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More "Trifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... artificially withdrawn from running streams for the purpose of irrigation is such as very sensibly to affect their volume, and it is, therefore, an important element in the geography of rivers. Brooks of no trifling current are often wholly diverted from their natural channels to supply the canals, and their entire mass of water is completely absorbed or evaporated, so that only such proportion as is transmitted by infiltration reaches the river they originally fed. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the autumn for many months. As we glance at the enormous fireplaces and ovens in the kitchens of those castles and halls, and remember the weight of the armor men wore, we can readily imagine that no trifling supply of brawn and beef was needed for their meals; and the sight of a husband frowning out of one of those old helmets because the dinner was scanty, must have been a fearful trial to feminine nerves. The title ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... command the combined forces; but that would be in plain disregard of General Fremont's order, the authority for which nobody knew, but in comparison with which the Articles of War or the Army Regulations were at that time regarded as practically of trifling consequence. The question was settled, or rather avoided (for there was no satisfactory settlement of it), by the proposition that Colonel Plummer, who proposed to go in pursuit of the enemy, should take with him, besides his own brigade, such portion of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... history, with her most terrible enemy in her own land of Italy. It is little to be wondered at therefore that this was in the main a century of religious depression, a time when the fear of the gods filled every man's heart and when every trifling apparent irregularity in the course of nature was exaggerated into a portent declaring the wrath of the gods and needing some immediate and extraordinary propitiation. It is in just such a moment as this in the middle ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... unsuccessful, had not been abandoned, and as she sat in the little porch on that particular afternoon, idle because she could not fix her attention upon book or work, it seemed as if the years of her early life among the mountains stood out with more than usual distinctness. Among other trifling objects, there was suddenly recalled to her memory a box which used always to stand in Mrs. Maverick's little bed-room, and which had looked wonderfully attractive to her childish eyes on account of a flowered red and green paper with which it was covered. Once, overcome with ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... stared. "With HER!" she repeated. This was a new idea. Was it possible that this common, ignorant girl was playing and trifling with her golden opportunity? "Then you are not quite sure of her?" she said ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... were drawn from the condition of its blinds and curtains, the costumes visible at its windows, the cabs at its door, its visitors admitted or rejected, its articles of furniture delivered or carried away; and the subtle serious humour of it all, the truth in trifling bits of character, and the gradual progress into a half-romantic interest, had enchanted the skilled novelist. She was well into the second volume of her small romance before she left, being as far as her observation ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that coffee and cakes could be obtained for the trifling sum of ten cents, that corned-beef hash was a specialty, and that as for Bob's chicken soup it was the best in the Bowery. Apparently attracted by this statement, Mr. Ricketty sat down, and intimated to a large young man who presented ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... expectation. Men are willing to be deceived, but it must not be a labeled deceit. I go down the street and meet Mr. Seyhmoor; although I see him a block off, and before he sees me, yet I affect great surprise when he greets me—a little start is quite effective. The trifling little deception floods my face with color, which comes almost at my command. It easily flashes upon him that I am indeed surprised, and betrayed into an expression of my delight. He is flattered. He joins me. A batch of envious ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... depth and silence of the night;—''twas bitter cold, and they were sick at heart, and not a mouse stirring.' The attention to minute sounds,—naturally associated with the recollection of minute objects, and the more familiar and trifling, the more impressive from the unusualness of their producing any impression at all—gives a philosophic pertinency to this last image; but it has likewise its dramatic use and purpose. For its commonness in ordinary conversation ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... was beneath a gentleman's notice. But Dr. Morgan had pretended to be his friend. He dwelt on all his intercourse with him, and weighed every conversation that he remembered. There came to him half a hundred trifling circumstances that seemed to ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... Frenchman and only twenty years old, but with a duke for an uncle, or a queen's favorite for a sister, pranced on his managed charger at the head of the regiment as its colonel. Nor was this all. The worthy veteran might, on some trifling quarrel, be deprived of the rank he had won with his sweat and his blood, and sent back to his paternal hawk's nest, a broken and disgraced man. The cahiers demand that there shall be no more dismissals without trial; and many of them ask that particular ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... rather limited; and having twenty times the abilities of Allan Ramsay and of Fergusson he talked of them with too much humility as his models. He was much caressed in Edinburgh, but the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling." Laudatur et alget. Burns went from those meetings, where he had been posing professors (no hard task), and turning the heads of duchesses, to share a bed in the garret of a writer's apprentice,—they paid ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... work on London is a book of such general interest, that the additions and corrections, which I shall continue from time to time to offer to your readers, will not, I think, be deemed impertinent or trifling. Let it not be imagined, for one single instant, that I wish to depreciate Mr. Cunningham's labours. On the contrary, his book is one of the most delightful publications relative to our great city which we possess. And let me candidly say, if I were to select only ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... it was no trifling task swaying the heavy guns out of the holds of the two lighters that brought them out to us early in the morning from the gun-wharf, one of these craft coming under our mainyard on either side; for, the guns were long ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Some trifling quarrel, that might perhaps have been settled by five minutes of common-sense arbitration, led to this fierce fray, in the midst of which Jesse Benton, brother of the colonel, fired at Jackson with a huge pistol, loaded to the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... constitution; you contend that the king's instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But these instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct on some trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended, in council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to you, the law of the land, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... price, and the whole surplus quantity remained a dead weight on this market only; whereas other branches of manufactures, practically enjoying no protection, in the case of depressed trade at home, had an opportunity of immediate relief, by spreading the surplus thereby created, at a very trifling sacrifice, over the wide markets ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... signatures to promissory notes and to mortgages on their lands or cattle, their horses, sheep, crops, and chattels. Of course there was a little interest to be paid on the indebtedness, but as it was merely a trifling one and a half per centum per month or eighteen per cent yearly, it was of no consequence. And it was so easy to pay your debts. Just think of it, people bought everything they needed and longed for at the ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... no importance, Merriman was a little intrigued, and he looked more closely at the vehicle. As he did so his surprise grew and his trifling interest became mystification. The lorry was the same. At least there on the top was the casting, just as he had seen it. It was inconceivable that two similar lorries should have two identical castings arranged in the same way, ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... by a man who was young when the men he is talking about were old, are apt to give prominence to trifles, to little follies and eccentricities. Let nobody think that there was anything trifling or ludicrous about John Davis. He was a great, strong, wise man, a champion and tower of strength. He not only respected, but embodied the great traditions and opinions of Massachusetts in the great days, after the generation of the Revolution had left the state when she ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... sort at the shortest notice. The people were not disposed to pay the value of his lost bullocks, and they could not be found. While he was meditating his revenge, his relation, Dhokul Partuk, was by a trifling accident driven to take the field as a robber. An oil- vender, a female, from a neighbouring village, had presumed to come to Peernuggur, and offer oil for sale. The oil-venders of the town, dreading the consequences of such competition, went forthwith to the little garrison ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... half a foot higher than the other. His temper was as crooked as his shape; the sight of a happy human being would give him the spleen; and no mortal man could long reside under the same roof with him. But in spite of these trifling imperfections, it has been confidently affirmed, that some of the haughtiest beauties of Hampshire would have been ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... with a mind like this could not construct a plot or outline an article. His writings, like his conversations, were long drawn out, meandering and painfully tiresome recitations of trifling and, for the most ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... army of attack. Like all wise commanders in all well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke, from the distracting confusion. He had placed himself where he could hear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by trifling reverse or success, by unimportant ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... operate badly for France and favourably to the European cause. The Austrian plenipotentiaries, in consequence, raised their pretensions, and sent notes and an ultimatum which gave the proceedings more an air of trifling than of serious negotiation. Bonaparte's original ideas, which I have under ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was soliciting an engagement, the other, leave of absence. He refused, in conformity with his principle never to grant a request until he had first refused it. In this way he bestowed a value upon his most trifling concessions. His glistening eyes and his patriarchal beard, his manner, at once amorous and paternal, gave him a resemblance to Lot, as we see him between his two daughters in the prints of the Old Masters. Standing on the table was ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... me," she muttered. "Drawn by King Charles's consent, except perchance some trifling articles which I have had interlined for Louis's sake. We need not speak of them. It would be troublesome to Charles. A little name and seal will ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... their dress, &c. might contribute to this attraction; and the view of several of these nymphs swimming all nimbly round the sloop, such as nature had formed them, was perhaps more than sufficient entirety to subvert the little reason which a mariner might have left to govern his passions. As trifling circumstances had given occasion to their taking the water. One of the officers on the quarter-deck intended to drop a bead into a canoe for a little boy about six years old; by accident it missed the boat and fell into the sea, but the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... it is to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners. Certainly what one is, is of far greater importance than what one appears to be. A knowledge of etiquette is of course essential to one's decent behavior, just as clothing is essential to one's decent ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... that, if a gentleman chooses to go into these commercial affairs, he can do as well as the bourgeoisie. It leads one to believe that English gentlemen are not degenerating so rapidly as I am told the evening Radical newspapers demonstrate for the trifling consideration of one halfpenny. But"—he paused with an expressive gesture of the hand—"I should have preferred that this interesting truth had been proved by the son ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... think it better to sit quiet, choosing to enjoy the moral satisfaction of seeing the fulfilment of your prophecies rather than make an effort to prevent it.'" [14] It is always interesting to trace mighty events to trifling causes; and it would have been particularly pleasant to believe that the destinies of Greece for once literally stood "on a razor's edge." [15] But we will do M. Venizelos the credit of believing him less childish than he represents himself. There were ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... negociations carrying on with his country, and the cabinet called upon the Spanish ambassador to disavow all participation in such a procedure, and to state that his court was neither cognizant of it, nor wished to blend its trifling differences with the weighty quarrels of France. But this demand produced an unlooked-for budget, The Spanish ambassador at first returned an evasive reply, but he was soon authorized by the court of Spain to declare, that the proceedings of the French envoy had the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... splendid breakfast was waiting; I changed my dress to one of white muslin, a chip hat adorned with white ribbons, a white sarsnet scarf-cloak, and slippers of white satin embroidered with silver. I mention these trifling circumstances because they lead to some ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... to look into their eyes and wonder if those eyes would soon be viewing the eternal mysteries "in the land that is very far off." I tried to make it a point never to pass anyone without a handshake or a word of cheer and encouragement. How their faces used to brighten up at some trifling kindness or ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... who was accused of an attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. His violence of temper, as in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, hurried him into acts that were not less impolitic than criminal. His tyrannical will would brook no contradiction, even in matters oL trifling importance. He broke away from engagements when he thought it advantageous to do so. It is not an injustice to say, that he was habitually untruthful: his bulletins were disfigured by flagrant falsehoods, as well as gross exaggerations. In a letter to Talleyrand from ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... Caesar would walk in the centre of town; the bars filled up with people who loved to take cakes and sweet wine; on the sidewalks the itinerant merchants cried their trifling wares; along the Corso a procession of carriages full of tourists passed rapidly, and a few well-appointed victorias came driving back from the ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... any page about the court. The duchess and her ladies loved to send him on their dainty missions. His temper was bright and joyous; his only fault, if fault it can be called, was an over-generosity of nature. His purse was always empty; and when he had no money, any trifling service of a lackey or a groom would be requited with a silver button, a dagger, or a clasp of gold. And such was to be his character through life. Time after time, in after years, his share of treasure, after ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... mere trifling,' said the Phoenix. 'Come, decide what I shall fetch for you. I can get ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... last, "we are not affected in this case by any interstate commerce regulations. Therefore, on behalf of myself and my associates, I should like to tender you annual passes over our new road. Of course the courtesy is a trifling one, but it will indicate that we shall appreciate your cooperation in turning your freight business our way. We'll save you at least two-thirds of the expense on the haul ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... now ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A. Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine, under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that, with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all they have to say, they are constrained to elaborate every ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... a blurred picture the thousand events of troublous times which had passed over the figure, leaving it through all peacefully asleep. A daughter of a king, with the Douglas Heart to guard her, she would be too noble in her stony slumber to show that she minded losing her features and a few other trifling accessories which might spoil the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Hillel, apprising Adam Besso that the Queen of the Ansarey had not only refused to give up the prisoners, but even declared that Eva had been already released; but Hillel concluded that this was merely trifling. This parleying had taken place on the border; the troops were about to force the passes ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... reduction of the mission, he has only the choice of leaving it or of carrying into execution his original offer of taking it with his own rank, but a reduced salary. In the event of a repetition of last year's attack, it would be no trifling change if the Secretary of State were in his heart against us, and if, perhaps, his intimates knew that he had proposed an arrangement for averting it. I will also fairly state that, after thwarting Canning's favourite ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... trifling sense of relief that I found the place really picturesque, when we arrived. We had, it is true, to put up with a comfortless drive of three or four miles in a primitive, jolting, yellow omnibus, which crawled at stated hours of the day between ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... in adorning our outward forms, and permitted, without reproach, to carry that custom even to extravagancy, while our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so long established and industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to go out of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses, as if it were a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... existence, its part to play, its allotted place; and all join together, as it were, in a musical concert, wherein the seeming discords are really meant to bring out a fundamental harmony. In short, all goes on in nature as in the works of human genius, where, though the result may be trifling, there is at least perfect adequacy between the object made and ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... of the London Charter-house. At the Dissolution the Prior and brethren, ten in all, did not emulate the heroism of the London monks and were fortunate enough to obtain pensions instead of martyrdom. Some trifling remains exist incorporated in a modern mansion, and a wall of the garden shows the position of doors which led to the isolated cells of the monks. The Botoners had given freely to the building of the church and cloisters ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... this be true of a stanza, a line, a word here or there, inserted as an afterthought, is there use or sense in printing a number of trifling or, apparently, accidental variants? Might not a choice have been made, and the jots and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... There were several trifling jobs that we would have preferred to finish off before proceeding to sea, several articles that we would fain have carried away from the island with us, had we been afforded the opportunity; but the presence of the savages of course precluded this, and therefore the moment that ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... curate for a godfather. So Cabesang Andang continued her litany of humble and patient Filipinos, as she called them, and was about to cite others who by not being so had found themselves persecuted and exiled, when Placido on some trifling pretext left the house to wander ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... of the eyes. He kept his eyelids constantly closed, by which we had the opportunity of observing that the upper lids were garnished with eyelashes. Years and climate have effected upon the face of this great monarch only a trifling alteration; we may say, indeed, that Time has touched his Imperial and Royal Majesty with the lightest feather in his wing. In the nose of the Conqueror of Austerlitz we remarked very little alteration: it is of the beautiful shape which we remember it possessed five-and-twenty ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... of his flock; and the divine worship in the church of the Resurrection was often disturbed by the savage rudeness of its masters. The pathetic tale excited the millions of the West to march under the standard of the cross to the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of these accumulated evils, if compared with the single act of the sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently endured by the Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the more irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of religious chivalry ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... been, and thus the complete success of Hamilton's management furnished his enemies with a new argument against him of which they afterwards made great use. The costly military expedition that had no fighting to do was continually held up to public ridicule. That the expense was trifling in comparison with the objects achieved must deeply impress any one who examines the records of the times. A mistake might have been fatal to the existence of the Government. It has become so powerful and massive since that time, that we ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... perhaps begin my chapter in this fashion, were it not for two trifling difficulties—one being that I should be a humbug, which it is not my ambition to be; the other, that Dick, too, would have been a humbug, ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... will try to send you one, in case Eastbourne should rise to the occasion. Of course, there must be hundreds of pairs, and heaps would get lost. I do believe other centres would join, and the cost of material for slippers would be quite trifling. A priest goes in each corridor train, and there is always a stove where the boots could be dried. I believe slippers can be bought for about a shilling a pair. The men's feet are enormous. Cases should be marked with a red cross, and sent per ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... process of sorting, and should it become necessary to transfer these papers a second time there would enter in this further distribution an element of chance which, as explained in the Appendix already referred to, is so trifling as to have no practical effect upon the result unless the number of electors is small as compared with the number of members to ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each of them, with the most ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... and gave them that objective setting which is as necessary to pastoral as to every other merely accidental form of poetry; for the true subjective lyric is independent of circumstances. The first of his great successors made the bucolic eclogue what, with trifling variation, it was to remain for eighteen centuries, a form based upon artificiality and convention. I have already pointed out that the literary conditions at Alexandria did not differ materially from those of Rome; it follows that the change must have been ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... of concealing it!" he exclaimed, with a little surprise. "Why should a trifling arrangement like that be concealed—or ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... proud of Yorktown: it and Manassas will be my brightest chaplets in history, for I know that I accomplished everything in both places by pure military skill. I am very proud, and very grateful to God that he allowed me to purchase such great success at so trifling a loss of life.... The crisis cannot long be deferred. I pray for God's blessing on our arms, and rely far more on his goodness than I do on my own poor intellect. I sometimes think, now, that I can almost realize ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Certain trifling symptoms aroused the suspicions of the French, who soon found themselves in a cul-de-sac, where the natives persisted in declaring that fresh water was to be found. Labbe, in spite of all the persuasions of the natives, did not wish to imperil his boats in two or three feet of water, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... proved to be correct. He turned out to be very trifling, and I was much annoyed by his laziness, his carelessness, and his apparent lack of any sense of responsibility. I kept him longer than I should, on Julius's account, hoping that he might improve; but he seemed to grow worse instead of better, and when ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... very well. And then we can do just what you planned to do with your dear lady. We'll run her through three or four hundred pages, but with just a trifling change or two. Every chapter or so I'd leave her, Joe, in a situation that ends with a gasp—no pause even for a caramel! Three or four hundred pages, and then, if you have to marry her off why, let's be honest about ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings—not born from above—may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart about some trifling point of manner, some momentary failure of sympathy, some oblivion of arrangement or engagement due to a sore stress of work, some very small matter of Church order, or Christian dialect; or who ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... try a recipe for the first time the day you wish it to appear perfect on your table; try it long before, and if you fail, make the same thing over again, reading the directions very carefully; some trifling caution or precaution may have escaped you. No one ever learns to draw so simple a thing as a circle who is discouraged at the first bad curve, and leaves it for easier lines. Keep on at the thing you select to do until you ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... fear I shall not be able to draw in any such manner as will make it distinct to others. They were something below the usual height, being slight and slender in all their proportions. Lily was the shorter of the two, but the difference was so trifling that it was hardly remembered unless the two were together. And when I said that Bell was the prettier, I should, perhaps, have spoken more justly had I simply declared that her features were more regular than her sister's. The two girls were very fair, so that the soft tint of colour ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... cavalier." Her appreciative glance was nectar to Bobby. So susceptible was he to the expression of her eyes, he would have been powerless to resist anything they asked of him. But he had never been put to the test; on the contrary, she had accepted with demur even the comparatively trifling services he had been able to render her. She was most punctilious in regard to any expense to which he was put, and insisted, to his discomfiture, on paying her share of everything. At first they had little quarrels about ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... deprived of its anticipated lark; all the while HANBURY, with hands in pockets, sits staring gloomily forth, rather pitying than resentful. House of course does not know what is in store for it; still this trifling at the very moment when, though all inconspicuously, the Commons have been saved from contumelious outrage, racks the soul that carries ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 16, 1890 • Various
... may compare him to a statue hid away in some temple of Zeus or Apollo, no longer existing on earth, a statue which has a look as of the God himself. Or we may once more imagine him following in another state of being the great company of heaven which he beheld of old in a vision. So, 'partly trifling but with a certain degree of seriousness,' we linger around the memory of a ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... and hesitated, looking down at the flushed, eager face. It seemed a very trifling matter. He could not tell that with the acceptance or refusal of this light request the whole of his future destiny was involved. He only thought that Mollie was a charmingly pretty girl, and that it would be amusing to practise riding ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... could break away; and in the hurry of leaving—" He paused again, checked by the impossibility of uttering, to the girl before him, the little conventional falsehoods which formed the small currency of Bessy's circle. Not that any scruple of probity restrained him: in trifling matters he recognized the usefulness of such counters in the social game; but when he was with Justine he always felt the obscure need of letting his real self ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... temper. It was a difficult task to correct it; though perfectly submissive to her, I was with others rebellious and outrageous in my anger. My mother heard continual complaints of me; yet she wisely forbore to lecture or punish me for every trifling misdemeanour; she seized proper occasions to make a strong ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... his fairness and thoroughness. The report was concurred in unanimously by the committee on appropriations. It showed that certain irregularities had entered into the management of the fund and that certain improper entries had been made in the account, but that only a trifling loss had resulted ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... year of the reign of Her present Majesty, (whom God long preserve,) entitled 'An Act for the Amendment of the Law with respect to Wills,' shall have come into operation, do make this my last will and testament; that is to say," &c. &c.: and he proceeded, after giving some trifling mementoes to his friends, to bequeath all his property to his two executors, in trust for his sisters. He directed that his coffin should not be closed till after decay should have visibly commenced in his body; a precaution against the possibility ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and, after trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony of Col. Starbottle on finding his wash-bill made out on the unwritten side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his letter were circulated ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... taken care of. Had she thrust herself upon him, enticed him, challenged him? Assuredly not; moved by some completely inexplicable influence, utterly alien to himself, his birth, his training, he had deliberately and persistently questioned her, prolonged a trifling encounter unjustifiably, whirled her away, literally; and now that he had found no suitable place of deposit it was incredible that he should deliver this extraordinary and self-assumed charge to civil authority. It would have been almost as ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... presents as neat an appearance, remarks Peter Martyr, as if it had come from the shop of a skilful bookbinder. They also covered buildings, tapestries, and scrolls of parchment with these devices, and for trifling transactions were familiar with the use of slates of soft stone from which the figures could readily be erased with water.[11-1] What is still more astonishing, there is reason to believe, in some instances, their figures were not painted, but actually printed with ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... gentlemen!" I cried, now thoroughly aroused at this ill-chosen trifling with time. "Either you do as I bid you, or else we settle down without any more ado, to wait the file to-morrow. How often does the Commandant ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... has a position to keep up, and his father—I've told you before how mean and difficult his father is, and it's so important that Frank should keep on good terms just now.—He dare not worry him for money. When he is going to make me a rich woman some day, why should I refuse to lend him a few trifling pounds when he runs short? He's in an expensive regiment; he belongs to an expensive Club; he is obliged to keep up with the other men. If I had twice as much I ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... enemy, until he got to the left of those in action, and then opened with his artillery. In a few minutes other artillery came up, when the Major ceased firing. Although his cavalry force was in a position of great exposure, under a heavy fire for quite a while, still the loss was quite trifling. ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... summer day. In the presence of myself and a friend one of these lawless fellows very recently hurled a log of wood at a poor Gipsy child's head for an offence which we could not learn, farther than it was for a trifling affair; fortunately, it missed the poor child's head, or death must have been the result. In visiting an encampment last autumn I came across six Gipsy children having their dinner off three small boiled turnips, and drinking the water as broth; ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... visit to the camp of Satanta a trifling incident comes to my mind. Crossing Red river which was considerably swollen due to the heavy thaws—the river at this point was only about nine feet across and about two and a half feet deep—but it was a treacherous place because it was so mirey. It stuck many freight wagons—I was ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... them, the more Danger the more Glory. He told them, that he had heard of one Hannibal, a great Captain, had cut his Way through Mountains of solid Rocks; and should a few Shrubs oppose them, which they could fire before 'em? No, 'twas a trifling Excuse to Men resolved to die, or overcome. As for Bogs, they are with a little Labour filled and harden'd; and the Rivers could be no Obstacle, since they swam by Nature, at least by Custom, from the first Hour ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... several strapping deer-stalkers, still possessed the farm, by virtue of a long lease, for a trifling rent. There was no chance of any one buying it with such an encumbrance, and a transaction was entered into by the MacLarens, who, being desirous to emigrate to America, agreed to sell their lease to the creditors for L500, and to remove at the next term of Whitsunday. But whether they repented ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Lord Byron had an insatiable curiosity, he was forever making questions and researches. He wished me to relate to him all the most trifling incidents of my life in America, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... idea of language becoming in the presence of the gentler sex was rather liberal, perhaps; but in any case his nice consideration was wasted upon the girl, who heard never a word. She lay as if in the grip of fever, her distorted mind pursuing quaint visions and trifling and irrelevant ideas. As they drew near, the rescue-party sent out a breathless cheer, which was answered from the ship with a wild yell of exultation, and then a broadside of questions burst from the deck of the Francis Cadman, where every creature on board ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... dear!" she said. "Take it that the reward is for my release, and that you were just tossed in for good measure—or, that it is a slight return for the pleasure of visiting you—or, that the money is a small circumstance to me—or, that it is a trifling sum to pay to be saved the embarrassment of proposing to Geoffrey, myself—or, take it any way you like, only, don't bother your pretty head an instant more about it. In the slang of the day: 'Forget it,' completely and utterly, as a favor to ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... never tell gentlemen's secrets. It seems that if he has, his success was so trifling that he has thought he had better trust some one ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... with hesitation, 'may I ask if you are angry at the trifling manner with which I have spoken of your sister before I knew her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... her preference for Mr. X. at balls and parties a little too conspicuously. Then there is Madame D., with the big dreamy eyes. How can she remain in the place after her husband was killed in a duel by a brother officer? Ostensibly the cause of the quarrel was a trifling incident at the card-table, but every one knows that in reality she was the cause of the deadly encounter. And so on, and so on. In the absence of graver interests society naturally bestows inordinate attention on the private affairs of its members; and quarrelling, backbiting, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... historian; while to the general public they will always be more attractive, from the scope they afford to elegance of style, at which the diary-keeper does not aim; and likewise from their frequently recording curious incidents, fashions, good sayings, and other things which, from their apparently trifling character, the grave diarist would not think ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... turn to account. Everything favored the conspirators. The deflection north-ward from the normal course of the ship as she approached the coast, bound for the latitude of the Hudson, required only to be so trifling that the best sailor of the Pilgrim leaders would not be likely to note or criticise it, and it was by no means uncommon to make Cape Cod as the first landfall on Virginia voyages. The lateness of the arrival on the coast, and the difficulties ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375, Fabricius (Bibliot. Latin. Medii AEvi, tom. i. p. 248, &c.) and Tiraboschi (tom. v. p. 83, 439—451) may be consulted. The editions, versions, imitations of his novels, are innumerable. Yet he was ashamed to communicate that trifling, and perhaps scandalous, work to Petrarch, his respectable friend, in whose letters and memoirs ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... would send a cheque to him as soon as I heard the exact amount? This would be no inconvenience to me; on the contrary, it would be an honour and lasting pleasure to me to have aided you in your invaluable scientific work to this small and trifling extent. (690/3. See Letter 687, also "Life and Letters," ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... indication that sulphur gives out no aerial acid during its combustion, but another substance somewhat resembling air; this is the volatile acid of sulphur, which occupies again the empty space produced by the union of the inflammable substance with air. It is not, as may be seen, a trifling circumstance that phlogiston, whether it separates itself from substances and enters into union with air, with or without a fiery motion, still in every case diminishes the air so ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele
... inhabitants, than about the other similar but less considerable islands in its vicinity. Of these, however, we have seen enough to satisfy us, that all that we observed and have related of Otaheite, may, with trifling variations, be ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the resolution of chickadees, but had a singular genius for getting others into trouble. They knew how to handle spirits like Harold. They dared him to do evil deeds, taunted him (as openly as they felt it safe to do) with cowardice, and so spurred him to attempt some trifling depredation merely as a piece of adventure. Almost invariably when they touched him on this nerve Harold responded with a rush, and when discovery came was nearly always among the culprits taken and branded, for his pride would not permit him to sneak and run. So it fell out that time ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Alexander and to Arius, a moderating epistle; which may be ascribed, with far greater reason, to the untutored sense of a soldier and statesman, than to the dictates of any of his episcopal counsellors. He attributes the origin of the whole controversy to a trifling and subtle question, concerning an incomprehensible point of law, which was foolishly asked by the bishop, and imprudently resolved by the presbyter. He laments that the Christian people, who had the same God, the same religion, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... any fear of actual danger. Though they may have the reputation of being friendly, and may be certified as such in books of sailing directions and on the Admiralty charts, one can never feel sure of their disposition. A trifling event may have occurred since the last report was made which would alter the disposition of the whole tribe towards Europeans. Some officers may have landed to shoot, and walked over the crops of the natives without apologising or offering them remuneration, not knowing that they had done anything ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... against their labourers; but it was equally determined that employers should not be allowed to abuse their opportunities; and this directly appears from the 4th of the 5th of Elizabeth, by which, on the most trifling appearance of a depreciation in the currency, it was declared that the labouring man could no longer live on the wages assigned to him by the act of Henry; and a sliding scale was instituted by which, for the future, wages should be adjusted ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... new whatever," answered Tzu-hsing. "There is one thing however: in the family of one of your worthy kinsmen, of the same name as yourself, a trifling, but yet remarkable, occurrence ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... offer to Dresser, who was rising at laborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realized how unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser's enthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him something valuable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... matured taste and understanding who should find himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an event apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled in a hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly up the broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim's faint color varied, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... adopting male attire as of innovating on the immemorial mode du pays, yet the quality of the materials allows scope for wealth and female coquetry to show themselves. Thus the invariable mode de Broons, with its trifling difference in form, which in the eye of the inhabitants made it as different as light from darkness from the mode de St. Jouan,' was equally observable in the coarse linen coiffe of the maid, and the richly-laced and beautifully 'got up' head-dress ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... imperfection of our senses. In physics the thermometer replaces the sensation of heat that our skin—our hand, for example—experiences by the measurable elevation of a column of mercury, and the scale-pan of a precise balance takes the place of the vague sensation of trifling weights; in physiology a registering apparatus replaces the sensation of the pulse which the doctor feels with the end of his forefinger by a line on paper traced with indelible ink, of which the duration and the intensity, as well as the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the shadow, I could now pause and reflect. The trifling incident that had caused me some apprehension, had also helped me to some useful knowledge: First, I had learned my own name; second, that a council was about to take place; and thirdly, that the renegade, Hissoo-royo, had something to ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... walked along (through a kind of dream, though he seemed so sensibly observant of trifling things around him,) he failed to notice that the path grew somewhat less distinctly marked, more infringed upon by grass, more shut in by shrubbery; he had deviated into a side track, and, in fact, a certain printed board nailed against a tree ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on some wild stream of the far west, for thither were they bound, and, with the appliances I have sketched, were cheerfully setting forth to perform a journey of some two thousand miles. These, however, are the sort of persons who may look most to benefit by such a change; after a few to them trifling privations, and an industrious struggle, they have the certain satisfaction of beholding their offspring surrounded by comfort, and their means yearly increasing. They presently exchange want for ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... a long period of still increasing error; until the time of reformation came, and the Church of England fulfilled its appointed task of retracing the old landmarks, and restoring primitive truth to its ancient purity. Allowing for such trifling modifications as the difference of time and change of circumstances absolutely necessitated, the Anglican was in their estimation the Ante-Nicene Church revived. If, in the doctrine, order, and government of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... no, certainly not; but you will love him; indeed you must. It's my wife's wish, you know, and so I wish it of course. Come, come, in this one trifling matter you must ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... will suffer loss" (I Cor. 3:15). If in tribulation we do not give thanks to God, if by good works we do not redeem our sins, we will remain so long in that fire of purification(268) until the little, trifling sins, as hay, wood, and ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... sent off all my despatches to Mourzuk, together with a few trifling things for my poor wife, by the hand of Mousa Waled Haj-Ali, the virtual Sheikh of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... had found the sea air tonic. He had been staying with the Johns, Vincent's mother lived in Leghorn. He had worked a little, made a few drawings. Digressing, he mentioned a trifling gift he had brought her, and produced a small brass vessel, fitted with two hinged lids, meant to contain grains of incense for the altar. He said he had found it in an antiquarian's shop and thought she might care ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... the proprietors claim, above a million acres each, several others above 200,000. * * * Although these grants contain a great part of the province, they are made in trifling acknowledgements. The far greater part of them still remain uncultivated, without any benefit to the community, and are likewise a discouragement to the settling and improving the lands in the neighborhood of them, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... humorous in describing the difficulties they had with old Lenthall. To the deputation of Republicans, which arrived first, "he began to make many trifling excuses, pleading his age, sickness, inability to sit long," the fact being, as Ludlow says, that he had been one of Oliver's and Richard's courtiers, and was now thinking of his Oliverian peerage, which would be lost if the Protectorate lapsed into a Republic. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... before used the expression "master of ceremonies." I now recall that Wolfgang Menzel has in his witty trifling called Lafayette a master of ceremonies of Liberty. This was when the former spoke in the Literaturblatt of the triumphal march of Lafayette across the United States, and of the deputations, addresses, and solemn discourses which attended such occasions. Other much less witty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... incident is chiefly remarkable to us as a relief to what I need not recount to you. But I wish to say one thing, dear Wilfrid. You are gazetted to a lieutenancy, and we congratulate you: but what I have to say is apparently much more trifling, and it is, that—will you take it to heart?—it would do Arabella and myself infinite good if we saw a little more of our brother, and just a little less of a very gentlemanly organ-player phenomenon, who talks so exceedingly well. He is a very pleasant man, and appreciates ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... very often, and sometimes he left off what he was doing at once; but at other times he would not attend to it. Strangely enough, it gave him only a slight prick for a trifling fault, but when he was really naughty it made his finger actually bleed. At last he got tired of being constantly reminded, and wanted to be able to do as he liked, so he threw his ring aside, and thought himself the happiest of men to have got rid of its teasing pricks. He gave himself ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... had plucked him from his moorings. For the moment the ardour of his quest for knowledge had burned low. He stifled in the air of the north, which was heavy with the fog of a furious ignorance. But his mind did not turn happily to the trifling of his Italian friends. There was a tragic greatness about such as his grandmother, a salt of nobility which was lacking among the mellow Florentines. Truth, it seemed to him, lay neither with the old Church nor the New Learning, and not ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... Byzantine taste to which it has returned is generally insipidly simple, while the attempts at Gothic and Moorish are truly miserable. A more elevated feeling than the present generation (which, in Goethe's manner, delights in trifling alternately with every style, or is completely enslaved by the modes imposed by France) is fitted to comprehend, is requisite for the revival of German or Gothic architecture. Still it may be, as is hoped, that the intention to complete the building of the Cologne cathedral will not ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... while, had journeyed on, and, passing through the forest, had seen a maiden weeping over the body of her slain lover. In answer to his inquiries she told him that she was his cousin, Sigune, and that the dead man, Tchionatulander, had been killed in trying to fulfill a trifling request—to recover her pet dog, which had been stolen. Parzival promised to avenge Tchionatulander as soon as possible, and to remember that the name ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... of Britain have by now made these particular defences of the Canal of most trifling importance. Her foot is in Palestine. Work done at Ashton may well be gradually obliterated. Yet a few words can be said of the men who lived and laboured here in June, 1916, in a temperature rising often to 120 deg. F. in the shade and rarely falling under ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... present length, or about ten feet. Its upper surface is decorated with large rosettes within square borders. We need hardly say that it is a solid casting, and that its weight is, therefore, by no means trifling. The workmen who put in place and those who cast it must both have thoroughly understood what they were about. Even now, we are told, the latter operation would ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... mischief done us by Science, Medicine and Chemistry, and all that sort of thing—stopped here. The mere consideration that burial in the heart of cities is unhealthy, would but lead to extramural interment, to which our only objection—though even that is no very trifling one—is that it would diminish mortality, and consequently our trade. But this Science—confound it!—shows that the dead do not remain permanently in their coffins, even when the sextons of metropolitan ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... brutally in the ribs. Jack expected the blow, and managed to relax so that no bones were broken by the kick, though he was sore for hours. Moreover he fortified himself so that, although the pain of the kick was far from trifling, he did not ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... a matter of trifling difficulty, except on one particular day—that devoted to the rivetting of the chaine. A surgeon, however, belonging to the establishment, promised to procure me admission, and on receiving his summons, I started one forenoon for Bicetre. Mortifying news ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various
... name very well, but he did not choose to have it appear that his august memory had been laden with a thing so trifling. ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... imbued with a wholesome fear of the penalty for contravening the law, refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling, if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is to be applied, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... handed the test paper to Miss Elder. "I have marked the few trifling errors on the margin. Do you think it possible that a girl who has studied Latin only a few months could write such a paper? Do either of you believe it?" ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... take down from the dial in his office the total record of air measured to the consumers, also the output of air from the compressors, which he ascertains by means of a continuous counter on the engines, and the difference between the two will represent the loss. If the loss is trifling, he will pass it over; if serious, he will send out his inspectors to trace it. Thus there could be no long continued leakage, misuse, or robbery of the air, without the company becoming aware of the fact, and so being enabled to take measures to stop or prevent it. The foregoing are absolutely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... seem so nice when you read about them, for all the trifling things which serve to make a person uncomfortable in both ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... recommended never to appear sensible of their superior cultivation, and to be even more submissive and respectful. All near relatives, whether by blood or marriage, are directed, whatever their feelings may be, 'to keep up a kindly intercourse by letter, word of mouth, trifling presents, and so forth, treating your husband or wife's connections in company as you do your own, merely introducing a little more ceremony.' Those newly-married couples who go into company to look at, dance with, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... that of day. She was noted as an obedient child. Her light was allowed to burn in her room for half-an-hour, to counteract her fears of the dark. She took the light, and stole on tiptoe to Richard's room. No Richard was there. She peeped in further and further. A trifling agitation of the curtains shot her back through the door and along the passage to her own bedchamber with extreme expedition. She was not much alarmed, but feeling guilty she was on her guard. In a short time she was prowling about the passages again. Richard had ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... one have means, and do not desire [to share in the paternal estate], he shall be separated, something trifling being given to him.[177] A distribution by a father in smaller or larger shares, if in accordance with ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... of a friend than an enemy."—"Out of love to yourself, you should confine yourself to truth," says Adams, "for by doing otherwise you injure the noblest part of yourself, your immortal soul. I can hardly believe any man such an idiot to risque the loss of that by any trifling gain, and the greatest gain in this world is but dirt in comparison of what shall be revealed hereafter." Upon which the host, taking up the cup, with a smile, drank a health to hereafter; adding, "He was ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... behind. For if she could no longer express herself in words, her eyes darted lightnings upon the unhappy menials who had the misfortune to incur her displeasure; and her lips would quiver with the violence of concentrated passion, at the most trifling neglect or error of which the female dependents immediately attached to her own person ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Sometimes Lulu would come in, with a bird on each hand, and sit at our feet. She then never mingled in the conversation, but just smoothed the birds' plumage, or fed them with crumbs from her own lips, like a child, or a princess trifling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... calumnious than whole falsehoods. It is not even necessary that a word should be distinctly uttered; a dropped lip, an arched eyebrow, a shrugged shoulder, a significant look, an incredulous expression of countenance, nay, even an emphatic silence, may do the work: and when the light and trifling thing which has done the mischief has fluttered off, the venom is left behind, to work and rankle, to inflame hearts, to fever human existence, and to poison human society at the fountain springs of life. Very emphatically was it said by one whose whole being had smarted under such affliction, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... circle, one must possess, if our ideal is to be fully realized, many important qualifications. Were we to be constantly indulging in the severity of criticism, always objecting to this or that, a perfect character would be almost unattainable. Men should therefore bear with patience any trifling dissatisfaction which they may feel, and strive constantly to keep alive, to augment, and to cherish, the warmth of their early love. Only such a man as this can be called faithful, and the partner of such a man alone can enjoy the real happiness of affection. How unsatisfactory ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... boyhood, and duly buried, with honors appropriate to his station in life; so that if Dmitri had been an ordinary mortal, or even an ordinary prince, there would have been no story of his life to tell, except the brief tragedy of his taking off. He was no ordinary prince, however, and so the trifling incident of his death during childhood had as little to do with his career as had one or two other episodes of a like nature in the history of his later life. He was born to rule Russia, and was not at all disposed to excuse himself ...
