep, to eat, for some years, and then to die—it was so trivial and so material. But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me. And everything appears beautiful. London Bridge, King William Street, Abchurch Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the almanacs and the shining ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... impression which exists. Yet a love of truth compels me to observe—only in a very slight sound, approaching to a whisper—that there are indications of the ravages of the worm, both at the beginning and end; but very, very trivial. It is bound like the preceding volume; and measures thirteen inches and nearly three quarters, by about nine inches ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... can be said, and is said, against the literature of information, I do not for a moment deny. It is shapeless, it is trivial, it may give an unreal air of knowledge, it unquestionably lies along with the rest of popular literature under the general indictment that it may spoil the chance of better work, certainly by wasting time, possibly by ruining taste. But these obvious objections are the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... correct view is that any considerable sum of money paid to a child at that child's request is an advancement; thus payment of a son's debts of honour has been held to be an advancement. On the other hand, trivial gifts and presents to a child are ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... difficult of application. Yet a criticism may be worth making which rests only on probabilities or impressions. Great disputes will arise about the merits of different passages, about what is truly characteristic and original or trivial and borrowed. Many have thought the Laws to be one of the greatest of Platonic writings, while in the judgment of Mr. Grote they hardly rise above the level of the forged epistles. The manner in which a writer would or would not have written at a particular time of life must be acknowledged ...
— Laws • Plato
... the public to the play brought in its train some annoyance to the author: "I find success, even in the most trivial things, raises the indignation of scribblers," he wrote to Parnell on March 18th, "for I, for my 'What D'ye Call It' could neither escape the fury of Mr. Burnet or the German doctor. Then, where will rage end when Homer is to be translated? ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... such events with good taste and then will present them so that they will have a bearing upon the more important phases of the man's life and character. Hundreds of the stories told about Lincoln would be trivial but for the fact that they help us better to understand the real ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... come there during my sleep under unusual circumstances and from a very different life, but the thought didn't disturb me or trouble my mind in any way. My chief emotion was a curious feeling of expectancy. I knew that I was about to have some new and curious experience, something not trivial, and I was eager to ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... there is nothing over which contention can arise. What crimes are committed are punished with a severity seemingly out of all proportion to what you would call justice. A persistent offender even of fairly trivial wrongdoing is put to death without compunction. There is no imprisonment, except for those awaiting trial. Punishment is a reprimand with the threat of death if the offense is committed again, or death itself immediately. ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... maybe you will not hereafter set it down to my reproach that I wasted an hour of a May morning in a denunciation of Jargon, and in exhorting you upon a technical matter at first sight so trivial as the choice between abstract ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... placed chairs and hassocks for their master, their mistress, and the noble stranger. Another low chair, or rather a sort of stool, was placed close beside that of Master Heriot; and though the circumstance was trivial, Nigel was induced to notice it, because, when about to occupy that seat, he was prevented by a sign from the old gentleman, and motioned to another of somewhat more elevation. The clergyman took his station behind the reading-desk. The domestics, a numerous family ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... up and raising a paw scraped at her hand, until she opened it, when he thrust his chin into her palm. It was a trivial incident, but it somehow ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... to bring. Thus the time was, and not so many years ago either, when the newsman constantly brought home to our doors— though I am afraid not to our hearts, which were custom-hardened— the most terrific accounts of murders, of our fellow-creatures being publicly put to death for what we now call trivial offences, in the very heart of London, regularly every Monday morning. At the same time the newsman regularly brought to us the infliction of other punishments, which were demoralising to the innocent part of the community, ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... circumstanced as we were, I pointed out to Kitty that an engagement ring was the outward and visible sign of her dignity as an engaged girl; and that she must forthwith come to Hamilton's to be measured for one. Up to that moment, I give you my word, we had completely forgotten so trivial a matter. To Hamilton's we accordingly went on the 15th of April, 1885. Remember that—whatever my doctor may say to the contrary—I was then in perfect health, enjoying a well- balanced mind and an absolute tranquil spirit. Kitty and I entered Hamilton's ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... how sagacious, how mathematically ordered! we exclaim; but we gaze without emotion, and we turn away without regret. It does not vex us to read how Ghirlandajo used to scold his prentices for neglecting trivial orders that would fill his purse with money. Similar traits of character pain us with a sense of impropriety in Perugino. They harmonise with all we feel about the work of Ghirlandajo. It is bitter mortification to know that Michael Angelo ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... kissed her tears away, she begged him to tell her what he still actually owed, and, after some little demur, he consented. The amount of the debt, which lay heavily on his conscience, was comparatively a trivial thing to her. But when he had told her all, she looked at him with eyes which, although very loving, were ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... last satisfactorily settled, and the night of June 2 was fixed for the attempt. On this night the officers whose good will had been secured were to be on guard, and the plot seemed