— Strange Stories from History for Young People • George Cary Eggleston
... believed that his scheme was in a fair way of accomplishment. At the meeting to discuss the details, however, each member of the company wanted to write upon the Filipino woman, and therest of the subjects scarcely interested any of them. Rizal was disgusted with this trifling and dropped the affair, nor did he ever again seem to take any very enthusiastic interest in such popular movements. His more mature mind put him out of sympathy with the younger men. Their admiration gave him great prestige, but his popularity ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... had tailed a neighbourhood of free cunts, as far as trifling sums would get them me. A shilling a feel, or a look at the nudity, and for half-a-crown to five shillings at the outside for complete enjoyment was ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... became a tribune from which the world was addressed. That world was soon doubled. The compass opened safe roads across the monotonous immensity of the seas. America was discovered; and the sight of new manners, the agitation of new interests which were no longer the trifling concerns of one town or castle with another, but the great transactions of mighty powers, changed entirely the ideas of individuals and the political ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... action in respect to one of the two ladies—my sister or my aunt. Now what IS that course? and which of the two ladies may we regard as the real object of your vagrom affections? I tell you frankly, before you begin, that I shall permit no trifling with Peggy. As to Aunt Elizabeth, she is quite able to ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... friends who wish to see a monthly list of stock phrases, with their English meaning, we beg to remind them that the Frazlibro de la Turisto contains 400 such phrases, each in 6 languages, for the trifling cost of 6d. We are not disposed to sacrifice our limited space as suggested, unless, after mastering the 400 phrases named, which deal with a great diversity of subjects, our friends still feel the need for a ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 2 • Various
... of poetry is not compatible either with the tone of punishment or that of amusement. The former is too grave for play, which should be the main feature of poetry; the latter is too trifling for seriousness, which should form the basis of all poetic play. Our mind is necessarily interested in moral contradictions, and these deprive the mind of its liberty. Nevertheless, all personal interest, and reference ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... penalty for contravening the law, refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling, if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... rate, he told me something." "I am quite sure of it, madam, but it was something that did not approach that!" "Thereupon," writes Jeanne in despair, "she burst out laughing; for, observe, she never speaks to me without trifling."[883] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... awful honours. In infancy I was his only treasure, On me he wasted all his store of fondness. Oh! I could tell thee of his wond'rous goodness, His more than father's love and tenderness. But thou wouldst jeer, and say the tale was trifling; So did he dote upon me, for in childhood My infant charms, and artless innocence Blest his fond age, and won on ev'ry heart. But, oh! from this sprung ev'ry future ill, This fatal beauty was the ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... might spend a month without a tedious hour, if he would only take the trouble to watch everything that the men do and find out why it is done. Ages on ages of storm and stress are answerable for the most trifling device that the sailor employs. How many and many lives were lost before the Norsemen learned to support the masts of their winged dragons by means of bull's-hide ropes! How many shiploads of men were laid at the mercy of the travelling seas before ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... manuscripts in the handwriting of Hariot in the British Museum (Add. 6789) are these samples of ingenious trifling. No evidence is forthcoming that he was ever a married man, but that he occasionally let himself down from pure mathematics and high philosophy and amused himself with anagrams is plain enough. Here are a few ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... a few persons who bitterly complained of the Gas Company so often disturbing the streets to enable them to lay down their pipes. Frequent letters appeared in the papers of the time to that effect. Previous to 1817 the town was wretchedly lighted by oil lamps which used to go out upon all trifling occasions and for insufficient reasons. They only pretended to show light at the best of times. The lamps were not lit in summer nor on moonlight nights. They were generally extinguished by four or five ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... Pony Riders grew long at this, for the ride had given them an appetite that would not bear trifling with. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... let us return to the eggs of the Curculionidae. We know where the egg is—at the base of the acorn, because the tenderest and most juicy tissues of the fruit are there. But how did it get there, so far from the point of entry? A very trifling question, it is true; puerile even, if you will. Do not let us disdain to ask it; science is made ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the actual state of the Bell Rock at neap-tides, he got one of the boats manned, and, being accompanied by the landing-master, went to it at a quarter-past twelve. The parts of the rock that appeared above water being very trifling, were covered by every wave, so that no landing was made. Upon trying the depth of water with a boathook, particularly on the sites of the lighthouse and beacon, on the former, at low water, the depth was found to be three feet, and on the central parts of the latter ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... election of a mayor of New York in the preceding spring. It operated, for the most part, in that city, but its sympathisers covered the whole State. Then, there was the anti-rent party, confined to Delaware and three or four adjoining counties, where long leases and trifling provisions of forfeiture had exasperated tenants into acts of violence. Like the Native Americans, these Anti-Renters avoided state and national nominations, and traded their votes to secure the election ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... these performances, however, is eclipsed by the unrivalled celebrity amongst German critics of the Faust. Upon this it is better to say nothing than too little. How trifling an advance has been made towards clearing the ground for any sane criticism, may be understood from this fact, that as yet no two people have agreed about the meaning of any separate scene, or about the drift of the whole. Neither ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... pains, and parted with so much money, to prove that he was an honest man. He appeared to be interested in the box, and he looked at it all the time, with only an impatient glance occasionally at the nabob, who appeared to be trifling with his bright hopes. The tin chest was about nine inches each way, and contained the private papers and other valuables of the rich man, including, now, the thirteen hundred and fifty ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... man who was rushing up to the Royal Society with the only possible way of avoiding an earth-destroying comet; and it showed how, even on this huge errand, the man was tripped up at every other minute by his own weakness and vanities; how he lost a train by trifling or was put in gaol for brawling. That is only one of them; there were ten or twenty more. Another, I dimly remember, was a version of the fall of Parnell; the idea that a quite honest man might be secret ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars, which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... placing too much importance on a trifling misunderstanding which will be explained to-morrow," she said, almost ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... with the deepest gratitude. My satisfaction and my glory are immense. What could I have done, that thus the generous hand of the representatives of the Mexican people should load me with honours? Have my trifling services been able to fix the attention of the country, on whose altars have been sacrificed so many and such illustrious heroes of liberty? My glory would have been yet greater, had I, like them, descended to the sepulchre, when the sun of victory brightened the existence ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... would walk in the centre of town; the bars filled up with people who loved to take cakes and sweet wine; on the sidewalks the itinerant merchants cried their trifling wares; along the Corso a procession of carriages full of tourists passed rapidly, and a few well-appointed victorias came driving back from the Pincio and ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... home. But her mind was so much upset that she trembled at the slightest noise, and her hands shook whenever any trifling ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... occurred which might have been far from trifling; one of the ornaments of the ceiling of the Palazzo Madama, where the Parliament assembled, fell close to the King. As it was of great weight, it would have killed anyone on whom it had fallen. 'Never mind that,' said the King in Piedmontese dialect to Colonel ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... have questioned some priest on the truths of the faith. After that, they boast of having made vain search in books and among men. But, verily, I will tell them what I have often said, that this negligence is insufferable. We are not here concerned with the trifling interests of some stranger, that we should treat it in this fashion; the matter concerns ourselves ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... are not only, as the nature of the case implies, less general, but even less certain, than the simpler laws from which they result; not in the same degree to be relied on as universally true. The inferiority of evidence, however, which attaches to this class of laws, is trifling, compared with that which is inherent in uniformities not known to be laws of causation at all. So long as these are unresolved, we can not tell on how many collocations, as well as laws, their truth may be dependent; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of travellers, which people in England, when speaking of Eastern lands, call Caravanserais. These are generally open spaces, surrounded by mud walls, with sheds at their sides for people who are willing to pay a very trifling sum for the luxury of sleeping under cover, and, if they like, for having their horses near them. Carts and oxen are always in the open. Sellers of grain and wood are always there with everything native travellers require. If a bedstead—a low four-footed article with ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... promised benefits. The Yankees had not stepped up with the alacrity expected of them, and thrust their servile necks into the yoke of their natural masters. The slave trade was not reopened. Niggers were not yet so cheap that every poor widow could, at a trifling expense, provide herself with several, and grow rich on their labor. In the pride of seeing her son made what she called a "capting," and in the hope of enjoying some of the golden fruits of his valor, she had given him her last penny, and received up to the present time not a penny from him ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... knew him for a robber, yet could not refuse his brilliant service. At the Poultry Counter, you are told, he laid the foundations of his future greatness, and to the Poultry Counter he was committed for some trifling debt ere he had fully served his apprenticeship to the art and mystery of buckle-making. There he learned his craft, and at his enlargement he was able forthwith to commence thief-catcher. His plan was conceived ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... a thing as esprit-de-corps running to excess. There may be a due amount of girlish pride in knowing that one of the sisters has inspired a grand passion. There may be a tremulous respect for the fact that she has passed the Rubicon, that, in place of girlish trifling, she has an affair which has to do with the happiness or misery of a fellow creature, not to say with her own happiness or misery, on her burdened mind. Why, if she does not take care, she may be plunged at once, first ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... &c.,' Dr. T. has shown how mindful he is on all occasions of his engagements to those who confide in him. He has also occasionally moved other engines, which it would be tedious and might appear too trifling to mention. Dr. T. is not ignorant that uncommon charges have happened in the course of this last year, that is, the year preceding May, 1789. Instead of 100l., therefore, he will be satisfied with 50l for that year, provided that this abatement shall ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... intellectual pressure of the conversation, began to see a faint shimmer of light behind the clouds. In a nebulous kind of way he began to understand that the girl had come to consult the firm about a breach-of-promise action. Some unknown man at Ealing West had been trifling with her heart—hardened lawyer's clerk as he was, that poignant cry "I'm not even engaged!" had touched Mr. Peters—and she wished to start proceedings. Mr. Peters felt almost in his depth again. He put the revolver in his pocket, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... killed the two lions, each with one blow of his trifling-looking little palm-wood club, in which year I was sold out of the Choragium, and purchased by Nonius, in which I crossed the sea, was wrecked and saved and resold to Falco, was the nine hundred and forty- first year of the City [Footnote: ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that, acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd, 330 A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest, Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? And where are the graves of another daughter and a son, who have a better right in the family row than Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law? Might not one or both of them have been laid under the nameless stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakespeare's dust; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave (though the prohibition makes it tempting), and shall let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must needs add that the inscription on ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... without the soft human spot. I think you flatter us even while you attempt to warn; but what's extremely interesting at all events is that, as I gather, we made on you this evening, in a particular way, a collective impression—something in which our trifling varieties are merged." His visitor's face, at this, appeared to acknowledge his putting the case in perfection, so that he was encouraged to go on. "There was something particular with which you weren't ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... clearly than ordinary apprehension can, reduces consciousness again to a tangle of trivial impressions, shots of uncertain range, as if a skin had not yet formed over the body. It emerges in tense and disorganised moments. Its reports are the more trifling the more startingly literal their veracity. It seems to represent a stratum of life beneath moral or intellectual functions, and beneath all personality. When proof has been found that a ghost has actually been seen, proof is required that the phantom has been rightly ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... matrimony in the style that young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he ventured, on the other ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I have narrated this trifling incident because there seemed to be some connection between it and what I was going to say about the stranger's sense of country life being the normal, natural, typical life of the English. In America, however ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... The question trifling seems from one, Who it appears the Word doth rate so low; Who, undeluded by mere outward show, To ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and naught too trivial for the exercise of the inventive faculties of our skilled workmen. All the world knows that hundreds of patents have been taken out for improvements, and discoveries in connection with steam machinery, but few would credit that quite an equal number relate to such trifling articles as buckles and buttons, pins and pens, hooks and eyes, &c.; and fortunes have been made even more readily by the manufacture of the small items than the larger ones. The history of Birmingham inventors has yet to be written; a few notes of some of ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... to have no seconds," continued Bergenheim, "let us arrange everything so that nothing can betray us; it is inconceivable how the most trifling circumstances often turn out crushing evidence. I think that I have foreseen everything. If you find that I have forgotten any detail, please remind me of it. The place I speak of is a narrow, well-shaded path. The ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... connoisseur; and they conjectured that his eyes must have discovered some extraordinary value in the purchased case. But from this moment Jussuf paid little more attention to his business. This absence of mind increased every moment, and often caused him to ask quite a trifling sum for very precious goods, and an unconscionably high one for those equally insignificant. He could scarcely conceal his chagrin whenever new customers made their appearance; and all saw with wonder, how—contrary to his usual custom—he ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... misery. A chilling consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Salvation,' on a single page each, in the form of a broadside, or handbill. This was the popular mode in which tracts were distributed; and when posted against a wall, or framed and hung up in a room, they excited notice, and were extensively read. They might also have afforded some trifling profit to aid this poor but eminent servant of Christ in his very limited income. They form two pages in that exceedingly interesting volume of 'The Works of Mr. John Bunyan,' in small folio, 1692. To which is added 'The Struggler,' containing some most valuable ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... continued Mrs. Dean, following that dismal period were the happiest of my life: my greatest troubles in their passage rose from our little lady's trifling illnesses, which she had to experience in common with all children, rich and poor. For the rest, after the first six months, she grew like a larch, and could walk and talk too, in her own way, before ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... however, gentle-folk, and had, for that matter, rich relations. Very rich relations indeed! Madam Liberality's mother's first cousin had fifteen thousand a year. His servants did not spend ten thousand. (As to what he spent himself, it was comparatively trifling.) The rest of the money accumulated. Not that it was being got together to do something with by and by. He had no intention of ever spending more than he spent at present. Indeed, with a lump of coal taken off here, and a needless candle blown out there, he rather hoped ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... identification ignores. So while we might readily grant that it is in the essential nature of things that virtue and truth, wisdom and character, understanding and goodness, are but two aspects of one thing, is it not trifling with one of the most serious facts of human destiny to interpret the truism to mean that, when a man knows that a contemplated act is wrong or foolish or ugly, he is thereby restrained from accomplishing it? Knowledge is not virtue ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... that the Arctic Sea of itself could contribute anything of importance to this rainfall; for, in the first place, it is for the most part covered with drift-ice, from which the evaporation is but trifling; and, in the next place, the comparatively low temperature in these regions prevents any considerable evaporation taking place even from open surfaces of water. The moisture that produces this rainfall must consequently in a great measure come from ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... Muntz, who is still at the Vine, and whom, for want of you, we labour hard to form. I shall put up in the parcel two or three prints of my eagle, which, as you never would draw it, is very moderately performed; and yet the drawing was much better than the engraving. I shall send you too a trifling snuff-box, only as a sample of the new manufacture at Battersea, which is done with copper-plates. Mr. Chute is at the Vine, where I cannot say any works go on in proportion to my impatience. I have left him an inventionary of all I want ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... traveled as many times from Texas to the Dodge City and Abilene points of shipment as some of our travelers to-day have journeyed across the Atlantic—and he thought just as little about it. More than once he had made the trifling journey from the Rio Grande to Montana, before the inventive individual who supplied fences with teeth had made such excursions impossible. Sheriff Tom had seen many war-bonneted Indians looming through the dust of trail herds. Of the better side of the Indian he knew little, nor cared to learn. ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... insensible being in the broad sunlight, in the hope possibly that the scorching heat would deaden her pains; whilst up and down, in front of her, went Madame Vincent ever with the same sleep-inducing step and ever carrying her little Rose, her poor ailing birdie, whose weight was so trifling that she scarcely felt her in her arms. Many people meantime were hastening to the water tap in order to fill their pitchers, cans, and bottles. Madame Maze, who was of refined tastes and careful of her person, thought ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... am grown so timorous, every trifling noise Scatters my spirits, and announces to me The footstep of some messenger of evil. 5 And can you tell me, sister, what the event is? Will he agree to do the Emperor's pleasure, And send the horse-regiments to the Cardinal? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wrong seat," that official announced in a tone that admitted of no trifling. "You were in eighteen in the other car and I had to move you to twenty-three in ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... active engagements, like every other natural appetite, may be carried to excess; and men may debauch in amusements, as well as in the use of wine, or other intoxicating liquors. At first, a trifling stake, and the occupation of a moderate passion, may have served to amuse the gamester; but when the drug becomes familiar, it fails to produce its effect: The play is made deep, and the interest increased, to awaken ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... furnace as they came. Visitors often came to see the mills after night: except by growing less noisy, the men took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a walk over one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused from his indifferent stupor, and watched them keenly. He knew some of them: the overseer, Clarke,—a son of Kirby, one of the mill-owners,—and a Doctor May, one of the ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the saddler well up during the day, and was fortunate enough to obtain our saddles, saddle-bags, etc., by four o'clock. On going to his house a couple of hours after about some trifling alteration I wished made, I found it shut up and deserted. On the door was pasted a paper with the following words, "Gone ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... of the wonderful strangers, bringing with them stores of fruits, fish, and vegetables, with the same hospitable spirit shown by their countrymen at Tumbez. After staying here a short time, and interchanging presents of trifling value with the natives, Pizarro continued his cruise; and, sailing by the sandy plains of Sechura for an extent of near a hundred miles, he doubled the Punta de Aguja, and swept down the coast as it fell off towards the east, still carried forward by light ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... species are met with; for in some cases not one species is identically the same, but they belong to the same families, genera, and sections of genera, and sometimes are similarly characterised in such trifling points as mere superficial sculpture. Moreover, other forms, which are not found in the Chalk of Europe, but which occur in the formations either above or below, occur in the same order at these distant points of the world. In the several successive ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... and labor that enabled Hermann von Meyer to prepare his paper on the ArchA|opterix, rescued from the lithographic slate, is a case in point, as showing how small apparently the labor of accomplishing a great work for science. The time devoted to preparing the paper was trifling as compared with the result of his achievement. And so with every one who enters the temple of science with a devout ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... what we most need in prayer, and what are our greatest evils; but surely it may be said, that no man ever learnt this lesson well without wishing to practise it; no man ever used the Lord's prayer with understanding and with earnestness, without adding to it others of his own. And this is not a trifling matter. We know the difficulty of attending in prayer; and if we use the words of others only, which we must, therefore, repeat from memory, it is perfectly possible to say them over without really joining with them in our minds: ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... He maintained a dignity without either affectation or ostentation; and supported with all strangers that high idea with which his great exploits and prodigious fortune had impressed them. Among his ancient friends, he could relax himself; and by trifling and amusement, jesting and making verses, he feared not exposing himself to their most familiar approaches.[*] With others he sometimes pushed matters to the length of rustic buffoonery; and he would amuse himself by putting ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... after the events narrated in the last chapter, an incident occurred which, trifling in itself, was nevertheless the cause of momentous issues in the life ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... wrote to Sidney his opinion of the manners he had observed. It is simply a confirmation of what Ascham had stated sometime before, when he wrote of his travelled compatriots: neither of them did justice to the more serious qualities hidden under all this courtly trifling: "It was a delight to me last winter," says Languet, "to see you high in favour and enjoying the esteem of all your countrymen; but to speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I could have wished, and most of your ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Another trifling revolt occurred about the same time in Margiana. The Margians rebelled and set up a certain Phraates, a native, to be their king. But the satrap of Bactria, within whose province Margiana lay, quelled the revolt ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... with his life at Scroope for a week after the funeral without resolving upon anything, or taking any steps towards solving the O'Hara difficulty. He did ride about among the tenants, and gave some trifling orders as to the house and stables. His brother was still with him, and Miss Mellerby remained at the Manor. But he knew that the thunder-cloud must break over his head before long, and at last the storm was commenced. The first drops ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... much more severe than a latitude of 16 degrees 6 minutes south, would lead one to anticipate. The remains of small fires, a well greased bark pillow, a head ornament of seabird's feathers, together with several other trifling articles, strewn upon the floors of these wigwams, proved that they had been very ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the daughters of the clergyman, gives us some weight,' said Helen; 'besides that, what each person does, however trifling, is of importance ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... medals, upon which he spent large sums of money and much time, in order to gain knowledge of them. And although he was employed almost always in great works, this did not mean that he would not set his hand at times to the most trifling matters in order to oblige his patron and his friends; and no sooner had one opened his mouth to explain to him his conception than he had understood it and drawn it. Among the many rare things that he had in his house was the portrait from life of Albrecht Duerer ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... bury them at any cost. The soldiers were needed for other work, so, at the point of rifles, the citizens were compelled to take the work of burying. Some objected at first, but the troops stood no trifling, and every man who came in reach was forced to work at least one hour. Rich men who had never done such work labored by the side of the workingmen digging trenches in the sand for the sepulcher of those who fell in the awful calamity. At ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... which he lived long enough to see the glutting, had a large and immediate sale. The author, not yet aware what a gold mine his copyrights were, parted with this after the first edition, and received in all rather less than L770, a sum trifling in comparison with his after gains; but probably the largest that had as yet been received by any English poet for a single volume not published by subscription. It is curious that, at the estimated rate of three for one in comparing the value of money ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... jade, and gems, Your Saracenic silver, your Nilotic gods, your diadems To bind the brows of Queens, impure, Perfidious, passionate, perfumed—these Your petted, pagan stage-properties, Seem but as toys of trifling worth. For I have marked the naked earth Beside my doorstep yield to the print Of a long light foot, and flash with the glint Of crocus-gold— Crocus-gold! Crocus-gold no mill may mint Save the Mill of God— The Mill of God! The Mill of God with His ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... take off no trifling dole Who heal the body, or the soul. Alas the times! do what we will, They have their payment, ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... amuse him." "Yes, sire." "Mind, what you undertake is no joke. It is no easy matter to amuse a king." This was a truth which I perceived at every moment, and our monarch was not the one to be amused with trifling exertion. Frequently when he entered my apartment he threw himself on an ottoman, and yawned most excessively, yes, yawned in my company. I had but one mode of rousing him from this apathy, but it was a sure one. I spoke of the high magistracy and its perpetual ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... usually in presence, and nobody ever ventured on what might bore Allen. He was in good spirits, believing that the discovery would put an end to all trifling on Elvira's part, and that he and she would thus together be able to act the beneficent genii of the whole family. Even their mother had a sense of relief. She was very quiet, and moved about softly, like one severely shaken and bruised; but there was a calm in knowing the worst, instead ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... England; if they have shown in the most emphatic manner that the memory of the past is still fresh, and that they are not yet prepared to accept the British Government as a friend; if they have seized every occasion, the most trifling as well as the most important, to show that the union with England was distasteful to them—what will be their attitude when the question admits of no doubt, and can give rise to no apprehension in a Christian conscience; when, indeed, they know that they stand ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... told of the boy's experiences in a way that brought many a blush to his cheeks. Mr. Treat was too busy with Aunt Olive's lamb, as he affectionately spoke of it, to be able to say anything; he was wonderfully fortunate in not choking himself but once, and that was such a trifling matter that it was all ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... women have more than five or six children. As soon as an infant is able to walk, it is permitted to run about with great freedom. The mother is not over solicitous to preserve it from slight falls and other trifling accidents. A little practice soon enables the child to take care of itself, and experience acts the part of a nurse. As they advance in life, the girls are taught to spin cotton, and to beat corn, and are instructed in other domestic duties; and the boys are employed ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the high-voiced singers, to the dress of the Venetian merchants, to the step of a dance; to the pomegranate in the garden or the cypress on the hillside; mere names of Italian things: the lavolta and corranto dances, the Traglietto ferry, the Rialto bridge; countless little touches, trifling to us, but which brought home to the audience at the Globe or at Blackfriars that wonderful Italy which every man of the day had travelled through at least in spirit, and had loved at least in imagination. And of this wonderful Italy the Englishmen of the days of Elizabeth and of James knew ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... several times. When a Bishop with his flock prays night and day against a heretic, and at length begs of God to take him away, and when he is suddenly taken away, almost at the moment of his triumph, and that by a death awfully significant, from its likeness to one recorded in Scripture, is it not trifling to ask whether such an occurrence comes up to the definition of a miracle? The question is not whether it is formally a miracle, but whether it is an event, the like of which persons, who deny that miracles continue, will consent that the Church should be considered still able to perform. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... than he was, to have the right to befriend Dinah without doing her an injury, and kept himself at a distance as though he were young, handsome, and compromising, like a man who has happiness to conceal. He tried to keep his little attentions a profound secret, and the trifling gifts which Dinah showed to every one; he endeavored to suggest a dangerous meaning ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... make to those who rendered me assistance in the prosecution of my Saharan tour and researches. I have rather complaints to prefer against professed friends. I was unable to get up in The Desert a single thing, the most trifling, to aid me in my observations, when I had determined to penetrate farther into the interior; whilst, somehow or other, a Memorandum was obtained from the Porte to recal me instead of a Firman to help me on my way. Fortunately I was beyond its power ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... others fight for, he will throw away while eager to secure to himself the [Greek: kalhon]: he will prefer a brief and great joy to a tame and enduring one, and to live nobly for one year rather than ordinarily for many, and one great and noble action to many trifling ones. And this is perhaps that which befals men who die for their country and friends; they choose great glory for themselves: and they will lavish their own money that their friends may receive more, for hereby the friend gets the ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... mother to Westminster Hall to me; she came and undertakes to get her daughter a lodging and nurse at next doore to her, though she dare not, for the parish's sake, whose sexton her husband is, to [have] her into her owne house. Thence home, calling at my bookseller's and other trifling places, and in the evening the mother come and with a nurse she has got, who demanded and I did agree at 10s. per weeke to take her, and so she away, and my house mighty uncouth, having so few in it, and we shall want a servant or two by it, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... only fault in her was that a slight over-prominence of the dark-blue veins on her little hands rather marred the general effect of her appearance. On the other hand, her daughter scarcely ever did anything at all. Not only had she no love for trifling with flowers and trinkets, but she neglected her personal exterior, and only troubled to dress herself well when guests happened to call. Yet, on returning to the room in society costume, she always looked extremely handsome—save for that cold, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... Percival promptly, and somewhat scathingly, "nothing at all, except the trifling fact that I am here talking it over with you gentlemen instead of attending to my business, as any honest conspirator should be doing. You may be quite sure of one thing: if there is a man on board this ship whose business ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... walls, and about mid-way from the floor, are six niches, of an oblong shape, and quite plain: in the back wall, opposite to the door, is a vaulted recess, with a small dark chamber on each side. The upper part of a niche is visible on the exterior of the remains of the front wall, with some trifling but elegantly sculptured ornaments. This ruin stands within a peribolus or large area surrounded by a double row of columns. The whole edifice seems to have been superior in taste and magnificence to every public building of this kind in Syria, the temple of the Sun at ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... tale, which, however bad it may be, they listen to quite unmoved though not unconcerned, for they hear such every day. When it is finished, they ask coolly enough why, in the name of all that their visitor reverences or holds dear, he considers it necessary to commit suicide for a trifling job like that. A new light dawns upon the desperate man. He answers, because he can ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Trinity Brothers put a light out yonder by the Gunnel Rocks, it was just a trifling makeshift affair for the time—none of your proper lightships with a crew of twelve or fourteen hands; and my father and I used to tend it, taking turn and turn with two other fellows from the Islands. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from the value of our schools; on the contrary, I regard them as of inestimable worth, when duly attended to. What I insist on is, that they are not the all in all of education; and that, in fact, their influence in training up or forming good character, is so trifling—that is, comparatively—that they scarcely deserve to be thought of when speaking of education, as a whole, especially the education of daughters. And though one of the tribes of the nation to which Solomon belonged, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... hostility; therefore listen to that which I have to utter, nor turn away thine ears in the wantonness of security. Thou knowest the character of the man with whom thou dwellest, young woman, and thou also knowest the danger of being found in evil company. Abandon, then, the trifling advantages of thy situation, and yield the rock peaceably to the will of those who accompany me—a legion, young woman—I do assure you an invincible and powerful legion! Render, therefore, the effects of this lawless and wicked squatter,—nay, children, such ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and how quickly and how easily habits are acquired—both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us. If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey—but ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... And such trifling chastisements as do occur to-day, are confined to a very early age of the child. A boy or girl of twelve or fifteen has no fear of a beating from father, or mother, or governess, or school-teacher. School-masters ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... the well-doing of this plant. It deserves them all, and, let me add, they may all be easily afforded. The list of requirements may seem formidable on paper, but to put them into practice is but a trifling affair. My specimen is grown in leaf mould, a little loam mixed in with it, and fine charcoal instead of sand, but sand will answer nearly as well; the aspect is east, it is sheltered from the west by a wall, the north by rhododendrons, and the south by a ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... thing about it is, that the first embracing of any sin seems to be but a trifling, an occasional affair. For one who lives in an ordinary city of a thousand inhabitants or upwards, unless he is an "out-and-out" Christian and selects only associates like himself, it becomes a real Embarrassment not to indulge in a social drink. It seems polite, clever, the kindly ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... into inhospitality. At another time, whilst halting at a little cabaret, when one of his retinue was suddenly taken ill, Caesar resigned to his use the sole bed which the house afforded. Incidents as trifling as these express the urbanity of Caesar's nature; and hence one is the more surprised to find the alienation of the Senate charged, in no trifling degree, upon a gross and most culpable failure in point of courtesy. Caesar, it is alleged— but might we presume to call upon antiquity ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... before how that trifling matter could be arranged; and, as he went industriously to work making shavings out of a portion ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... short conversation, trifling in itself, but conveying, under the circumstances, so much subject for deep and painful reflections, the young officer had evinced much restlessness of manner, yet without interposing any other remark than to join Miss Heywood's entreaties that her mother ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... news troubled John. He did not believe that Akers cared a penny piece for a membership, and pooh-pooh it as he would, this trifling affair would not let him alone. It gnawed under the great sorrow of Jane's absence, like a rat gnawing under ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... I only note these trifling circumstances, because, after all I had seen and heard, that day, it pleased me to observe that our two gentlemen were on just as good terms as ever. Their warfare of words (heard by Penelope in the drawing-room), ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... 31st.—How many youths around me do I see trifling away the greatest part of their time, and profaning their Maker's name? My soul magnifies His name that I have decided to be on the Lord's side; how many evils have I escaped; how many blessings obtained; what praise enjoyed, through ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... had it not been for Gothic violence, this part of the structure would have equally resisted the ravages of time. Nothing can be more exact than the preservation of the gradines; not a block has sunk from its place, and whatever trifling injuries they may have received have been carefully repaired. The two chief entrances are rebuilt with solidity and closed by portals, no passage being permitted through the theatre except at public shows and representations, sometimes still given ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... I fear mine will appear too trifling," said Mrs. M., "but as it is the only circumstance of the kind that ever happened to myself, I prefer giving it you to any of the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... so foolish, Richard?" she forgot her trifling to ask in an earnest way, and had another Aurorean kiss, just brushing the dew on her lips, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and honourable, it is also much less difficult than is commonly supposed. To take a trifling example: If for some reason I cannot, or do not, choose to verify a quotation which may be useful to my purpose, what is to prevent my saying that the quotation is taken at second-hand? It is true, if my quotations are for ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... course of these events. But the envy of fortune was already swelling against the Romans, when she saw their affairs progressing successfully and well, and wishing to mingle some evil with this good, she inspired a quarrel, on a trifling pretext, between Belisarius and Constantinus; and how this grew and to what end it came I shall now go on to relate. There was a certain Presidius, a Roman living at Ravenna, and a man of no mean station. This ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... doing. Within a year after the occurrence that has just been narrated an old friend of Gambetta's met with an accident which confined him to his house. The statesman strolled to his friend's residence. The accident was a trifling one, and the mistress of the house was holding a sort of informal reception, answering questions that were asked her by the numerous ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... for good fortune of which Harrison Smith lost no time in availing himself. Lending a trifling support to his impromptu host they entered the building and ascended in the electric lift to the fourth floor. There was a brass plate on the front door which informed the curious that the owner of ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... his frenzied exertion, yet still refusing to give up, but plying his frail paddle until his nerveless arms seemed like weights of lead, and could scarce carry the board through the water. But the result, which at the outset, and in the very freshness of his strength, had been but trifling, grew less and less against the advance of his own weakness and the force of that tremendous tide, until at last his feeble exertions ceased to have any ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... be disposed to give trifling sums occasionally, for the relief of the poor, and who did not choose to go, or to send to the banker, fixed poor-boxes were placed in all the churches, and most of the inns; coffee-houses; and other places of public resort; but ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... my companion and I could learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses, different kinds of clubs and balls, and different scores. Belleair turns up its nose at Palm Beach. It considers the game of golf as played at Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies. The woman who thinks it ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... given, by way of architectural arrangement, or the conveniences in accommodation, are, in almost all cases, appreciated by those who occupy them, and have an influence upon their character and conduct; while the trifling decorations which may be added in the way of shrubbery, trees, and flowering plants, costing little or nothing in their planting and keeping, give a charm to the ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... many others, to mistake the Bishop of Meaux for the editor of Pascal's works. Once more, that unfortunate editor is BOSSUT, not BOSSUET; and if it may appear to some that the difference of one letter in a name is not of much consequence, yet it is from an error as trifling as this that people of my acquaintance confound Madame de Stael with Madame de Staal-Delauney, in spite of chronology and common sense. Again, by the leave of the Christian Remembrancer (vol. xiii. no. 55.), the elegant and accomplished scholar to whom we owe the only complete text of Pascal's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... is a beginner. Is it right for us to refuse so trifling an encouragement? Who knows to what useful ends it may lead? You remember how difficult it was for me to procure the plants, and how keenly you felt my trouble. Will you inflict a keener one on this child, whose heart seems bent on doing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... boys are away, we are willing to take charge of that child and adopt her, should her friends not be discovered. To show you that I am in earnest, here are five guineas as payment to you for going off and bringing her on shore in the gallant way I understand you did. It's a trifling reward, I own, but if I have the power I will increase it should you ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy—even with its sickening accompaniment of Court circulars—to such a government as this. The more I think of its youth and strength, the poorer and more trifling in a thousand aspects it appears in my eyes. In everything of which it has made a boast, excepting its education of the people, and its care for poor children, it sinks immeasurably below the level I had placed ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... intervention in a work that they did not understand. There is really nothing of all that, but a seizing of a passing incident as the medium of an universal truth. It is the skill of one who knows that the human attention is caught by a matter, however trifling, which is vividly present. The scene is sharply defined for us: our Lord interrupted in His talk; the report of the mother and the brethren seeking Him; the obvious interest of the people as to how He will take their intervention; and then the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... have cost this Intellectual to fulfil precisely all the duties of his ministry, down to the humblest. What he would have liked, above all, was to pass his life in studying the Scriptures and meditating on the dogmas—not from a love of trifling with theories, but because he believed such knowledge necessary to whoever gave forth the Word of God. Most of the priests of that age arrived at the priesthood without any previous study. They had to improvise, as quick as they could, a complete ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... a series of statutes known as the Black Acts, putting the bodies and souls of the Scotch under the yoke of the king, who was now pope as well. In 1587 the whole property of the pre-Reformation church, with some trifling exceptions, was confiscated and put at the king's disposition. As in England, so here, the lands of abbeys and of prelates was thrown to new men of the pushing, commercial type. Thus was founded a landed aristocracy with interests distinct from the old barons and strong in supporting ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the routed posse, with Race Moran in the lead, his left arm tied up in a blood-stained handkerchief, rode into Crawling Water. A bullet had pierced the fleshy part of the agent's wrist, a trifling wound, but one which gave him more pain than he might have suffered from a serious injury. None of the members of the posse had been dangerously wounded; indeed, they had suffered more in the spirit than in the flesh; but there had been a number of minor casualties amongst the men, which ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... own, the suffering of others seemed trifling. When his mother went about in silence, bending more than she had done, all interest in the things of life and in her studies of Swedenborg at an end, he thought that much of it was due to her wish to show sympathy with him. When Lydia sat through an hour with ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... think, that I was the only officer of the Continental line in the whole party. This fact, and some trifling differences between my uniform and that of the militia colonels and majors, had attracted notice, not wholly of an admiring sort. I had had the misfortune, moreover, to learn in camp before Quebec to shave every day, as regularly as if ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the day from the effects of the poison, and the Leader owns that he was beginning to be at his wits end as to how they were to get along. Every superfluity and been abandoned, and, with the exception of a few light things, such as clothes and blankets, of too trifling weight to make it worth while to leave, and only what was absolutely necessary, retained; yet there were barely sufficient horses left to carry that. He had therefore good cause for anxiety. The day kept tolerably fair until the party came into camp, when the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... At many times I brought in my accounts, Laid them before you; you would throw them off, And say you found them in mine honesty. When for some trifling present you have bid me Return so much, I have shook my head, and wept; Yea, 'gainst the authority of manners, pray'd you To hold your hand more close: I did endure Not seldom, nor no slight checks, when I have Prompted you in ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... a Catholic? After all,' she said, 'I could have been a Calvinist with all my heart. Does any one believe that religion had any thing to do with that movement, that revolution, the greatest the world has ever seen, which has been retarded by trifling causes, but which nothing can hinder from coming to pass, since I failed to crush it? A revolution,' she added, fixing her eye on me, 'which is even now in motion, and which you—yes, you—you who now listen to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... but very trifling, and mere childishness? The message may be mine, it seems, if it be of a lofty character: it may not be mine if it be of a homely, ordinary kind!—I send a message by my Servant, and he delivers it faithfully: but whether it is to be ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... individual purpose to fleece him, because all the attendants who come in contact with him are to be separately considered. So, after paying, in the first instance, a very heavy bill, for what would seem to cover the whole indebtedness, there remain divers dues still to be paid, to no trifling amount, to the landlord's servants,—dues not to be ascertained, and which you never can know whether you have properly satisfied. You can know, perhaps, when you have less than satisfied them, by the aspect ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distributed. But for the feast. Mr. Snodgrass's basket was opened, and out of it were taken four remarkably fine chickens, and a tongue—uncooked! There was but one mode of accounting for this trifling omission. Mr. Snodgrass's Betty was a downright matter-of-fact person, who obeyed orders to the very letter. Having been told, the evening before, to get four fine chickens for roasting, together with a tongue, and to pack them, next morning, in a basket, she did ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... himself, his non-arrival threw his friends into a state of the utmost anxiety and suspense. They waited a couple of hours, in order to give him a chance of coming in, hoping that he might have merely been detained by some trifling accident, such as having lost his way for a time. But when, at the end of that period, there was still no sign of him, they gave up all hope of his arriving, and at once set out to sweep the whole country round ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... when he had shared a serious trouble with her, had passed through common difficulties and dangers, he was finding what accident may do—how it may fan a first liking into a stronger flame. It was absurd, of course. He was fifty-one, he had weathered many trifling affairs of the heart, and here he was, bowled over at last, and by a woman he was not certain was entitled ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... favourite, he may go as far as a thousand. Curly-haired pages and amusing dwarfs are generally dear. It is the business of the house-steward to see that each slave receives his daily or monthly rations of corn, a trifling sum of money for other needs, and perhaps an allowance of thin wine. Many a slave also received a considerable number of "tips" from guests, as well as perquisites and presents from his master. With economy he was thus enabled to purchase his own freedom. The master might also in some cases ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... day; the tea and fresh milk and bread and butter; and how, when settling ourselves to sleep for the night, we saw a large white rat crossing the stovepipe which ran through our bedroom from the great Canadian stove in the sitting-room. It is curious how trifling things cleave to the memory, while the monotonous things of everyday life, which are our proper ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... such a man should care enough what befell her to dare to say what he had said to her. It had been—she admitted it—a lesson in scrupulousness, in high delicacy of feeling, in magnanimity. "You are trifling with what may be the life of another—just to amuse yourself—or to pay off a moment's offence. Only the stupid or cruel souls do such things—or think lightly of them. ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... action by the Congress. It is discreditable to us as a Nation that our merchant marine should be utterly insignificant in comparison to that of other nations which we overtop in other forms of business. We should not longer submit to conditions under which only a trifling portion of our great commerce is carried in our own ships. To remedy this state of things would not .merely serve to build up our shipping interests, but it would also result in benefit to all who are interested ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the shining bosom of the lake, appealed to him as it does to us to-day, and finding no boatmen upon the shore willing to convey him thither, on account of the hideous monsters, dragons, and serpents of huge size then inhabiting the place, good Julius, nothing daunted by so trifling an inconvenience as the lack of a boat, used his long cloak as a sail, and his staff as a rudder, and thus equipped allowed himself to be ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... certain social and moral forces against them. The German Government does not hesitate for a moment to send ten thousand of its own people to certain death under enemy guns even though the military advantage of so doing may be relatively trifling. But it dare not order the massacre of ten thousand foreign residents in Berlin. There is some force which makes it sometimes more scrupulous of the lives of its enemy than of the lives ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... I was a very ordinary looking fellow. Half a dozen of us, the better to gather courage, went down Duke of Gloucester Street arm in arm toward the governor's palace with its great lantern alight to honor the occasion, and mounted the steps together,—our trifling over our toilets had made us late,—and as we entered the high doorway, did our best to look as though a great assembly was an every-day event to us. A moment later, I saw a sight which took my ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... man and for a long time directed the Nation Francaise, once an important journal, now no longer in existence."—Not a word beyond the brief details of his death. No word of praise or regret, merely the commonplace statement of a fact. Vaudrey thought it was a trifling notice for a man who had held so large a place in the ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... enough for you to want me to muck up out of the window, wasn't it?" demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... first place he had not been in Quebec or Montreal during his absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other posts; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his meridional fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge gained at first hand in his youthful days in France while he was a student whose parents fondly expected him to conquer the world, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... literary gentry; but if in my endeavors to appreciate and sympathize with their thoughts and theories I had been able to win their regard, was it for me to heed the envy of one who grudged me this trifling tribute to my enthusiasm? Assuredly not. Therefore I resolved to act exactly as if I were ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... influence which he exercises on public business is no doubt feeble and indirect; but the choice of the President, which is of small importance to each individual citizen, concerns the citizens collectively; and however trifling an interest may be, it assumes a great degree of importance as soon as it becomes general. The President possesses but few means of rewarding his supporters in comparison to the kings of Europe, but the places which are at his disposal are sufficiently numerous to interest, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... soldiers; they do fear the turning of certain social and moral forces against them. The German Government does not hesitate for a moment to send ten thousand of its own people to certain death under enemy guns even though the military advantage of so doing may be relatively trifling. But it dare not order the massacre of ten thousand foreign residents in Berlin. There is some force which makes it sometimes more scrupulous of the lives of its enemy than of the lives of its ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to the gate of the sultan's mud edifice, where a few of the court were assembled to receive them. One, a sort of chamberlain, habited in eight or ten tobes, or shirts, of different colours, carried an immense staff, and on his head was a turban of prodigious size, though but a trifling one compared to those they were destined to see at the audience on the following morning. A large marquee was pitched for their reception, which they found luxuriously cool. In the evening a plentiful repast ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the early spring-flowering small trees—indeed, the earliest one that blooms in white—is the shad-bush, or service-berry. Again the "common" names are trifling and inadequate; shad-bush because the flowers come when the shad are ascending the rivers along which the trees grow, and service-berry because the pleasant fruits are of service, perhaps! June-berry, another name, is better; but the genus ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... this, grave sir, which is in fact trifling in a person of your character and appearance," answered the Anglo-Saxon. "I am like the rocks of my country; the fierce winds cannot shake me, the soft rains cannot melt me; flattery and loud words are alike lost ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Tristan to Isoude. May God pity a poor fool, I loved you half as much again than I had love for myself. From the first to the last of our friendship, never by thought, or by word, or by deed, have I done amiss; there is no wrong doing, trifling or great, to make plain your hatred, or to excuse so vile a betrayal as this scorning of our love for a fresher face, this desertion of me, this proclaiming of our secret. Alas, my friend, I marvel greatly; ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... work in earnest, and labouring diligently from morning to night—and even into the night hours—they knew they would not be long in accomplishing a task so trifling as the stocking of a gun, or putting the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... of Dissenters-I ask how comes it that England is neither a sober nor a moral country, and that vice in every shape rears its horrid front? Does it not prove that there is a radical error in the system? By the union of the people of England advantages of no trifling amount have lately been gained: the barrier of the Test Acts has been broken down; the system of parliamentary corruption has been stormed with success; and I trust the time is not far distant when the consciences of men will be no longer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... would have given little heed to such a trifling matter, but now it seemed of so much importance that I spoke to my companions in misery regarding it, picturing the bedraggled condition of the fine feathers after they had become thoroughly saturated, and was talking with more ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... D. Adams's Gram., 48; and others. "Till religion, the pilot of the soul, have lent thee her unfathomable coil."—Tupper's Thoughts, p. 170. "Whether nature or art contribute most to form an orator, is a trifling inquiry."—Blair's Rhet., p. 338. "Year after year steals something from us; till the decaying fabric totter of itself, and crumble at length into dust."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 225. "If spiritual pride have not entirely vanquished humility."—West's Letters, p. 184. "Whether he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... air fanned his burning face. He stood on the bank of the Plover Creek and looked with unseeing eyes around him, and found himself thinking of the most trifling things—he couldn't think about what he wanted to; his brain refused to act. Suddenly there came over him a great calmness, and with it a strong resolve. He would do the square thing. He loved Thursa, but there was something stronger even than ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... upbringing. His talk was brilliant, if it bore no searching analysis, and he had his circle of listeners wherever he went. He was a born raconteur, and had proved himself in that particular, and his increasing acquaintance with the stage and the professors of its trifling art ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... psychic body; and, when he comes to be born again, that body will become his outermost vesture, upon which, with its wound still there, bodily tissue will be built up. So the man will be born maimed, or with the predisposition to some mortal injury; he is unguarded at that point, and any trifling accidental blow will pierce the broken Joints of his psychic armour. Thus do the dynamic mind-images manifest themselves, coming to the surface, so that works done in the past may ripen and come ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... anecdote which I had imagined to be wrapped up in that tale. So then, while he spoke, I wrote—no longer to Hohenfels, but to my own consciousness and memory—these little notes on Chamillo, or rather Chamilly, and obtained a trifling contribution to the back-stairs history ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Under these circumstances it has through its organs openly assailed the credit of the Government, and has actually made and persists in a demand of 15 per cent, or $158,842.77, as damages, when no damage, or none beyond some trifling expense, has in fact been sustained, and when the bank had in its own possession on deposit several millions of the public money which it was then using for its own profit. Is a fiscal agent of the Government which thus seeks to enrich itself at the expense of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there were many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Greeks, both in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as they are almost in everything equal to the ancient philosophers, so they far exceed our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... thrust, however). "No, not with you. And you know in your heart, in the bottom of your trifling and fickle and worthless heart, Helena Emory, that if it came to the test, and if life and all the world and all happiness were to be either all yours or all mine, I'd go anywhere, do anything, and leave it all to you rather than keep any ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... books, and keep them arranged and easily accessible, whether Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or others, maintaining also the rooms in good condition. He must preserve the books from damp and vermin, as well as from the hands of trifling, ignorant, dirty, and tasteless persons. To those of authority and learning, he ought himself to exhibit them with all facility, courteously explaining their beauty and remarkable characteristics, the handwriting and miniatures, but ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... As trifling as this Article in Brewing may seem at first it very worthily deserves the notice of all concern'd therein, for on this depends much the good of our Drink, because if it is ground too small the flower of the Malt will be the easier and more freely mix with the water, ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; One star alone shot forth a spark To prove thee—not Eternity. That beam hath sunk—and now thou art A blank—a thing to count and curse Through each dull tedious trifling part, Which all regret, yet all rehearse. One scene even thou canst not deform— The limit of thy sloth or speed When future wanderers bear the storm Which we shall sleep too sound to heed. And I can smile to think how weak Thine efforts ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the late and present Secretary of State with the British plenipotentiary during the negotiation. The British proposition of compromise, which would make the Columbia the line south of 49 , with a trifling addition of detached territory to the United States north of that river, and would leave on the British side two-thirds of the whole Oregon Territory, including the free navigation of the Columbia and all the valuable harbors on the Pacific, can never for a moment be entertained by the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Senator, of course, had to assist at Mr. Malt's, and they began to work themselves up, as Mr. Malt said, into the spirit of it. Mr. Malt was to insist that the windows should be shut, he said he had got a trifling cold, and the Senator was to require them open in the interests of ventilation. They rehearsed their arguments, and momma putting her head out of the window at the first small station cried, "Be quick and change ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... different degrees. In breeding from such he will exercise his judgment, and decide what are indispensable or desirable qualities, and will cross with animals with a view to establish them. This proceeding will be of the 'give-and-take' kind. He will submit to the introduction of a trifling defect, in order that he may profit by a great excellence; and between excellences perhaps somewhat incompatible he will decide on which is the greatest, and give it the preference. To a person commencing improvement, the best advice is to get as good a bull as he can; and ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... may appeal to the practice of inoculation, which as effectually saturated the system, and indisposed to subsequent attacks, as if the skin had formed a continuous pustular surface; and yet this benefit was often gained by the trifling tax of a few days' fever, and half a dozen of pustules. Where the fever runs high and the respiration is much affected, in the first period of measles, and before there is the slightest appearance of eruption, we conceive it often so be ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... advance of us, and as we hesitated and finally stopped, there appeared round it a body of men in whom we at once recognized the Japanese soldiers. There was a low but wide doorway on our right, and into it we at once slipped with no trifling celerity. It was intensely dark and offered a good concealment. We could not afford to extinguish our lantern, and I placed it behind an angle of the inner wall where it was impossible that its glimmer could be seen from the street. Crouching in the deep shadow, we anxiously awaited ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... never had many people to love; she had never (before) loved anybody very much; and the truth and dignity which had kept her from all forms of love-trifling, so kept the hidden treasures of her heart all sparkling with their own freshness. They had never been passed about from hand to hand; no weather-stains, no worn-out impressions were there. What the amount ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... mind like this could not construct a plot or outline an article. His writings, like his conversations, were long drawn out, meandering and painfully tiresome recitations of trifling and, for the most part, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... indulgence.—Thus far it may be well;—but, so mistaken are we in our road, as to run on in the very opposite tract, which leads directly to our ruin. Whatever else we indulge ourselves in, is attended with some small degree of relish, and has some trifling satisfaction in the enjoyment, but, in this, the farther we go, the more we are lost; and when arrived at the mark proposed, we are as far from the object we pursue, as when we first set out. Here then, are we inexcusable, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun. The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... this hour the events of one hundred years ago, it is certain that the small armies and the smaller appliances of force then in use will seem trifling, in contrast with those which have so recently wearied science and have tasked invention in the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... answered for themselves with two more sharp reports, and these four shots resulted in checking the enemy's advance and in raising a wildly exultant, though feeble, cheer from the defenders along the little line; for, trifling as was the addition to the failing force, the shots seemed to give as much encouragement to the enfeebled men as ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... beside his calm and comely partner. The first impression was one of disappointment. It looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually laughing at or with somebody. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... at the station, I found that I was the only traveler, by a first-class carriage, who left the train. A young lady, remarkable by her good looks and good dressing, seemed to have noticed this trifling circumstance. She approached me with a ready smile. "I believe I am speaking to my father's friend," she said; ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... success, and amidst this hour of interest how many hearts beat with all hopes and fears that are incident even to the most circumscribed contest of human life. Opposite Dora stood the youth whom we have already noticed, James Cavanagh, whose salvation seemed but a very trifling thing when compared or put into opposition with her success. Be this as it may, the moment was a most exciting one even to those who felt no other interest than that which naturally arises from human competition. And it was unquestionably ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... she keeps a severe eye on him all through dinner, and so forbids any trifling with the sacred topic. "It would have put the poor things out so!" She had said to herself; and, indeed, it must be confessed that the lovers are very shy and uncomfortable, and that conversation drifts a good deal, and is only carried on irregularly ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Timmins by his outrageous demands for 'a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham', on behalf of the stock-pot. But the 'Reform' housekeeper need be under no apprehension on that score, for she can have the choicest and most wholesome materials fresh from the garden to her pot-au-feu, at a trifling cost. Of course it is quite possible to be as extravagant with vegetarian foods as with the other, as when we demand forced unnatural products out of their season, when their unwholesomeness is matched only by their cost. No one who knows what sound, ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... with great eagerness; I promise supreme and eternal things, but the hearts of mortals are torpid. Who serves and obeys Me in everything with so great care as the world and its lords are served? Men run a long way for a trifling reward, but for eternal life many scarcely lift a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... until the world is disgusted with them; a woman gives herself to God only when the world no longer wants her. Her vanity finds in religious devotion a role which occupies her and consoles her for the ruin of her charms. She passes her time in the most trifling practices, parties, intrigues, invectives, and slander; zeal furnishes her the means of distinguishing herself and becoming an object of consideration in the religious circle. If the bigots have the talent to please God and His priests, they rarely possess that of pleasing society ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... "That's too trifling. Say a bit," returned the man, but half concealing the eager impatience he felt to get hold ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... there was scarcely a trifling incident in his everyday life which escaped her. She saw each sign of his poverty and physical weakness. He grew paler day by day. There were days when his step flagged as he went up and down the staircase; some mornings he did not go out at all. She discovered that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... livres, nine sols and two deniers. It is perhaps even more interesting to know that of this vast sum more than three millions went for marble, twenty-one millions for masonry, two and a half millions for the rougher woodwork and a like sum for marquetry. Other additional "trifling" embellishments of Versailles and the Trianon during the same period counted up another six million and ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... close upon sixteen. One day, I heard some one say, speaking of some trifling thing of which I was ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... offices, and there busy themselves about their affairs, after a fashion, energetic or desultory, till after two o'clock. The dinner hour varies from three to half-past five. Post-prandial labor is generally declined; wisely, too, for few American digestions will bear trifling with; though Nature must have gifted some of my acquaintance with a marvellous internal mechanism. How, otherwise, could they stand a long unbroken course of free living, with such infinitesimal correctives of exercise? The evening is spent after each man's fancy—at ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... and the French, with some small sprinklings of Greek, Italian, and Spanish, are some relief in poetry, and help us to soften our uncouth numbers; which, together with our English genius, incomparably beyond the trifling of the French, in all the nobler parts of verse, will justly give us the pre-eminence. But, on the other hand, the effeminacy of our pronunciation, (a defect common to us and to the Danes,) and our scarcity of female rhymes, have left the advantage of musical ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and threw leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem's had had a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had left a lasting terror in Maggie's mind. The thought had risen, that some ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... but rather to lead on the witnesses than to entangle them. He succeeded, however, in creating a violent altercation between the Waterhouses on the one hand, and Agnes Brown on the other, over trifling matters of detail.[3] At length he offered to release Mother Waterhouse if she would make the spirit appear in the court.[4] The offer was waived. The attorney then asked, "When dyd thye Cat suck of thy bloud?" ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... voice, the fierceness of his eye, and the manner in which he held the loaded weapon, within a hand's-breadth of Chiffinch's head, convinced the last there was neither room for compromise, nor time for trifling. He thrust his hand into a side pocket of his cloak, and with visible reluctance, produced those papers and despatches with which Julian had been entrusted ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... render those trifling services which it was usual to ask from holy folk and sometimes from magicians. Before the coronation ceremony the nobles and knights had been given gloves, according to the custom. One of them lost his; he asked the Maid to find them, or others ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From some trifling details, from the way they made the coffee together, for instance, and from the way they understood each other at half a word, I could gather that they lived in harmony and comfort, and that they were glad of a visitor. After dinner they played a duet ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Lindsay's offer to Dresser, who was rising at laborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realized how unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser's enthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him something valuable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... already understood, though perhaps others more proper might sometimes be invented. Sylburgius, and other innovators, whose new terms have sunk their learning into neglect, have left sufficient warning against the trifling ambition of teaching ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great "barin"—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the upkeep of this mighty host, and for this general comforting of the Allies, the British taxpayer is now paying cheerfully and willingly, in addition to such trifling impositions as a 60 per cent tax on his commercial profits, income tax at the rate of twenty-five cents ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... about a salary. I promised you a pension; and, not wishing to maintain you in absolute idleness, I lay upon you these absurd and trifling duties." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often "How beautiful!" that it became rather a byword in the family. Estimated by their mere money value, the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth; but, as they stood arranged and combined, they had all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the compass of limited means, yet every ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... later a large number of the Catholic princes bound themselves together in the /League/ and accepted Maximilian of Bavaria as their leader (1609). Thus Germany was divided once again into two hostile camps, and only a very trifling incident was required to plunge the country into another civil war. For a time it seemed as if the succession to the Duchy of Cleves was to be the issue that would lead to the catastrophe. Duke John ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... gift which I shall bring you myself, my Katy; but I have a fancy also that you shall wear some trifling thing on your wedding-day which comes from me, so for fear of being forestalled I will say now, please don't buy any stockings for the occasion, but wear the pair which go with this, for the sake ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... of a pig-stye. We should as soon think of erecting the Nelson Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. Indeed, were it not necessary to show some kind of respect to fashion, we should hasten at once into the midst of things, instead of trespassing on the patience of our readers, and possibly, trifling with their time. We should not like to be kept waiting at a Lord Mayor's feast by a long description of the bill of fare. Our preface, however, shall at least have the merit of novelty; it shall ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... continued by the apostolic librarians and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries; and that the last and smallest part is the work of Anastasius, whose name it bears. The style is barbarous, the narrative partial, the details are trifling—yet it must be read as a curious and authentic record of the times. The epistles of the popes are dispersed in the volumes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give; and much less take What I shall die to want.[422-10] But this is trifling; And all the more it seeks to hide itself, The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning! And prompt me, plain and holy innocence! I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow[423-11] You may deny me; but I'll be your servant, Whether you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes; it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... explain to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and memorizing accidental, superficial, or even purely artificial relations. This double faculty of observing trifling and irrelevant details, and of remembering them, became phenomenally and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... You don't need glory. Friendship is a simple story. Pass by trifling errors blindly, Gaze on honest effort kindly, Cheer the youth who's bravely trying, Pity him who's sadly sighing; Just a little labor spend On the duties of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right. It doesn't make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he's doing may seem, that's the big thing and the only thing for him just then. Business is like oil—it won't mix ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... June between the British and Americans in the Dismal Swamp region, and in one of them Gregory was repulsed and driven from his position. But in July he wrote to Colonel Blount reporting that his losses were trifling, and that he had regained his old post from the enemy. In August, 1781, a letter from General Gregory conveyed the joyful tidings that the enemy had evacuated Portsmouth. As his troops were no longer needed to guard against the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... it were only in having seen what they have not seen." Such an accidental advantage, since it neither implies merit, nor confers dignity, one would think should not be desired so much as to be counterfeited: yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces innumerable narratives, all equally false; but more or less credible in proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater. How many may a man of diffusive conversation count ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... this?" Witherspoon asked. He had paid no attention to this trifling set-to and had caught merely the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... a man happy in matrimony in the style that young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some future ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knew that Harriet meant exactly what she said. She knew that it was time to stop trifling and to explain. "If you must see them, here they are." She drew the "specs" from a pocket in her skirt, holding them at arm's-length suspended from a string that the wearer had fastened to them to keep the glasses ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... launched against him a more tremendous excommunication. In return the partisans of Frederick in Rome, raising an insurrection, expelled the pope from that city. And now the free-thinking emperor, to convince the world that he was not trifling with his word, set sail of his own accord for the East, with as numerous an army as he was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... indistinct, that few seem to have reaped the benefit of them. For these reasons it was necessary to methodize the whole work; to abridge some parts of it; and to leave out many things that appear to be trifling. This we have endeavored to do in the translation, by reducing the whole work to four general heads or books; and {ii} by bringing the several subjects treated of, the accounts of which lie scattered up and down in different ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... wholesome fear of the penalty for contravening the law, refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling, if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is to ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... this just what spiritualists pretend to do? Many may call it only trifling and play. The Lord does not. The Scriptures continue: "For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations He will destroy them at thy coming." I certainly do not mean to say that all that passes for spiritualism is thus downright deviltry to-day, nor was it so in pagan ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... minutes and listening to the talk but learning nothing new, they went through the little village, made a few trifling purchases and then returned to the Academy, Jack managing the car and quite exciting Dick's admiration by the cool manner in which he took the trying hills, sharp turns and ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... been wholly unprepared for the demand that had been thrust upon her by the man, Peterman. It had frightened her at first. She had shrunk from it. Then, finally, she had accepted it as her duty, under pressure. Peterman had made it appear so trifling. A journey, a trying journey, perhaps, but one to be made with all the comfort he could provide. And then to preach to those ignorant forest-men the disaster towards which their employers were heading. As Peterman had put it, it had almost seemed a legitimate thing to do. Convinced ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... supplied with provisions and tobacco from the town, and every effort had been used to renew their hopes and courage. Cathelineau had passed the greater portion of the morning among them, going from one quarter to another, assuring the men that their loss was most trifling, that their future victory was certain—it was nearly in vain; they declared that they could do ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... considerable interest is the quantity per acre different soils contain of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. Although the amount of these ingredients when stated in percentage seems very trifling, yet when calculated in lb. per acre, it is seen to be in large excess of the amount removed by the different crops. This question will be dealt with in ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... very small part of the land was under cultivation. A few miniature olive and currant orchards, attempts at vineyards, and trifling patches of beans and grain, represented the sole efforts at tillage. There were no railways, and the few roads in existence were in poor condition. In or near what afterwards became the British zone, the only communities were those grouped around the fortifications ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... in a back room and searched him some more, and found his roll, and then a man who said he was a lawyer offered to help pa, and keep him out of the penitentiary. He told pa the law of Kentucky made the crime of trifling with a slot machine the same as breach of promise, or arson, and that he would be lucky if he got off with ten years in the pen, with 30 days' solitary confinement in a Turkish bath cell, with niggers ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... staggered by the shot from my gun. Many were wounded, but they were trifling small shot-wounds, which only infuriated them as they saw their prey escaping, and with a rush they came tearing through the water, whirling their clubs above ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... at the disconcerting providence which has overwhelmed us in the journey of life. There are compensating circumstances which should alleviate our sorrow. Our lives are spared, and the immeasurable forests are undisturbed by the trifling event which has overtaken us ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... is the creature of that circle. And I ask myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images. And everything is possible—except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling humanity can know. No woman can stand that mode of life in which women rule, and remain a perfectly ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... bow-man had charge of the boat-hook and painter, and the coxswain of the rudder, yoke, and stern-sheets. Our duty was to carry the captain and agent about, and passengers off and on; which last was no trifling duty, as the people on shore have no boats, and every purchaser, from the boy who buys his pair of shoes, to the trader who buys his casks and bales, were to be taken off and on, in our boat. Some days, when people ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Trifling as it may seem, the first measure of the new government pertained to the etiquette to be observed at receptions, dinners, etc., in which there was more pomp and ceremony than at the present time. Washington himself ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... paper, though it is altogether too light and trifling in its treatment of serious subjects. Besides, it never treats of any thing serious. This won't do. The earnest men and women of the nation require something better at your hands. I have an essay on the "Origin of Evil," which I forward ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... delight his sence; The youth that doted on Minerva's[177] picture Had some contentment for his eye; [soft Musique. But love, or rather an infernall hagge, Envying Saxons greatnes and his joyes, Hath given me nothing but a trifling glove, As if by the proportion of the case Art had the power to know the jewels nature. Or Nimph, or goddesse, woman, or faire devill, If anything thou art, within my braine Draw thine owne picture, let me see ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... In Mexico the curious class of miners known as 'gambusinos' rove through the valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan, passing their lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles. If they come upon a mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret for a trifling sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find the mines worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them, their El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... This trifling circumstance served to arouse me, and I began to look about me with some attention. I discovered, at length, that the forest glade was not tenantless, for the part farthest removed from me was crowded with ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... child nor woman that I should weakly yield to guidance or misleading! Some trifling matter of free-will remains to me in spite of mine affliction,—and that I have supped with Sah-luma at the Palace of the High Priestess, has been as much my choice as his example. Who among men would turn aside from high feasting and mirthful company? ... not I, believe me! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... away all that gorgeous array whereof they were so proud; and especially when they had talked familiarly with the Utopians, and had learned all their fashions and opinions. For they marvel that any man be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the glistering of a little trifling stone, which may behold any of the stars, or else the sun itself; or that any man is so mad as to count himself the nobler for the smaller or finer thread of wool, which self-same wool (be it now in never so fine a spun thread) did once a ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... had raised his fortune. With the common people his reputation stood still worse. They would neither yield him the territorial appellation of Ellangowan nor the usual compliment of Mr. Glossin: with them he was bare Glossin; and so incredibly was his vanity interested by this trifling circumstance, that he was known to give half-a-crown to a beggar because he had thrice called him Ellangowan in beseeching him for a penny. He therefore felt acutely the general want of respect, and particularly when he contrasted ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her to confide in him, to tell him the cause of her anguish. If Clinton had been trifling with her happiness, he should not depart without feeling ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... leave her boys to the mercy of the pavement; she tried to make her home happy and taught them all to have a share in adding to its sunshine. "It makes boys selfish," she would say, "to have their sisters do all the work and let the boys go scot-free. I don't believe there would be so many trifling men if the boys were trained to be more helpful at home and to feel more for their mothers and sisters." All this was very well for the peace and sunshine of that home, but as the children advanced in life the question came to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... you answer I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... but it knocked the "love motive" and the "heart interest" higher than a kite, utterly ruining some of his prettiest bits of writing, besides letting him in for a call-down from Naylor. Still, the old man couldn't be very hard on him—he'd understand that some trifling little inaccuracies were bound to creep into a great big story like this, dug out and worked ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... Venice on the mainland, which were then small, were assailed by Francesco Carrara and the Hungarians. Her only ally in the war, Bernabo Visconti of Milan, gave her little help on this side, but his mercenaries invaded the territory of Genoa. The danger on land seemed trifling to Venice so long as she could keep the sea open to her trade and press the war against ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... other for various smaller irregularities, like the sale of appointments to West Point cadetships, and that sort of thing—mere trifling pocket-money enterprises that might better, be passed over in silence, perhaps, but then one of our Congresses can never rest easy till it has thoroughly purified itself of all blemishes—and that is a thing to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion- -an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. 'Our ancient' is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... not a man who raked cinders over the fire, but rather raked them off and that in true kindness and love; but with terrible and awful plainness he showed the danger of trifling with the Gospel, and presuming upon God's love ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... campaign, not a milrea was suffered to find its way into the pockets of the officers and men, and the squadron would have been wholly defrauded of its reward, had I not refused to give up to the prize tribunal the comparatively trifling sums received in redemption of the seizures at Maranham; these being retained on board the flagship in consequence of the unjustifiable course which the tribunal was pursuing. A plot was, however, formed to seize it by force, but this was met by such ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the earth thus sheds, this crystal thread, scorned by the unobserving passer-by, is arrested in its timid course by some trifling obstacle—a rising path, a fallen branch or tree. This little streamlet swells, frets the immediate spot of ground, imperceptibly increases in size, and becomes after many efforts, the patient work of months and years, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the most depressing trials, and the unconquerable ardour, in spite of every obstacle, characteristic of British seamen. About 2000 miles altogether were traversed by the different parties. Mr Penny made every effort to ascend Wellington Channel; but his success was trifling compared to his unwearied endeavours. When his sledge was stopped by open water, and after incredible labours a boat was brought to the spot, thick-ribbed ice had collected to impede its progress. All the efforts of the heroic explorers were in vain. Lieutenant De Haven's ships returned ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... colleges, seventeen academies, fifty high schools, five law schools, five medical schools and twenty-five theological seminaries. It is true that all of the education he is obtaining is not practical; and also true that many so-called educated ones are shiftless and trifling; but this is no more than was to be expected under ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... need of a reply, as their voices were already audible from below, talking with Mrs. McGuire. The distance was so trifling that they had seen Phil enter the house, and the padrone, having a contempt for the physical powers of ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... flourish apart from the sophistry and fictions of selfishness. He would have rejoiced to have been as light of heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours, before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious of your duties, in which he ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the head of the bed and bent down to examine the bedposts. A slight groove in the deep pile carpet showed clearly enough that the bed had been pushed back a few inches. The change in position was so trifling that it might have been attributed to the act of a servant in sweeping the room if a closer examination had not revealed the continuance of the groove under the bed. The inference was unmistakable: the bed, in the first instance, had been ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the present what would suffice for competence to one of few wants, and freeing his name from that title of Adventurer, which is so prodigally given in rich old countries to those who have no estates but their brains. He thought of Violante but as the civilized trader thinks of a trifling coin, of a glass bead, which he exchanges with some barbarian for gold dust; he thought of Frank Hazeldean married to the foreign woman of beggared means, and repute that had known the breath of scandal,—married, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... direction for which she would all her life be thankful. It would have been surprising if her presence in the doctor's house had not after some time made changes in it, but there was no great difference outwardly except that she gathered some trifling possessions which sometimes harmonized, and as often did not, with the household gods of the doctor and Marilla. There was a shy sort of intercourse between Nan and Mrs. Graham's grandchildren, but it was not very valuable to any of the young people at first, the country child ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... times adopt the vulgar suspicion, that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops whom he had labored to reform; the misconduct and favor of Commentiolus are imputed to this malevolent design; and every age must condemn the inhumanity of avarice [42] of a prince, who, by the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of gold, might have prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands of the chagan. In the just fervor of indignation, an order was signified to the army of the Danube, that they should spare the magazines of the province, and establish their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... silence in the midst of an excitement which was great for so trifling an incident, and then ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... her not to steal sugar for the future," observed Michael, as he and his son righted the kettle. They had to pull down some of the shed before they could put the fire out; but such trifling events were too common in the bush to disturb their tempers, and they were thankful that matters ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... tried, for General John E. Wool the department commander, had not at command a sufficient number of officers of appropriate rank to constitute a court in the case of Rains, and the charges against Ord were very properly ignored on account of their trifling character. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... have bent on the last struggle of life in a beloved object. Without any show of surprise Grandcourt nodded to Deronda, gave a second look at Gwendolen, passed on, and seated himself easily at a little distance crossing his legs, taking out his handkerchief and trifling with it elegantly. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... I'll engage no page remains a blank, But ere we leave the range of our design, E'en scrup'lous dames shall to our wish incline, Our persons handsome, with engaging air, And sprightly, brilliant wit no trifling share,— 'Twere strange, possessing such engaging charms, They should not ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... undertaking the same service for 60,000 rupees a year for nine years, and the terms of Mr. Frazer's contracts: preferring the latter, because these were "to effect a complete repair, which could hardly be concluded in one season, and the subsequent expense would be but trifling." ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the spirit of wanton mischief fairly bristles through the crowd, evidently needing but the merest friction to set it ablaze and render my situation desperate. My coat-tail is jerked, the bicycle stopped, my helmet knocked off, and other trifling indignities offered; but to these acts I take no exceptions, merely placing my helmet on again when it is knocked off, and maintaining a calm ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... with the numbers of the Propositions, and the words included within brackets, are supplied from Foxe. Also a few trifling corrections in the orthography. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... was done to ward off the danger, "the throats of all the white people of Virginia will be cut." The other replied, "No, the whites cannot be conquered—the throats of the blacks will be cut." Faulkner's rejoinder was that the difference was a trifling one, "for the fact is conceded that one race or ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... With these appeals for trifling allowance,—leaving the larger need to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no slight fiction can adequately handle,—I give you leave ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to explain, O father. Did not you give us leave to take from the Sheep a trifling contribution for our pelisses in winter? It is only because they are stupid sheep that they cry out. They have only a single fleece taken from each of them, but they grumble about ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... mission; and when informed by Illo of its failure, he broke out into the bitterest complaints against the court. "Thus," said he, "are our faithful services rewarded. My recommendation is disregarded, and your merit denied so trifling a reward! Who would any longer devote his services to so ungrateful a master? No, for my part, I am henceforth the determined foe of Austria." Illo agreed with him, and a close alliance ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... the middle and high, to the vox humana of some organs; lastly, the harmonical sounds are exactly like those of the harmonica. It is conceived, that this diversity of tones affords already a great variety in the execution, which is always looked upon as being feeble and trifling, on account of the smallness of the instrument. It was not thought possible to derive much pleasure from any attempt which could be made to conquer the difficulties of so limited an instrument; because, in the extent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... cannot think how comic it looked hopping about the bar, quite as much at home as a tame squirrel would have been. I had a bed made up for me at this place, on one end of a long dining-table. It was very comfortable, with the trifling drawback that I had to rise earlier than I wished, in order that what had been a bed at night might become a table ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... my memory, that in committing it to paper I did not omit one material circumstance; however, upon strict review, I blotted out several passages of less moment, which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... mystic meaning to a shibboleth of their own; roared over old jokes with a delight they had never since given to new; reawakened idiotic nicknames and bywords with intense enjoyment; grew grave, anxious, and agonized over forgotten names, trifling dates, useless distances, ineffective records, and feeble chronicles of their domestic economy. It was the thoughtful and melancholy Demorest who remembered the exact color and price paid for a certain shirt bought from a Greaser peddler amidst the envy of his companions; ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy soon passed off and for the next fifty years he enjoyed almost ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... are promiscuously admitted, men or women, and have places every way fitted for both concealing and entertainment. The man and woman of the house frequently take their commodities off their hand at low prices, and the women who frequent these sort of places help them off with what trifling sums of money they receive; for though they are utterly devoid of education, yet dinning and flattery are so perfectly practised by them, that these bewitched young robbers make no scruple of venturing soul and body ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... dairy-produce and plenty of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-footed, rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... of a recitation, and delivered the short Latin presentation-address, I thought him to be a god." This fascination is hard to be explained. The great seriousness of Horner's character may in part account for it. He could not bear trifling on important subjects, and could not help frowning on all jests which were not more wise than witty. The calm determination, the unvarying earnestness of his character, may aid in explaining it. From a boy, he never swerved from great purposes, pursued the most useful though difficult knowledge, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... some trifling act I had offended the Frenchman, and ever after did he make it a point to insult and annoy me by every means in his power, until at length, on one occasion, he struck me a cruel blow on the face. That blow did the business. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... and critics, Dickens, looking about superciliously, or Anthony Trollope, breathing hard, or Trollope mere, or Harriet Martineau, or Captain Marryat, or Mayne Reid, or Samuel Lover. For in a case like this a trifling matter like an anachronism or a misstatement counts ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... disapproved. She would have preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of busy representations to the provincial officials which secured some good-will and even trifling favor to the family. But the results were otherwise unsatisfactory, for the mulberry money ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... cutter to receive the syndic's letters was fully reported the same evening to the commandant, who, knowing that the syndic was suspected, reported the same to the authorities, and this trifling circumstance only increased the suspicions against the unfortunate Mynheer Van Krause; but we must follow the cutter and those on board of her. Smallbones had remained concealed on board, his wounds had been nearly healed, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
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