easy of execution. But once more the innate in decision of Maximilian's character interfered. For some trivial cause he postponed the venture, and thus lost his last opportunity. Too many were in the secret for it to remain one. Some one made disclosures, which reached the ears of the authorities, and led to ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, forfeited in ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... peoples. The suckauhock with its varying shades of purple was particularly beautiful. Its value was double that of the white and the darker its color, the more highly it was prized. But the laborious method of production imparted no trivial value to ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... to the representatives of the Atlantic as well as of the Western states. Most of our European readers will, we think, agree with us, that, considering the entire absence of provocation, and the infinitely trivial nature of the matter in dispute, these rhetorical flourishes are without parallel in ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that Mrs. C.S. PEEL does not deserve well of her country. She is evidently a capable person and hustled about the country for the Ministry of Food to some purpose before the days of compulsory rationing. Her general idea seems to be that simple folk are tremendously interested in the most trivial and indirect details of important folk. So she will tell you how Sir HENRY REW and Mr. ULICK WINTOUR were fond of tea (Sir HENRY liked a bun as well); how Mr. KENNEDY JONES once lent her his car; how Lord DEVONPORT, asked if biscuits were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... interesting to remark, even in apparently trivial things, how all nature is full of compensating processes. We give our servants household bread, while we live on the finest of the wheat ourselves. The mistress eats that which pleases the eye more, the maid what sustains and nourishes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... him. He had a box strapped to his shoulders containing divers articles of traffic, and appeared to be one of those itinerant traders who often resorted to Alhama and the other garrison towns under pretext of vending trivial merchandise, such as amulets, perfumes, and trinkets, but who often produced rich shawls, golden chains and necklaces, and valuable ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... fascinated me. Were these flickering shadows shadows, or—or had Kniaz, after all, spoken the truth when he said this valley was haunted? The moonlight rendered every object I looked upon so startlingly vivid, that not even the most trivial detail escaped my notice, and the more I scrutinized the more firmly the conviction grew on me that I was in a neighbourhood differing essentially from any spot I had hitherto visited. I saw nothing ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... bring the end of his cane down upon the ground with a tremendous thump, and gesticulate like a man laboring under strong excitement; but this was nothing out of the ordinary, for Major Jimmy had been known to get excited over the most trivial discussion; on one occasion, indeed, he had even mounted a dry-goods box, and, as the boys expressed ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... holy task of training mind Is not a trivial thing, Its influence lives, grows and expands Till harvest it ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... characterises the old buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the Market Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, with its ground-floor ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of what they are destined to become. We are comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell or taste or feeling. Every generation makes the discovery, that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and faculty misapplied and debauched. The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God? Are we to be put off and amused in this life, as ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... The woman had been at home almost a twelvemonth, and Caius had some natural interest in questioning Morrison as to her welfare and general demeanour. The strange gaunt creature had for his imagination very much the fascination that a ghost would have had. We care to hear all about a ghost, however trivial the details may be, but we desire no personal contact. Caius had no wish to meet this woman, for whom he felt repulsion, but he would have been interested to hear Neddy Morrison describe her least action, ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... say: "What a tempest in a teapot?" To many this may seem a very trivial affair, but how small a thing can influence our lives! A breath, the passing of a summer shower, may help or hinder plans which alter our entire lives. And Miss Preston was wise enough to understand it. ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... inspired, but improved, by order and symmetry. There was nothing in it to dazzle by wildness, and surprise by eccentricity. It was of a higher species of moral beauty. It contained everything great and elevated, but it had no false or trivial ornament. It was not the model cried up by fashion and circumstance: its excellence was adapted to the true and just moral taste, incapable of change from the varying accidents of manners, of opinions, and times. General Washington is not the idol of a day, ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... worked hard each afternoon, and conscientiously, only to be filled at the last with despair and despondence. She had read, re-read, written and re-written it, until she knew every word by heart, and all seemed stale, dull, and trivial. ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... not strange that so many controversies about more or less trivial matters should have obscured in the minds of both Englishmen and Americans the fundamental identity of aim and purpose in the larger things of life. For notwithstanding the German influence in America which has had an undue ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... appears to have given occasion for the first skit, and it was scarcely necessary to do more than parody the grandiloquent newspaper language. "The clouds soon dissipated, and the appearance of the azure vault left trivial hopes of further needful supplies from the uncorked bottles of heaven. In a few moments the horizon was again overshadowed, and an almost impenetrable gloom mantled the face of the skies.... The majestic roar of disploded thunders, now bursting with a sudden crash, and now wasting ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... critical secretary, so keen in detecting conversational inaccuracies, having but two words to quote from a printed document, got one of them wrong. But this trivial comment must not lead the careful reader to neglect to note how much is made of what is really nothing at all. The word aleatory, whether used in its original and limited sense, or in its derived extension as a technical term of the civil law, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the first time I looked upon Blanche, I felt that I had at last found the gift rarely accorded to us here,—the fulfilment of a promise hidden in every heart, but often waited for in vain. Hitherto my all-sufficing self-hood had never been stirred by the mighty touch of Love. I had been amused by trivial and superficial affections, like the gay triflers of whom Rasselas says, 'They fancied they were in love, when in truth they were only idle.' But that sentiment which is never twice inspired, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... not refer to the bets upon horseflesh at Ascot, Epsom, and Goodwood, by which fortunes change owners in an hour and so many men are ruined, but rather to the general habit of betting upon any and every subject to settle a question, no matter how trivial, for which the Englishman is everywhere renowned on the Continent. Betting is with most other nations a form of speech, but with Englishmen it is a serious fact, and no one will be long in their company without finding an opinion backed up by a bet. It would not be very difficult ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... and rare exigencies or emergencies, which constitute the justa causa of dissembling or misleading, whether it be extreme as the defence of life, or a duty as the custody of a secret, or of a personal nature as to repel an impertinent inquirer, or a matter too trivial to provoke question, as in dealing with children or madmen, there seem to be ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... was within a few paces of her now. There was a smile upon his lips, and in that smile she saw the final confirmation of her fears. When Leopold of Lutha smiled his upper lip curved just a trifle into a shadow of a sneer. It was a trivial characteristic that Barney Custer did not share ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in thoughts of a different nature, but she managed to reply to her ladyship, and occasionally ventured a remark upon some trivial matters. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... morality is that of a highly respectable British cynic; his intelligence is largely one of trifles; he is wise over trivial and trumpery things. He delights in reminding us—with an air!—that everybody is a humbug; that we are all rank snobs; that to misuse your aspirates is to be ridiculous and incapable of real merit; that Miss Blank has just slipped out to post a letter to Captain ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray. The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... After the sixth century no monuments were built at all rivalling in scale the creations of the former period. The later churches were, with few exceptions, relatively small and trivial. Neither the plan nor the general aspect of Hagia Sophia seems to have been imitated in these later works. The crown of dome-windows was replaced by a cylindrical drum under the dome, which was usually of insignificant size. The exterior was treated ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... course of my travels, I found myself at Denver in Colorado. We stayed here, at first, one day only, to break our journey farther up into the Rocky Mountains. The previous day, when wandering about Colorado Springs, my friend and I had come across a lady doctor by chance; and having asked some trivial question, we were invited into her pretty little house, where we chatted for half-an-hour on various subjects—including spiritualism. We gave no account of our experiences, but simply mentioned the fact that we had some interest in ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... sickness had received the most friendly treatment from everybody, were in general just as indifferent as the rest; and I do not believe that any one among them would have gone half a mile out of his road, or have sacrificed the most trivial self-gratification to serve us. Okotook and Iligliuk, whom I had most loaded with presents, and who had never offered me a single free gift in return, put into my hand, at the time of their first removal from Winter Island, a dirty, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... hand, such an enterprise on our part, if directed against Spanish commerce on the seas, as was suggested by several excellent officers, would have had but a trivial objective. The commerce of Spain was cut up, root and branch, by our expeditions against her colonies, Cuba and Manila; for her most important trade depended upon monopoly of the colonial markets. The slight ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... far concealed. And yet this young man has the self-confidence to come to me and to demand your hand as though it were a matter of course that I should accede to so trivial a request. It is, as a matter of course, quite impossible. You understand that; do you not?" When she did not answer him at once, he repeated the question. "I ask you whether you do not feel that it ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... who presides over it; while theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy, make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is, that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the Virgin and the Saints. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... be in all matters of business subjected to the ministration of these gentry: and what a pity it is that some steady Englishmen will not qualify themselves to fulfil their functions. But, from the most important diplomatic negotiations down to the most trivial matter of convenience, procedure can only be had through such agency: at least almost without exception at present, whatever revolutions may lurk in the recent studies of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... from these trivial and slightly interesting comic songs to poems of a serious import, which played so important a part in Goliardic literature, must of necessity be abrupt. It forms no part of my present purpose to exhibit the Wandering Students in their capacity as ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... Maelstrom in which the tiny boat is engulfed, and the sensations of the fishermen—awe, wonder, horror, curiosity, hope, alternating or intermingled—are described with the same quiet precision as the trivial preliminary adventures. The man's dreary expectation of incredulity seals our conviction of the truth of his story. In The Manuscript Found in a Bottle, too, we may trace the first suggestion of that idea which finds ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead |
