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More "Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strokes of fate we have curiously trivial demonstrations. Lorne met Hesketh's eye with the steadiness of a lion's in his own; the unusual thing he did was to take his hands out of his pockets and let his arms hang loosely by his side. It was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... once the deep roll of the drum roused the country, only to discover that it was a false alarm. But these constant alarms were trying indeed, especially on the timid and nervous, and women became almost hysterical on the most trivial occasions. ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... if I had read it only the day before, I recalled the description of a wild and stormy night when the heroine placed a lighted lamp in the window of her sea-bound cottage, to guide her lover home in safety. Gentlemen, the reading of that book in my boyhood days was but a trivial thing. I had read a thousand others, and of them all it was possibly the least significant; but the Supreme Arbiter ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... in the least interested in them," interrupted Marjorie with dry contempt. "You might be able to make a child of nine years believe you. I doubt even that. I have heard of this foolishness. Malicious as it is intended to be, it is too trivial to be deceiving. You will kindly unlock the front door and ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... party, having not had any since the 20th ultmo.; I say most of the party, for my friend Capt. Clark declares it to be a mear matter of indifference with him whether he uses it or not; for myself I must confess I felt a considerable inconvenience from the want of it; the want of bread I consider as trivial provided, I get fat meat, for as to the species of meat I am not very particular, the flesh of the dog the horse and the wolf, having from habit become equally formiliar with any other, and I have ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... Mrs. Tracy, thrown upon her own resources, has been continually tasting dear Julian's store, and finding out excuses for his trivial peccadilloes. And when, from the recesses of his desk, she had routed out (in company with sundry more, rather contrasting with a mother's pure advice) a few of her own letters, which had not yet been destroyed, she would doat by the hour on these proofs of his affection. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... intelligence on almost every subject. Mr. Bowen, although deferential in his deportment towards the captain, and ever treating him with a good show of respect, was in reality master of the brig; his advice being solicited on the most trivial occasion, and every suggestion he made in relation to the management of the vessel was eagerly seized upon by the captain. Indeed, Bowen was a model of a mate; industrious, economical, and faithful, treating the crew with kindness and consideration, yet exacting their full quota of ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... that you have had leave granted you: you then receive, in some way or another, directions to go to some place or another.... You go there ... you meet people you do not know, who ask you questions, sometimes seemingly trivial, sometimes obviously of the gravest importance.... It is up to you to find out whether you are face to face with your spy chiefs, or if, on the contrary, you have not fallen into a trap set by the police to catch spies.... You cannot go to a rendezvous with a quiet mind: how do you know that ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... most correct habits, yet in the old army he was in frequent trouble. As a subordinate he was always on the lookout to catch his commanding officer infringing his prerogatives; as a post commander he was equally vigilant to detect the slightest neglect, even of the most trivial order. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Irish! How frequently do circumstances, at first sight the most trivial and unimportant, exercise a mighty and permanent influence on our habits and pursuits!—how frequently is a stream turned aside from its natural course by some little rock or knoll, causing it to make an abrupt turn! On a wild road in Ireland I had heard Irish spoken for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... been carried only with the help of the Social Democratic party. The speaker then once more rehashed the incidents of the Zabern matter, referred to the attitude of the Emperor, who, he said, had evidently been too busy with hunting and festivities to devote time to such trivial matters as the Zabern Affair, and also said that, if the Chancellor had refused to withdraw, the only possible conclusion from the vote of the two hundred and ninety-three Reichstag members, who were certainly ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... another kind of needlework in which more is made of the stuff than of the stitching. In applique the craft to the needleworker is not carried to its limit, but, on the other hand, it calls for great skill in design. Effective it must be: coarse it may be: vulgar it should not be: trivial it can hardly be: mere prettiness is beyond its scope: but it lends itself to dignity of design and nobility of treatment." The foregoing quotation is from "Art in Needlework" by Louis F. Day and Mary Buckle. It is of interest because it explains ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... see the officer, but that also was impossible, although he lodged in the inn. Monsieur Follenvie alone was authorized to interview him on civil matters. So they waited. The women returned to their rooms, and occupied themselves with trivial matters. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... makes me proudest. It will be attended with proeme, prolegomena, testimonia scriptorum, index authorum, and notes variorum. As to the latter, I desire you to read over the text, and make a few in any way you like best; whether dry raillery, upon the style and way of commenting of trivial critics; or humourous, upon the authors in the poem; or historical, of persons, places, times; or explanatory, or collecting the parallel passages of the ancients. Adieu. I am pretty well, my mother not ill, Dr. Arbuthnot vexed with his ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... off the talent of her pupils to the friends she invited; while, in a word, Hortense was thus being trained up to the accomplishments of a distinguished woman of the world, she did not dream how useful all these little details, so trivial, apparently, at the time, would one day be to her, and how good a thing it was that she had learned to play parts at Madame Campan's, and to appear in society as ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... to choose for every trivial noise but mine, and in so full a time? Away! You wrong me, Master Shrieve: dispose of him At your own pleasure; send the ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... said Loring. "Allow me, in turn, to make a suggestion, Mr. Wyatt. Put the money in your billbook, hand it to the stakeholder, and let him give it, unopened, to the winner. Of course, you will first take out your other money. There is no need for them to know that more than a trivial sum is at stake. We do not want to ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... what he would say, but was disappointed to find that it was a merely trivial conversation about some inconsequential thing, as though Kennedy had merely wished to get in touch with the "Silent Boss." Next he called up the sanitarium to which Murtha had been committed, and after posing as Murtha's personal physician managed ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... still, and beyond the far-away echoes of a policeman's patrol on the hard pavement outside, nothing, absolutely nothing, broke the universal, and as it seemed to her, unnatural silence. Generally at night-time there are sounds one likes to assure oneself are too trivial to be heard during the day—the creaking of boards, stairs (nearly always stairs), and the tapping of some leaf (of course some leaf) at the windows. Who has not heard such sounds, and who in his heart of hearts has not been only too ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... gossip she had heard, but it suddenly seemed small and not worth while. She had already told her that Aunt Susan had her promise to come in time for dinner; it occurred to her to tell her of Nathan's attitude toward them for their unfriendly neglect, but that too seemed unnecessary and trivial since they were going. On that point Elizabeth did not intend to give in an inch: she was going, even if John was cross ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... means to that end in a way entirely similar. The divine thunders out his anathemas with more noise and terror against the breach of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of some of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and institutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was a born idealist and a Utopian, Paul Deroulede had never for a moment had any illusions with regard to his own popularity. He knew that at any time, and for any trivial cause, the love which the mob bore him would readily turn to hate. He had seen Mirabeau's popularity wane, La Fayette's, Desmoulin's—was it likely that he alone would survive the inevitable death of so ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... at length arrived at my destined haven, and, what is very unusual for me, have been successful in several trivial circumstances, such as getting over the ferry (which is difficult at this season), finding temporary quarters for my chevaux without difficulty or delay. I cannot help regarding these as harbingers of good luck. I am, however, not fortunate in finding Judge Yates. He is from ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... had been a conspiracy to circulate false rumours, merely to abuse public credulity, it would not have been a trivial offence; but if the object of the conspiracy be not merely to abuse public credulity, but to raise the funds, in order that the conspirators may sell out of those funds for their own advantage, and, consequently, to the injury of others, in that case the offence assumes ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... the road as Callender's Consolidated Spectacular Colored Minstrels. On all the bills appeared the inscription "Gustave and Charles Frohman, Proprietors." As a matter of fact, Charles had very little to do with the company, although he made a number of its contracts. His financial interest was trivial. Gustave used his name because Charles had been prominently associated with the Mastodons and he had achieved some eminence as a ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... because of all this, he is lonely, morose, and secretive. Here is a girl of great ability and charm but subject to fits of deep depression. Another young man loses his temper very easily and cherishes resentment for a long time over trivial matters. The girl whom he is interested in is extremely self-conscious and thinks that she is being purposely slighted unless she is the center of everything. Others, both boys and girls, are excessively ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... Some apparently trivial entries have been copied, such as the payment of a sexton's salary for a number of successive years, but the name of the sexton in such cases has an important bearing upon the subject, when it is not improbable that the churches indicated as ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... the first step in the theory, the Supreme Being is reduced to the function of a motive power, a mainspring, a corner-stone, or, if a still more trivial comparison may be allowed me, a constitutional sovereign, reigning but not governing, swearing to obey the law and appointing ministers to execute it. But, under the influence of the mirage which fascinates him, the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and President Wilson several times sharply criticised the actions of the Mexican dictator. But Huerta did not reform and nothing sufficient happened to him; it began to look as if watchful waiting might continue indefinitely when a trivial incident furnished ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... have made a newspaper man; and now he was too far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. He didn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the most amazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he could always be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequential detail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point lace adjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig up a long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a story without a quotation from one of the poets. It never ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... trouble, an inundation of vanity and vexation, of confusion and disappointment. While we enjoy ourselves, neither the joy not sorrow of other men affect us: We are then at liberty with the voice of our soul, to speak to God. By this we shun such frequent trivial discourse, as often becomes an obstruction to virtue: and how often do we find that we had reason to with we had not been in company, or said nothing when we were there? for either we offend God by the impiety of our discourse, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... failed, ignominiously failed, and through what appeared a trivial accident. More such "accidents" at critical periods will appear before this history ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... retirement into Hertfordshire in 1864 as a gentleman farmer, and above all the undeniable gift for creating such pure melodies as his songs "When other Hearts" and "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," it is idle to refuse him a prominent place in the history of music. He wrote much that was trivial, but also much that was enduring. He died on the 20th of October 1870, and was buried at Kensal Green. In 1882 a medallion portrait of him was unveiled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... know that Mr. Graham had a daguerreotype which looked just like 'Lena, and that Mrs. Graham had no doubt whatever that she was in the habit of writing to him. This of course was repeated, notwithstanding the promise of secrecy, and many of the neighbors suddenly remembered some little circumstance trivial in itself, but all going to swell the amount of evidence against poor 'Lena, who, unconscious of the gathering storm, did not for a time observe the sidelong glances cast toward her ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... but which, loosely construed, had been applied to punish socialism, pacifism, and left-wing ideologies, the charges often resting on far-fetched inferences which, if true, would establish only technical or trivial violations. They proposed 'clear and present danger' as a test for the sufficiency of evidence in particular cases. I would save it, unmodified, for application as a 'rule of reason' in the kind of case for which it was devised. When the issue is criminality of a hot-headed speech ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... those years, old and failing, they fell out over some trivial thing and separated for good. One traveled north, the other south. Both struck fine mineral that promised to make their dreams come true. But neither was content. Each wanted the other's companionship and yet each feared that pride would keep his ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... fascination a good puzzle has for a great many people. We know the thing to be of trivial importance, yet we are impelled to master it; and when we have succeeded there is a pleasure and a sense of satisfaction that are a quite sufficient reward for our trouble, even when there is no prize to be won. What is this mysterious charm that many find irresistible? Why do we ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... reminded him of a heroine of Meredith's—but a heroine at the end of the book. All had been written about her. She had played her mighty part, and knew that it was over. He and he alone was not content, and wrote for her daily a trivial ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... probably gained much color by constant repetition, even if they were not wholly created by imagination and hatred of the Austrian rule. According to these accounts, the local despots imposed exorbitant fines for trivial offences, and frequently sent prisoners to Zug and Lucerne to be tried by Austrian judges. They levied enormously increased taxes and imports on every commodity, and exacted payment in the most merciless manner; they openly violated ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... quarters in England and Ireland, to the extent of upwards of ten thousand miles yearly; and it was amidst this incessant and laborious travelling, that he contrived to commit to paper his fast-growing generalizations on what he rightly regarded as a new science. No observation, howsoever trivial it might appear, was neglected, and no opportunity of collecting fresh facts was overlooked. Whenever he could, he possessed himself of records of borings, natural and artificial sections, drew them to a constant scale of eight yards to the inch, and coloured them up. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... foundations. From dawn till night every centre of public traffic and intercourse was the scene of hostile meetings between Christians and heathen, with frequent frays and bloodshed, only stopped by the intervention of the soldiery. Still, as we see that the trivial round of daily tasks is necessarily fulfilled, even when the hand of Fate lies heaviest on a household, and that children cannot forego their play even when their father is stretched on his death-bed, so the minor interests of individual ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... old patriarch seems to have been a great traveler in his day, and to have passed under a different name in every country that he visited. The Chaldeans, for instance, give us his story, merely altering his name into Xisuthrus—a trivial alteration, which to an historian skilled in etymologies will appear wholly unimportant. It appears, likewise, that he had exchanged his tarpaulin and quadrant among the Chaldeans for the gorgeous insignia of royalty, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Revolutionists were many surgeons, and in vivisection they attained marvellous proficiency. In Avis Everhard's words, they could literally make a man over. To them the elimination of scars and disfigurements was a trivial detail. They changed the features with such microscopic care that no traces were left of their handiwork. The nose was a favorite organ to work upon. Skin-grafting and hair-transplanting were among their commonest ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... definite, lucid and shiningly practical soul,—with such a power of always expectorating himself into clearness again. If he do frankly wager his life in that manner, beware, ye Soubises, Karls and flaccid trivial persons, of the stroke that may chance to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Mr Pilkington was entirely dormant this morning. The matter of the ten thousand dollars seemed trivial to him in comparison with the weightier ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... cried, appealing to her husband, and even to Hortensia, who sat apart, scarce heeding this trivial matter of which so much was being made, "you see that he evades the point, avoids a direct answer to the question that ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... him in a cruel dispersal of hope. He avoided, and then he tenderly solicited a regret that he had not thrown her into the lock. To end on that hour by the sea would have been better than the trivial and wretched conclusion of a broken promise, and everything, even murder, were better than that a brute should have her woman's innocence to sully and destroy. His love of the woman disappeared in his desire to save, the idea which she represented at that moment; and lost in sentiment he stood watching ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... throughout Australia should likewise, as far as possible, bear uniform names. He stated that he had met wines in various vineyards grown from the same grape, and called by different names; and though this might seem a trivial matter, yet it led to endless confusion. Moreover, it should not be permitted to continue, especially as it could be so ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... interrogation and exclamation points for which we have no symbol. She tried to look surprised at the unimaginable suggestion of Cheever's being in her environs. She succeeded as well as Dyckman did in pretending that his errand was trivial. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... is a trivial breach of the criminal law, and is punishable on summary conviction before a magistrate or justices only, while the more serious crimes (indictable offences) must be tried before ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... about the room, attending to those details of forethought of which mothers have the secret. He watched her putting everything in place with silent pleasure. He noted her deft, clever ways, the exquisite neatness of her dress, her small feet so trigly shod, her lovely face bending over the most trivial duty with a smile of sweet contentment; and he could not help thinking hopefully of Harry. Indeed her atmosphere was so afar from whatever was evil or sorrowful that John wondered how he was to begin a conversation which ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... made a recovery by the twelfth day, and the fetal sounds were plainly audible. Cullingworth speaks of a woman who, during a quarrel with her husband, was pushed away and fell between two chairs, knocking one of them over, and causing a trivial wound one inch long in the vagina, close to the entrance. She screamed, there was a gush of blood, and she soon died. The uterus contained a fetus three or four months old, with the membranes intact, the maternal death being due to the varicosity of the pregnant ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... mutterings. On the other side sat Mr. Cameron, his head bowed upon his hands, his mind going back to the years of Guy's childhood and youth. How vividly he recalled many little incidents, seemingly trivial when they occurred, but carefully treasured among the most precious memories in the long, sad years that followed! With the memory of his son, his heart's pride and joy, came also that of the beautiful daughter, with her golden hair and starry eyes, the ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... now that poor Aline was gone. True, he was growing more and more disinclined for active exercise, and he regretted he had led so sedentary a life. But though '64 piled itself up on '63, and '65 on top of that, these arbitrary divisions of time seemed to him but trivial. ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... that this will satisfy His Imperial Majesty concerning the puerile and trivial sophistry with which the adversaries have perverted our article. For we know that we believe aright and in harmony with the Church catholic of Christ. But if the adversaries will renew this controversy, there will be no want among us of those who will ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... applying come I," he says, "outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters." Indeed, the character which speaks throughout "Leaves of Grass" is raised to the highest degree of personal exaltation. To it nothing is trivial, nothing is mean; all is good, all is divine. The usual distinctions disappear, burned up, the poet says, for religion's sake. All the human attributes are heightened and enlarged; sympathy as wide as the world; love ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... I carried with me to my work a note book and during the noon hour I set down everything which I thought might be of any possible use to me. I missed no opportunity for learning even the most trivial details. A great deal of the information was superficial and a great deal of it was incorrect but down it went in the note book to be revised later when I became ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... anecdotes, to let you know in some measure what manner of man my father was. Anecdotes, if true and alive, are always valuable; the man in the concrete, the totus quis comes out in them; and I know you too well to think that you will consider as trivial or out of place anything in which his real nature displayed itself, and your own sense of humor as a master and central power of the human soul, playing about the very essence of the man, will do more than forgive anything of this kind which may crop out here and there, like ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... landmark I passed was noted down as one step nearer to my object. At Umvelos' I had not the leisure to do more than glance at the shell which I had built. I think I had forgotten all about that night when I lay in the cellar and heard Laputa's plans. Indeed, my doings of the past days were all hazy and trivial in my mind. I only saw one sight clearly—two men, one tall and black, the other little and sallow, slowly creeping nearer to the Rooirand, and myself, a midget on a horse, spurring far behind through the bush on their trail. I saw the picture as continuously and clearly as if I had ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... this suggestion was an overwhelming opposition. The President, Congress, the Army, Navy and public opinion generally agreed that the weapon was too terrible to use in so comparatively trivial a cause. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... sort of complaining you hear from British soldiers is over minor discomforts in the field. Tommy and Jock will grouse when they are so disposed. They will growl about the food and about this trivial trouble and that. But it is never about a really serious matter that you hear ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... material, which inspired the native Americans with such awe, which raised in their winds such wonder, are to be ascribed to the junction of the apparently harmless substances of nitre, charcoal and sulpher, set in activity by the accession of trivial scintillations, produced from the collision of steel with flint, merely because some bigoted Priest of the Sun, who is ignorant of the composition, chooses to think it is not possible such a striking phenomenon could be the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... faculty not always given to the waking self. Compared with my own waking self, for instance, my half-asleep self is almost a personality of genius. He can create visions that the waking self can remember, but cannot originate, and cannot trace to any memory of waking impressions. These apparently trivial things thus point to the existence of almost wholly submerged potentialities in a mind so everyday, commonplace, and, so to speak, superficial as mine. This fact suggests that people who own such minds, the vast majority of mankind, ought not to make themselves ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... traffic. In point of practical operation this ghastly business was characterized by a more fierce and flagrant dishonesty than any of its kindred pursuits. To such lengths of robbery did the managers go that at last the patience of the public was exhausted and a comparatively trivial occurrence fired the combustible elements of popular indignation to a white heat in which the entire insurance business of the country was burned out of existence, together with all the gamblers who had invented and conducted it. The ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... of Pharisees come up from Jerusalem to press the fighting. They at once bring a charge against Jesus' disciples of being untrue to the time-honored traditions of the national religion. Yet it is found to be regarding such trivial things as washing their hands and arms clear up to the elbows each time before eating, and of washing of cups and pots and the like. Jesus sharply calls attention to their hypocrisy and cant, by speaking of their dishonoring teachings and practices in matters of serious moment. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... tongues, had brought their sorrows there and their joys—and gone; yet it seemed to him that they had not so surely gone. The great have their individual day and disappear, but the poor, in their corporate indistinguishableness remain. The multitude, petty in their trivial wants and griefs, find no historian and leave no monument. Yet, ultimately, it was because of the Christian faith in the compassion of God for such that Notre-Dame lifted her towers to the sky. The stage for the ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... writing, go straight to the point from the opening—make the wheels of the plot actually commence to revolve in the first scene—plunge into your action, don't wade timidly in inch by inch. To use up two or three scenes in showing trivial incidents which may happen to the characters while they are, so to speak, standing in the wings ready to make their entrances, is as tiresome as it is useless. If the hero of the Western story makes his first appearance by dashing ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... a preface, and to superintend the printing of one of the volumes. We may also add, that we believe we have notices of all the letters in the Macclesfield collection. We judge this because several which are too trivial to print are numbered and described; and those would certainly not have been noticed if any omissions had {305} been made. And we know that every letter was removed from ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... nursery was not without its annoyances, though as yet of a comparatively trivial kind. Sometimes, at night, the handle of the door was turned hurriedly as if by a person trying to come in, and at others a knocking was made at it. These sounds occurred after the children had settled to sleep, and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... strange, Rome's a place of that general Intelligence, methinks thou might'st have News of such trivial things as Women, amongst the Cardinals Pages: I'll undertake to learn the Religion de stato, and present juncture of all affairs in Italy, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... friend. God keeps showing me by the strangest of surprises that He is all about us. This very incident, so seemingly trivial, is yet a part of my life already, it has set its mark upon me. All his life he has been led, from bad to worse, into drink, and haunted by all the other devils of sin, and piloted across the country thus, so that ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sick, broke bread at his own house, Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat, And must have so avouched himself, in fact, In hearing of this very Lazarus Who saith—but why all this of what he saith? Why write of trivial matters, things of price Calling at every moment for remark? I noticed on the margin of a pool Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, Aboundeth, very nitrous. ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... futile process, Tarzan bridged the dangerous gulf by distracting their attention from their altercation to a consideration of their plans for the immediate future. Accustomed to frequent arguments in which more hair than blood is wasted, the apes speedily forget such trivial encounters, and presently Chulk and Taglat were again squatting in close proximity to each other and peaceful repose, awaiting the moment when the ape-man should lead them into ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... come to warn me of Volney's latest move, he was also the bearer of a budget of news which gravely affected the State at large and the cause on which we were embarked. The French fleet of transports, delayed again and again by trivial causes, had at length received orders to postpone indefinitely the invasion of England. Yet in spite of this fatal blow to the cause it was almost certain that Prince Charles Edward Stuart with only seven companions, of whom one was the ubiquitous O'Sullivan, ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... to some to have acted precipitately, and built much on small foundations. I answer that I had the life of the King my master to guard, and in that cause dared neglect no precaution, however trivial, nor any indication, however remote. Would that all my care and vigilance had longer sufficed to preserve for France the life of that great man! But ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... no trivial matter for the high-souled maiden to devote herself, with sweet self-sacrifice, to those whose roughness and uncouth manners wounded her. The women, it is true, gladly accepted her aid, but the men, who had grown up under the rod of the overseer, knew neither reserve ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... first—then I took a step backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of playful surprise for her. Think of it—that trivial conceit was neighbor, with but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event destined to endure ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sin too often view the matter in a somewhat narrowly ecclesiastical spirit, and make use of forms of self-examination which mix up real and serious moral offences with "sins" which are merely ceremonial, trivial, or imaginary, as though the two stood precisely upon the same level. "One must abstain from sexual sin and not go to dissenting places of worship; one must not steal and must be sure to abstain from ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... feeble humanity. This subject leads me on to the last of the opinions of Confucius which I shall make the subject of remark in this place. A commentator observes, with reference to the inquiry about recompensing injury with kindness, that the questioner was asking only about trivial matters, which might be dealt with in the way he mentioned, while great offences, such as those against a sovereign or a father, could not be dealt with by such an inversion of the principles of justice [5]. In the second Book of the Li Chi ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... melancholy go hand in hand; both are born of an extreme sensitiveness, and the man who smiles at the trivial misfits of life realizes also that all men who tread the earth are living under a sentence of death, and that Fate has merely allowed them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... reason he had himself unveiled to Commines, no doubt with a set purpose. Behind the King's most trivial act there was always a set purpose. In a boy's feeble hands, a puppet as he had called him, a king in legal age and yet a child in years and ignorance, this great France he had built up so laboriously would ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... As it stood there, lifting its proud roofs and gables to the sky, it might have been its own funeral monument. "Tombs in the chapel? The whole place is a tomb!" I reflected. I hoped more and more that the guardian would not come. The details of the place, however striking, would seem trivial compared with its collective impressiveness; and I wanted only to sit there and be penetrated by the weight of ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... my mark on him. He was a sneaking, cold-blooded fellow, with his white hair and pale face, and always fawning round the girls. I hated him, and gave it to him good." Joe spoke musingly and complacently as though it was a trivial thing to compass the killing of ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Carlisle Heth and her cousin Henrietta the day after Canning left, was no doubt a trivial and obscure occurrence. Not an earthly thing could be said for it, except that it was a bubble on the surface of an unrest which would one day change ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the jury,—I should be sorry to treat with levity any charge which I see that you treat with solemnity. The charge of treason is here, I find, a very grave one: though elsewhere I have known it as common and as trivial as assault and battery. However, be that as it may, I trust there can be no offence in my noticing without much gravity the attempt of the learned gentleman who opened the case for the crown to aggravate ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... from these circumstances, trivial as they are, that those writers, whoever they were, and in whatever time they lived, were not present at the scene. The only one of the men called apostles who appears to have been near to the spot was Peter, and when he was accused of being one of Jesus's ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... smell departed gradually from the region of Ranny's breast pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... angrily, and the evil thought slunk away. But it came again—it kept coming. One by one, little trivial circumstances built themselves into suspicions, until the little brown freckles on Jemmy Three's face came to spell "Dishonesty" to Judith Lynn. If it had not been for the terrible need of lobster-money—Judith would have fought harder against ...
— Judith Lynn - A Story of the Sea • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... statements, and opposing each other's opinions, which, though mutually understood and allowed for in private, was most trying to the bystanders in public. If one related an anecdote, the other would break in with half a dozen corrections of trivial details of no interest or importance to any one, the speakers included. For instance: Suppose the two dining in a strange house, and Mrs. Skratdj seated by the host, and contributing to the small ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... with me a guide who knew the country far too well; for he would pertinaciously tell me endless Indian names for every little point, rivulet, and creek. In the same manner as in Tierra del Fuego, the Indian language appears singularly well adapted for attaching names to the most trivial features of the land. I believe every one was glad to say farewell to Chiloe; yet if we could forget the gloom and ceaseless rain of winter, Chiloe might pass for a charming island. There is also something very attractive ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... and Turgy, a cook, who, by an act of faithful boldness, had obtained a surreptitious entrance into the Temple, and whose services seemed to have escaped notice, though at a later period they proved of no trivial importance. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... of inaccuracy and negligence which, however trivial in themselves, tend to prove that the author is not always very scrupulous in speaking of things he has not studied. A purist so severe as to write "Kelt" for "Celt" ought not to call Mercury, originally ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... became so overwhelming that he lost all hope, and, overcome by the most abject fear, sunk down, and would have fallen, had he not been supported. Recovering himself a little, he broke forth into earnest petitions that his life might be spared. He made the most trivial and weak excuses for his conduct, utterly unlikely to avail him anything. He declared that he had been led on by Myers; that his crew had forced him to consent to the piracy; that he had endeavoured ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... indulgently. "Storm and calm are to me alike! I am affected by neither. Life is so exceedingly trivial an affair, and is so soon over, that I have never been able to understand why people should ever trouble ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... abundantly supplied with ships, provisions, battering engines, and military stores. But we may rest assured, from the love of glory, and contempt of danger, which formed the character of Julian, that he was not discouraged by any trivial or imaginary obstacles. [75] At the very time when he declined the siege of Ctesiphon, he rejected, with obstinacy and disdain, the most flattering offers of a negotiation of peace. Sapor, who had been so long accustomed to the tardy ostentation ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... it occurred to the Duke that there could be no better channel through which to communicate his views upon the situation to political circles at home. Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr. Creevey was malicious and might keep a diary. He therefore sent for him on some trivial pretext, and a ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... deal taken up," she said rather stiffly; "but Signora Grassini overrates the importance of my occupations. They are mostly of a very trivial character." ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... very confident, know you to whom you speak? but I suppose you have lost your Estate, or some such trivial thing, which makes ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... a few miscellaneous reminiscences, many of them no doubt trivial, but they may perhaps be not entirely devoid of interest, when it is remembered that they are the impressions and recollections of one who was then a boy ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Such a trivial thing had provoked the outburst—merely an invitation from Captain and Mrs. Saxham, who were settled for the London summer season in Eaton Square, for Owen and his wife to spend the scorching months ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to keep disease away from a herd or farm. To do this all sick or suspicious animals should be avoided. A grave form of disease may be introduced by apparently mild or trivial cases brought in from without. It is generally conceded that continual change and movement of animals are the most potent means by which infectious diseases ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... idler—I have heard that from your uncle—self-indulgent, fond of trivial pleasures. Such men never succeed in life. But if you were certain to be Lord Chancellor—if you could this moment prove yourself possessed of a splendid fortune—my feelings would be unchanged. You have lied to me as no gentleman would have lied. I will ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... shall not come to pass, nor be fulfilled, though you do the thing that he hath forbidden. But if there was danger, what a slavery is it to live always in fear of the greatest of punishments, for doing so small and trivial a thing as eating of a little fruit is? 2. Touching his laws, this I say further, they are both unreasonable, intricate, and intolerable. Unreasonable, as was hinted before, for that the punishment is not proportioned to the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... them several men of consular rank. In this number were, Civica Cerealis, when he was proconsul in Africa, Salvidienus Orfitus, and Acilius Glabrio in exile, under the pretence of their planning to revolt against him. The rest he punished upon very trivial occasions; as Aelius Lamia for some jocular expressions, which were of old date, and perfectly harmless; because, upon his commending his voice after he had taken his wife from him [819], he replied, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... as if an age had passed over him. As persons who are drowning see in one brief moment all the course of their past lives, with its most trivial circumstances, so he seemed to have looked into his own future, stretching before him in gloom and darkness, and foreseen a thousand miserable results springing from this fatal source. She was his wife, dearer to him than any other object in the world; but after she had repented and reformed, ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... valleys, swings into the main stream, and docks finally at one of the cities on its banks. This particular youth was a great success—in the beginning. Every door was open to him. He had position, brains, and popularity to boot. He married brilliantly. And then The Past, a trivial, unimportant Detail, lifted its head and barked at him. He was too sensitive to bark back. Thereupon it ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... around her very artfully suggested the sixteenth century—the furniture, the most trivial utensils, the costume of the humblest person in the castle. Nuta attended her. The convalescent was told that she had been ill in consequence of the attack on her lover, but that he, instead of succumbing, had been spirited away and stealthily nursed back to health. Again ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... stoop-shouldered, purblind way, their voices became hushed and they looked after him as though he really was all he pretended to be—or all he thought he was. He delved in histories—ate, slept, and seemed to draw the breath of his nostrils from histories. That the pamphlets and books he wrote were of trivial importance, and seldom if ever saw the light of print, was not made manifest to ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson
... and manner they betrayed agitation too, while the serious expression upon their features told they were there on no trivial errand. ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to dethrone the usurper and re-establish the legitimate taste. But that a downright simpleness, under the affectation of simplicity, prosaic words in feeble metre, silly thoughts in childish phrases, and a preference of mean, degrading, or at best trivial associations and characters, should succeed in forming a school of imitators, a company of almost religious admirers, and this too among young men of ardent minds, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ecclesiastical cohesion among the Christians of the land, the ease with which a small group might split off for the furtherance of its own particular view, would tend to liberalisation. It is doubtful whether this is true. Isolation is not necessarily a condition of progress. The emphasis upon trivial differences becomes rather a condition of their permanence. The middle of the nineteenth century in the United States was a period of intense denominationalism. That is synonymous with a period of the stagnation of Christian thought. The religion of a people absorbed in the practical ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... shivered a little as at some recollection. "But don't talk—don't remind me of them. I hate a man who has no originality." He spoke sharply. At times he showed an almost childish irritation over trivial things. ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... "Every trivial action must be thoroughly motivated, and the finish of the playlet, instead of occurring upon the 'catabasis,' or general windup of the action, must develop the most striking feature of the playlet, so that the curtain may come down on a surprise, or ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... water, that he has seen climbing trees behind St. Quentin, we retort, "Oh, go and tell it to 'I.'" and then sit back and see what the inspired official organ of the green tabs will make of it. A hint is as good as a wink to them, a nudge ample. Under the genius of these imaginative artists the most trivial incident burgeons forth into a LE QUEUX spell-binder, and the whole British Army, mustering about its Sergeant-Majors, gets selected cameos read to it every morning at roll-call, laughs brokenly into the jaws ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... finest copy of this impression which exists. Yet a love of truth compels me to observe—only in a very slight sound, approaching to a whisper—that there are indications of the ravages of the worm, both at the beginning and end; but very, very trivial. It is bound like the preceding volume; and measures thirteen inches and nearly three quarters, by about nine ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of serious history connected with these letters which I was the first I think to discover. They were intended to satirise the trivial scraps brought forward in Mrs. Norton's matrimonial case—Norton v. Lord Melbourne. My late friend, "Charles Dickens the younger," as he used to call himself, in his notes on Pickwick, puts aside this theory altogether ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... the usual allotment of Greek, Latin, and mathematics in the daytime. One year he captured the Greek prize and the next the Sutherlin medal for oratory. With a fellow classicist he entered into a solemn compact to hold all their conversation, even on the most trivial topics, in Latin, with heavy penalties for careless lapses into English. Probably the linguistic result would have astonished Quintilian, but the experiment at least had a certain influence in improving the young man's Latinity. Another favourite dissipation was that of translating ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... advanced with the kind of shout one would hurl at a dog, and smote the policeman to the earth with the stout stick that the peculiar social atmosphere of Hayti had disposed him to carry. By the local standard his blow was probably a trivial one, but the moral effect of his indignant pallor and a sort of rearing tallness about him on these occasions was always very considerable. Unhappily these characteristics could have no effect on a second negro policeman who was approaching ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... utmost care, and in order to quiet her, I, during this period, broke off all intercourse with our neighbours; in my anxiety for her health I tried everything in my power to bring her to reason and to hold views befitting herself and her age. All in vain! She persisted in the most trivial remarks, she said she was an injured woman, and she had scarcely been quieted, before the old rage broke out again. Since Minna returned a month ago, some conclusion had finally to be reached. The close proximity of the two women was for the future impossible, for Frau Wesendonck could not forget ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... which was characteristic of the magistrate, Mr. Cooper. An end, at least, has been made of these abuses. Mr. Cooper is henceforth to draw his salary for the minimum of public service; and all larcenies and assaults, however trivial, must go, according to the nationality of those concerned, before the Consular ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exaggerated, a kind of credulity or superstition exercised upon abstract words. Like Clifford, in Hawthorne's beautiful romance—the born Epicurean, who by some strange wrong has passed the best of his days in a prison—he is the victim of a division of the will, often showing itself in trivial things: he could never choose on which side of the garden path he would walk. In 1803, he wrote a poem on 'The Pains of Sleep'. That unrest increased. Mr. Gillman tells us 'he had long been greatly afflicted with nightmare, and when residing ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... scientific outlook is a thing so simple, so obvious, so seemingly trivial, that the mention of it may almost excite derision. The kernel of the scientific outlook is the refusal to regard our own desires, tastes, and interests as affording a key to the understanding of the world. Stated thus baldly, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... that ordeal gave him no uneasiness. Those who saw him would forget him the next moment, or confuse him with some other in the same wretched plight. His mind always reverted from such reflections, as comparatively trivial, to the issue of the trial itself. Indeed, that thought might be said to be constant, though others intruded on it occasionally without obscuring it, like light clouds that cross the moon. As to the details of the scene ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... up her lead, whether she wished it or not. "A good third of our lives here is passed in sleep. I'm not always sure that we are right in treating the mental—for certainly they are mental—experiences of that time as altogether trivial, ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... each other again. Official balls facilitated their meeting; Serge was introduced to Madame Desvarennes as being an English friend, and soon became the most assiduous partner of Jeanne and Micheline. It was thus, under the most trivial pretext, that the man gained admittance to the house where he was to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fear to spoil by suggesting the most trivial addition, else I should say it would be an interesting feature to classify the exports of cotton goods, etc., ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... imagine that 'Uncle Jack' will be annoyed if he is kept waiting by such a trivial matter as a cabinet ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... faculties were sharpened by contact with these children of the wilds, whose only class-room was the forest, their only teacher, nature. As the crushed blade or broken twig were of deepest import to the Indian scout, so no incident of his life was now too trivial for Brock to dismiss as ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... external fact. These philosophers seem to feel that unless moral and aesthetic judgments are expressions of objective truth, and not merely expressions of human nature, they stand condemned of hopeless triviality. A judgment is not trivial, however, because it rests on human feelings; on the contrary, triviality consists in abstraction from human interests; only those judgments and opinions are truly insignificant which wander beyond the reach of verification, and have no function ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... After a trivial delay of perhaps 40 minutes, the D.C.L.I. or 479 have observed our arrival and tools are counted out and issued, the homely pick and shovel. The task is pleasantly situated about 150 yards in front of several batteries of our field guns (which open fire ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... greater gift of humor. It did not destroy his idealism, but kept it in touch with things mundane. Esther's vision, though more penetrating, lacked this corrective of humor, which makes always for breadth of view. Perhaps it was because she was a woman, that the trivial, sordid details of life's comedy hurt her so acutely that she could scarcely sit out the play patiently. Where Raphael would have admired the lute, Esther was troubled by the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... first oysters make their appearance! This event, trivial in itself, is significant as showing that the Paris central markets are able to supply Parisians not only with necessities but with luxuries. The mute oyster that comes in with the months having the letter "R" in their names bears ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... six years ago and at a comparatively early age, was a distinct loss to music, was one of the small number of composers who have written music of the lighter kind which yet is thoroughly good, music that is pleasing without being trivial, melodious without a suggestion of the commonplace, and thoroughly sound in workmanship. This American composer was exceptionally apt at reproducing in music a mood or fancy and at painting in tone the charms of a romantic locality. Possibly no gentler rise from ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... sacred music, of which he had already produced several fine specimens. He was wont to say, that this was an occupation 'better suited to the circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the performance of the oratorios of Saul and Israel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... trite phrases of a letter from a French-speaking girl to an Englishman. "I think of you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?" And then I vaguely realised that I was reading a man's private correspondence. And yet, how could one consider these trivial, facile French phrases private? Nothing more trite and vulgar in the world than such a love-letter—no newspaper ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... brought, while taking coffee, the conversation back again to the bet; and, after reproaching Madame de Pontchartrain for supposing him ignorant upon such a point, and declaring he was ashamed of being obliged to say such a trivial thing, pronounced emphatically that it was Moses who had written the Lord's Prayer. The burst of laughter that, of course, followed this, overwhelmed him with confusion. Poor Breteuil was for a long time at loggerheads with ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... explain my conduct—my coldness? On what imaginary and unsubstantial premises base the neglect in my deportment, amounting to rudeness, of which she had sufficient reason and a just right to complain? When I came to review my causes of vexation, how trivial did they seem. The reserve which had irritated me, on her part, now that I analyzed its sources, seemed a very natural reserve, such as was only maidenly and becoming. I now recollected that she was no longer a child—no longer the lively little fairy whom ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... while they talked of trivial things—of plays, and books, and people. But every now and then would fall a silence, and their eyes would meet—and hold. Just for a moment or two; just for long enough to make them both realise the futility of the game they ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... of this choice. Most other early churches are covered with imagery sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... presuming to ask you to repeat to him briefly what you have already told me about the mysterious disappearance of your father? Perhaps some additional details will occur to you, things that you may consider trivial, but which, I assure you, may ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... certainly meant to. Anyway, there's some comfort in knowing I left my mark on him. He was a sneaking, cold-blooded fellow, with his white hair and pale face, and always fawning round the girls. I hated him, and gave it to him good." Joe spoke musingly and complacently as though it was a trivial thing to compass the killing of ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... year 1793, the same division and bloodshed continuing, notwithstanding the arrival of the commissioners, a very trivial matter, a quarrel between a mulatto and a white man, (an officer in the French marines,) gave rise to new disasters. The quarrel took place at Cape Francois on the 20th of June. On the same day, the seamen left their ships in the roads, and came on shore, and made common cause ...
— An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections, • Joshua Coffin
... still the secession of these, who formed but a very inconsiderable member of the agricultural body, in consequence of the enormous price of cattle even at that period, and the great capital which it consequently required to become a stock-holder to any extent, afforded but a very trivial relief to those who adhered from necessity to their original employment. In this conjuncture, therefore, many of the next richer class abandoned their farms, and with the funds which they were enabled to collect, set up shops ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... realities of life. It was fortunate for her that she was quick-witted. These two flagrant blunders were sufficient for her. She grasped the principle that those who have a great love of power and little scope for it must necessarily exercise it in trivial matters. She extended the principle of the newspaper and the letter-bag over her entire intercourse with the Gresleys and never offended ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... physical knowledge, to succeed very fairly and without any great difficulty. I was able to protect myself, therefore, against many small reprimands, which fell tolerably frequently on those who had thought this or that instruction might be lightly passed over as too trivial to be attended to. It came about in this way, when we were continually drilling, after the cessation of the armistice, that the military exercises we performed gave me genuine pleasure on account of their regularity, their clearness, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and never can think of it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. We trust our lives to these seamen, and how nobly they fulfil their trust! They are, under heaven, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other in the dark at Big Bethel, Virginia; the ambush of a Union railroad train at Vienna Station; and Lyon's skirmish, which scattered the first collection of rebels at Boonville, Missouri. Comparatively speaking all these were trivial in numbers of dead and wounded—the first few drops of blood before the heavy sanguinary showers the future was destined to bring. But the effect upon the public was irritating and painful to a degree entirely out of proportion to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... might be useful later. His childish vanity loved the trivial encomiums inscribed thereon. They would impress beholders who had not the same reasons for preoccupation as ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author. 'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like Cato, a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial, nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... could divine real timidity, unacknowledged distrust, born of great ignorance. If the conversation did not become general, it was because nobody dared to speak out frankly; and what he heard in the corners was simply so much childish chatter, the petty gossip of the week, the trivial echoes of sacristies and drawing-rooms. People saw but little of one another, and the slightest incidents assumed huge proportions. At last Pierre ended by feeling as though he were transported into some salon of the time of Charles X, in one of the episcopal cities of the French provinces. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... what a trivial thing is a man!" She drew off her glove and held out a hand with two rings on it. "Marry me with which you will." One was a plain piece of gold, paler than the common, carved into an odd device of a snake ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... father, poor girl. She was only just nineteen, and very beautiful they say. I suppose the dear good old lady fancies she sees some resemblance even now, though I am so much older than her daughter was when she died. There is the origin of our friendship—the trivial and the tragic—confectionery and death—a box of candied fruits and an irreparable loss! If there were no contrasts what would the world be? All one or the other, I suppose. All death, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... He had a most furious temper, and was consequently dreaded by his relations and his domestics. I remember once seeing him administer a terrible thrashing with a hunting-crop to a stable-boy for some trivial fault. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... dumplings!" Upon this, the loons, all down the lake, who had hitherto been silent, took up the strain with vehemence, hurling their wild laughter at the presumptuous mortal who thus dared to invade their solitudes with details as trivial as Mr. Pickwick's tomato-sauce. They repeated it over and over to each other, till ten square miles of loons must have heard the news, and all laughed together; never was there such an audience; they could not get over it, and two hours after, when we had rowed over to the camp and dinner ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... he had struggled so futilely. To me the vital part of my story had to do with Herbert Talcott. But for its apparent effect on Rufus Blight I had as well discovered his brother thrashing Tom Marshall. To him that incident was trivial. What he wanted to know was how Henderson looked. Was he well? Was he in absolute poverty? Did he speak as though he really meant to come home in two years? When I had finished he asked me these questions again and again. He thrashed the whole story over, all but the essential ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... from the British Consulate at Tangier. They also pass certain boxes of stores upon production of a certificate testifying that they paid duty on arrival at the Diplomatic Capital. These matters, trivial enough to the Western mind, are of weight and moment here, not to be settled lightly or ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... no connections in life, purchase an annuity, on which you might have lived at your ease, without any fear of the consequence? Can't you, from the whole budget of your philosophy, cull one apophthegm to console you for this trivial mischance?" ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... freedom. He knew it now as she walked close beside him like a beautiful dream. There was no use longer in parrying or feinting. The brush of her sleeve made him dizzy; the sound of her voice set the whole world to music. How trivial seemed the barriers which had loomed so formidable before him a day ago. Given the opportunities he had thrown away and he would hew a path to her as straight as a prairie railroad bed. He would do this, remaining true to ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... without the least disguise, The Papists at all times Still favour'd, and their robberies Look'd on as trivial crimes. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and poetise—that is a pleasure; everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always your own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial matters." ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... his daughter Elizabeth attached importance to so trivial a circumstance. The General punctiliously avoided glancing at the windows during the passage past them, whether in his wild career or on foot. Elizabeth took a side-shot, as one looks at a wayside tree. Their speech concerning Lady Camper ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... my patron, for I have one now. I am now with the Viscount de Mussidan, as his private secretary. M. Octave is not the most agreeable man in the world to get on with, as he gets into the most violent passions on very trivial occasions; but he has a good heart, after all, and I am very pleased with the position ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... for Placentia Bay; he would like to ask me to do him a small favor. Could I take one package and land it on my way to Auvergne, where was one friend of his? A small matter, one five-gallon keg of rum, that rum which was of such trivial price in Saint Pierre, but on which the duty was so high in Newfoundland, and his friend was one poor man, one fisherman, who could not ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... up to his knees thrashing vainly at his straining, staggering horse. The tortuous road-way was blocked, but Waring had been up and down the river-bank too many times both day and night to be daunted by a matter so trivial. He simply cautioned Jeffers to lean well over the inner wheel, guided his team obliquely up the slope of the levee, and drove quietly along its level top until abreast the scene of the wreck. One glance into the ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live, all other facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the profoundest and most penetrating ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... gross employments of rusticks or mechanicks; so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... respect the streets are assuredly less gay. When I first knew Naples one was never, literally never, out of hearing of a hand-organ; and these organs, which in general had a peculiarly dulcet note, played the brightest of melodies; trivial, vulgar if you will, but none the less melodious, and dear to Naples. Now the sound of street music is rare, and I understand that some police provision long since interfered with the soft-tongued instruments. I miss them; for, in the matter of music, it is with ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Blake read it over three times, and when he finished sat in a reverie with it still between his fingers. The tone of it was so like the man he had known long ago, that friend from whom a misunderstanding that now seemed pitiably trivial had separated him. It had been his fault; Mr. Blake could see that now. He had been both hasty and unjust. Over him surged a great wave of regret. Well, it was too late to mend the matter at this late day. One chance was, however, left him—to make up to the son for the injustice ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... houses a girl was imprisoned, her life threatened; perhaps even at that moment she was facing her death. While, on either side, shut from her by the thickness only of a brick wall, people were talking, reading, making tea, preparing the evening meal, or, in the street below, hurrying by, intent on trivial errands. Hansom cabs, prowling in search of a fare, passed through the street where a woman was being robbed of a fortune, the drivers occupied only with thoughts of a possible shilling; a housemaid with a jug ...
— The Lost House • Richard Harding Davis
... after the Reformation, a few people came over into this New World for conscience' sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of empire ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... politics and aggrandizement ever to become cultured. In spite of this heritage from the Greeks, decadence took place among the Arabs, and, as the centuries go on, what they do becomes more and more trivial, and their writing has less significance. Just the opposite happened in Europe. There, there was noteworthy progressive development until the magnificent climax of thirteenth century accomplishment was reached. It is often said that Europe owed much to the Arabs for this, but careful ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... with a sharper and clearer intensity, because I have learned my limitations, and expend no energy in useless enterprises. I have learned what the achievements are which come joyfully bearing their sheaves with them, and what are the trivial and fruitless aims. When I was younger I desired to be known and recognised and deferred to. I wanted to push my way discreetly into many companies, to produce an impression, to create a sense of admiration. Now as the sunset draws nearer, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Failing them—if disappointingly in evidence on every side was the integrity and the honour for which Mr. Bitt raved and bawled when in the thick of splashing a muddy pool,—then, argued Mr. Bitt, catch hold of something trivial and splash it, flog it, placard it, into a sensational and semi-mysterious bait that would set the halfpennies rising like ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Very trivial in Dr. Dunlap's eyes were the anxieties of some poor fellows whom he saw later in the day appealing to Colonel Menard. The doctor was returning to a patient. The speeches were over, and the common meadow had become a wide picnic ground ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... merely to entertain—the fiction that is to serious fiction as the opera-bouffe, the ballet, and the pantomime are to the true drama—need not feel the burden of this obligation so deeply; but even such fiction will not be gay or trivial to any reader's hurt, and criticism should hold it to account if it passes from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were exacting; she, who felt equally the irksomeness of petty enmities and of small friendships, which, like gnats buzzing monotonously about her, were now and then ready to sting. The sting itself might be trivial, but it was irritating. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Further, we are told that his mother and sisters never tired of recommending him to wrap up carefully in cold and wet weather, and that, like a good son and brother, he followed their advice. Lastly, he objected to smoking. Some of the items of this evidence are very trivial, but taken collectively they have considerable force. Of greater significance are the following additional items. Chopin's sister Emilia was carried off at the age of fourteen by pulmonary disease, and his father, as a physician informed ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... chilblains vesicate, ulcerate or slough, it is better to omit the aconite and apply the other components of the liniment without it. The collodion flexile forms a coating or protecting film, which excludes the air, while the sedative liniments allay the irritation, generally of no trivial nature. For chapped hands we advise the free use of glycerine and good oil, in the proportion of two parts of the former to four of the latter; after this has been well rubbed into the hands and allowed to remain ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... something about those brown eyes of his that appealed to me. Also it struck me as odd that he should happen to be present on this occasion, for I have always held that there is nothing casual or accidental in the world; that even the most trivial circumstances are either ordained, or the result of the workings of some inexorable law whereof the end is known by whatever power may direct our steps, though it be not ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... popular with the courtly Chinese officials, and when he was about to return to his own country some of the Wai-Wu-Pu (Foreign Office) Ministers asked him to speak a good word for China in the United States. "Was not that an excellent idea?" they asked the I.G. next day. He agreed, and out of this trivial incident grew the Burlingame Mission to all the courts of Europe. Alas! the idea was visionary rather than practical, and doomed to disappointment—a disappointment which, luckily, Mr. Burlingame himself never felt keenly, since he died at St. Petersburg while his ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... law, every person condemned for a criminal offence, by the lay tribunals, has the right of appealing to the Supreme Pontifical Court. It is, therefore, needless to say, that in all cases where sentence of death is passed, an appeal is made on any ground, however trivial, as the condemned culprit cannot lose by this step, and may gain. The practical and obvious objection to this unqualified power of appeal, is that the supreme ecclesiastical court is the real judge, not the nominal lay court, which does little more ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... The other matter is trivial. Perhaps not trivial exactly. I can well understand how it's taken hold of you. Still, one must get free of it. To be bound by it, in spite of one's saner thought—that's clearly ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Nor aims at that clear-ethered height Whither the brave deed climbs for light: We seem to do them wrong, Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their hearse 5 Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler verse, Our trivial song to honor those who come With ears attuned to strenuous trump and drum, And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire, Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and fire: 10 Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, A gracious ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... morbid, by yielding to it. This was a mistake. It was a mistake, as much as it would be for us to leave out of our letters to our friends the petty incidents of daily life, and describe only grand principles and outside events. It is only to those loved most by us that we recite the trivial things, for we know that those trivialities link us closer than anything else, filling all the chinks in our friendship or love. It was a disappointment to those who desired to know often of the spirit of the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... accordance with the subject. In these, and ornamental borders, &c., there is much room for the development of taste and judgment. In all that, you undertake, it will be well for you to recollect, that nothing is lost by taking time to think. However trivial and unimportant our actions may be, they should always be preceded by mature deliberation. A habit of thought once established will remain through life, and protect its possessor from the countless miseries of rash actions, and the agonies ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... Those also that have become offenders from ignorance and folly should be forgiven for learning and wisdom are not always easily attainable by man. They that having offended thee knowingly, plead ignorance should be punished, even if their offences be trivial. Such crooked men should never be pardoned. The first offence of every creature should be forgiven. The second offence, however, should be punished, even if it be trivial. If, however, a person commiteth an offence unwillingly, it hath been said that examining his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... might be repelled and cleared away if only my people would turn towards me once more. So I sent down upon them all possible blessings—some they rejected angrily, some they snatched at and threw away again, as though they were poor and trivial—none of them were they thankful for, and none did they desire to keep. And the darkness above them deepened, while my anxious pity and love for them increased. For how could I turn altogether away from them, as long as but a few ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... telling me that I ought not to pardon an affront offered by such a mean fellow, but insist upon his being dismissed; whilst he persuaded the King my husband that there was no reason for parting with a man so useful to him, for such a trivial cause. This was done by M. de Pibrac, thinking I might be induced, from such mortifications, to return to France, where he enjoyed the offices of president ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... have made me suspicious was the fact that at every station she made some trivial excuse to get me out of the compartment. She pretended that her maid was travelling back of us in one of the second-class carriages, and kept saying she could not imagine why the woman did not come to look after her, and if the maid did not turn up at the next stop, would I be so very ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... the Armenian's flowing eloquence would have seemed as far from affecting my life as the source and flow of the sacred Ganges, and yet it was some trivial irritation of it that kept us from hearing his philosophy that night, and, more important to me, that sent another to expound ideas far different than could ever have come from the famous thinker. All the college, all in Harlansburg who were well-to-do and wise, watched for his coming ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Ramon and Bill and those who were with him would learn what it means to turn traitor to the hand that has fed them, and to fling upon that hand the mud of public suspicion. But just now they were not talking about these things; they were arguing very earnestly over a very trivial matter indeed, and they got as much satisfaction out of the contention as though ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... and went down to the club. Surbiton was there with a party of young men, and he was obliged to dine with them. Their trivial conversation and idle jests did not interest him, and as soon as coffee was brought he left them, inventing some engagement in order to get away. As he was going out of the club, the hall-porter handed him a letter. It was from Herr Winckelkopf, asking him to call down ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... essences. The air of presumption which there might seem to be in proclaiming that mathematics reveals what has to be true always and everywhere, vanishes when we remember that everything that is true of any essence is true of it always and everywhere. The most trivial truths of logic are as necessary and eternal as the most important; so that it is less of an achievement than it sounds when we say we have grasped a truth that is ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... freely forgiven, Mr. Morris. In fact, now that I think more calmly about the incident, it was really a very trivial affair to get angry over, and I must confess I ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... Judas Iscariot had notice (for those assemblies were public and notorious) he ran from Bethany, and offered himself to betray his Master to them, if they would give him a considerable reward. They agreed for thirty pieces of silver.' In a case so memorable as this, nothing is or can be trivial; and even that curiosity is not unhallowed which has descended to inquire what sum, at that era of Jewish history, this expression might indicate. The bishop replies thus:—'Of what value each piece was, is uncertain; but their own nation ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... with the trivium, the initiatory course taught in the schools, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, S3; trivial, adj., initiatory, ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... The Great Duke, when at the head of armies, could give all the particulars to be observed in a cavalry charge, and took care to have food ready for all his troops. Men think that greatness consists in lofty indifference to all trivial things. The Grand Llama, sitting in immovable contemplation of nothing, is a good example of what a human mind would regard as majesty; but the Gospels reveal Jesus, the manifestation of the blessed God over ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... Trivial as the matter seemed, looked at in this light, it had yet enough of human interest about it to decide him to leave the grouse alone, and wait patiently for the partridges at Millstead. After all, he had shot grouse and most ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... also conducted in the White Sea by the allied squadrons, but the assistance rendered by the French was trivial. The allies, particularly the French, arrived too late in the season to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... did not believe that Peg's wound would prove fatal, but Hippy advised her not to tell the foreman of Section Forty-three of this, saying that he wished to make the man talk, which Peg probably would not do were he to think that his wounds were trivial. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... personal adventures. But in that part of my life which may be considered relatively of a public character, or in which events of a public interest occurred, I have ample record made at the time. In what is peculiar to myself, and so of relatively trivial moment, dates and the order of events are of little importance. It occurred to me in the connection, that to give a human document of Puritan family life, and the development of a mind from the archaic severity of New England Puritanism to a complete freedom of thought, by a purely evolutionary ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... mental energy as we do consume is dispersed and scattered over a multitude of trivial interests instead of being focused upon ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... Commentarii Pontificum contained the names of magistrates for each year, and a daily record [1] of all memorable events from the regal times until the Pontificate of P. Mucius Scaevola (133 B.C.). The occurrences noted were, however, mostly of a trivial character, as Cato tells us in a fragment of his Origines, and as we can gather from the extracts found in Livy. The Libri Lintei, mentioned several times by Livy, [2] were written on rolls of linen cloth, and, besides lists ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Miao Miao, the Divine, into the world of mortals, and how it would be led over the other bank (across the San Sara). On the surface, the record of the spot where it would fall, the place of its birth, as well as various family trifles and trivial love affairs of young ladies, verses, odes, speeches and enigmas was still complete; but the name of the dynasty and the year of the reign were obliterated, and could ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... gradually grow into the habit of finding this inspiring Presence within ourselves, and of realising its forward movement as the ultimate determining factor in all true healthful mental action, it will become second nature to us to have all our plans, down to the apparently most trivial, so floating upon the undercurrent of this Universal Intelligence that a great harmony will come into our lives, every discordant manifestation will disappear, and we shall find ourselves more and more controlling all things into the forms ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... every word that was spoken, and every trivial circumstance that happened during that quarter of an hour; they are burnt into my memory as if by fire. The Doctor was raving about English poetry, as usual, saying, however, that the modern English poets, good as they were, had lost the power ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... rise to an infinite variety of extravagant follies. The Romans, who were remarkably fertile in these sorts of demonological inventions, suggested numerous ways of divination. With them all Nature had a voice, and the most senseless beings, and most trivial things, the most trifling incidents, became presages of future events; which introduced ceremonies founded on a mistaken knowledge of antiquity, the most childish and ridiculous, and which were performed with all the air of solemnity and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... seemed trivial enough, but already his keen and calculating mind had seen various side issues which might tend to place him—Robespierre—on a yet higher and ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to the second which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Very small and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing utter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship. They were traffic-sounds, recorded on a world no one knew how many light-years distant, and nobody knew when. There were sounds as of voices, ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... is not conventional in structure and mechanical in its effects, the name of the author is almost invariably that of a newcomer, or of one of our few uncorrupted masters of the art. Still more remarkable, the good short stories that I meet with in my reading are the trivial ones,—the sketchy, the anecdotal, the merely adventurous or merely picturesque; as they mount toward literature they seem to increase in artificiality and constraint; when they propose to interpret life they become machines, and nothing more, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... oath-bound society, swears that he will keep secret things about which he knows nothing—things which, for aught he knows, ought not to be kept secret. If the apostle condemned, in most emphatic language, the man who would do so trivial a thing as eat meat without assuring himself of the lawfulness of his doing so, what would he have said had the practice existed in his day of swearing by the God of heaven in regard to matters that are altogether unknown? To say the very least, such swearing is altogether inconsistent ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... consequently, if a document has been analysed upon fifty different slips, the same references must be repeated fifty times. Hence a slight increase in the amount of writing to be done. It is certainly on account of this trivial complication that some obstinately cling to the inferior note-book system. Again, in virtue of their very detachability, the slips, or loose leaves, are liable to go astray; and when a slip is lost how is it to be replaced? To begin with, its disappearance is not perceived, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the purpose of interpreting the laws and of applying them to particular cases. The legislature makes the laws, but it can not execute them. The governor recommends the passage of certain laws, and holds the veto power; but he has no law-making power, nor can he try the most trivial suit. ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... travelling, to do five shillings' worth of work. He showed us, among other things, an account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be plunged for boiling—all this joined to the utter absence of anything like party feeling, which ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... dispensed with the same thoroughness as in England. The day's offenders against discipline were punished with what seemed to us unusual severity. But we were now on active service, and offenses which were trivial in England were looked upon, for this reason, in ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... various. They worked if they had something to do, or could invent a pretext. They told and retold stories until all were wearisome. They sang songs. Mercedes taught Spanish. They played every game they knew. They invented others that were so trivial children would scarcely have been interested, and these they played seriously. In a word, with intelligence and passion, with all that was civilized and human, they fought the ever-infringing loneliness, the savage ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... natural; but at a distance from home the mind is doubly anxious for the details of what is going on there, and attaches an interest to particulars which, under other circumstances, it would consider as too trivial to be worthy of attention. During my stay on the Continent, I felt very forcibly the truth of Dr. Johnson's observation, "that it is difficult to conceive how man can exist without a newspaper." I was, however, for a considerable time, forced to be satisfied with the ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... own personal interests, and which at other times might irritate and wound their feelings, pass by them like the idle wind which they regard not. He himself must have had his intervals of comparative happiness, in which the causes of his present grief would have appeared trivial and absurd. He should not, then, expect persons whose blood is warm in their veins, and whose eyes are open to the blessed sun in heaven, to think more of the apparent causes of his sorrow than he would himself, were his mind and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... left behind him his hat, which apparently trivial loss cost him and one of his fellow conspirators their lives. Fearing that the lack of it would arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods east of Washington ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... of speculation. But it seemed very extraordinary, even to him, that the attention of the bishop should have been at once abstracted from all reflection on the marvellous cure which they had witnessed, and upon the probability it afforded of Richard being restored to health, by what seemed a very trivial piece of information announcing the motions of a beggardly Scottish knight, than whom Thomas of Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of gentle blood more unimportant or contemptible; and despite ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile—at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... disadvantages, and at moderate heights not the smallest feeling of nausea is ever experienced. The only unpleasant sensation, and that not of any gravity, ever complained of, is a peculiar tension in the ears experienced in a rapid ascent, or more often, perhaps, in a descent. The cause, which is trivial and easily removed, should be properly understood, and cannot be given in clearer language than that used by Professor Tyndall:—"Behind the tympanic membrane exists a cavity—the drum of the ear—in part crossed by a series of bones, and in part occupied by ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... and defiant. It was unjust that anyone, knowing himself to be brilliantly clever, should yet be made an oaf by an incident so trivial. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... accessories to dress; and the use of them, except to define its chief terminal outlines, or soften their infringement upon the flesh, is a confession of weakness in the main points of the costume, and an indication of a depraved and trivial taste. When used, they should have beauty in themselves, which is attainable only by a clearly marked design. Thus, the exquisite delicacy of fabric in some kinds of lace does not compensate for the blotchy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... That close sly being used—to worm out the secrets of men's innermost hearts; and his impassive mask never showed a sign of emotion. To illustrate his mode of extracting the information of which he made such terrible use, I may tell one trivial anecdote which has never before been made public. When Greville was very old, he went to see a spiritualistic "medium" who was attracting fashionable London. The charlatan looked at the gray worn old man and thought himself ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... "moral" was sought to be extracted. The technical language, too, of the early Heralds, had its expressive simplicity travestied by a complicated jargon, replete with marvellous assertions, absurd doctrines, covert allusions devoid of consistent significance, quaint and yet trivial conceits, and bombastic rhapsodies. Even the nomenclature of the Tinctures was not exempt from a characteristic course of "treatment," two distinctive additional sets of titles for gold, silver, blue, red, &c., having been devised and substituted for those in general ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... the emotion by which she was agitated. Sometimes she cast her eyes with terror upon a letter which she held in her hand, a letter that had been delivered by post in the course of the evening, and which had been placed by the housekeeper (the dyer) upon the table, while she was rendering some trivial domestic services during the recognitions of Dagobert and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to make up this true history; it would be lost labor, were not the flower and the blade of grass, the very thistle down upon the breeze, each and all, as wonderful as the grand forests of the splendid tropics. What character or human deed is too small or trivial for study? Never did a great writer utter truer philosophy than when ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Jahn's testimony that these afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and adds that "some of his first ideas for pieces which are now among the jewels of the opera are so extremely trivial and commonplace, that one would hardly dare to attribute them to Beethoven, were they ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... it is a "monstrous absurdity" that women who are "discharging their supreme social function, that of rearing children, should do it in their spare time, as it were, while they 'earn their living' by contributing some half-mechanical element to some trivial industrial product." Nevertheless, such a woman whose wages are fixed on the basis of individual subsistence, who is quite unable to earn a family wage, is still held by a legal obligation to support her children with the desperate penalty ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... interest, no humor, and plenty of faults, may be granted. His Paradise Lost especially is overcrowded with mere learning or pedantry in one place and with pompous commonplaces in another. But such faults appear trivial, unworthy of mention in the presence of a poem that is as a storehouse from which the authors and statesmen of three hundred years have drawn their choicest images and expressions. It stands forever as our supreme example of sublimity and harmony,—that sublimity which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... upon so unlimited a subject, come out with so poor, so jejune a production. Should we pity or be amazed at so perverse a talent, which, instead of qualifying an author to give a new turn to old matter, disposeth him quite contrary to talk in an old beaten trivial manner upon topics wholly new. To make so many sallies into pedantry without a call, upon a subject the most alien, and in the very moments he is declaiming against it, and in an age too, where it is so violently exploded, especially among those readers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... he was too far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. He didn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the most amazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he could always be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequential detail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point lace adjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig up a long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a story without a quotation from one ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... knowing it, know also that it is the only way to do your necessary work. The absurd and disgusting thing is the ignorance and cowardice of those who can slaughter an army corps every day for lunch, with words, and would not be able to make so trivial a start toward the "crushing" they are forever talking about as to fire into another man's open eyes or jam a bayonet into a single man's stomach. Among the Utopian steps which one would most gladly support would be an attempt to send the editors and politicians of all belligerent countries ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... makin' a onseemly uproar an' disturbin' the gen'ral peace for purely private causes. Then ag'in it would be beneath the dignity of a high grade savage an' a big medicine sharp to conduct himse'f like he'd miss so trivial a ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... best I'd ever known except theirs, not for any reason at all only just that I wanted to see your face, hear your voice, and have you pick me up and take me in your arms when I was tired. That was when I almost quit writing. I couldn't say what I wanted to, and I wouldn't write trivial things, so I went on day after day ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... design. You cannot begin by just throwing about sprays of natural flowers. It calls peremptorily for treatment—by which test the decorative artist stands or falls. Effective it must be; coarse it may be; vulgar it should not be; trivial it can hardly be; mere prettiness is beyond its scope; but it lends itself to dignity of design and nobility of treatment. Of course, it ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... thought which enters your mind, fanned by curiosity's wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed, commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its presence, seems insignificant at first sight; that unguarded ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... the messenger, and his heart beat quickly. An uncontrollable presage of evil racked his nerve-centres. Something had gone wrong; and yet the whole thing was so absurd, trivial. In a crisis—well, he could always apologize. He smiled confidently at ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... King John's reign; the last within the past two hundred years. In England, America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia—every country without exception—witches have lived, flourished, and been burned at the stake. Laws were enacted against witches, and they were condemned on the most trivial and even ridiculous evidence imaginable. If an old woman were seen to enter a house by the front door, and a black cat was seen to leave the house by the back door, it was deemed sufficient evidence that the old woman ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Tappertit, scrutinising it attentively, while a breathless silence reigned around; for he had constructed secret door-keys for the whole society, and perhaps owed something of his influence to that mean and trivial circumstance—on such slight accidents do even men of mind depend!—'This is ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... The trivial wound the wrathful knight Disdains to search with care. But soon he finds, the wound tho' slight, Death lurks in ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind, noble. You will be just to ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... acquiring an ornamental style, gave many useful precepts to expedite and improve the invention of an Orator. For in this System we have a collection of fixed and determinate rules for public speaking; which are delivered indeed without any shew or parade, (and, I might have added, in a trivial and homely form) but yet are so plain and methodical, that it is almost impossible to mistake the road. By keeping close to these, and always digesting his subject before he ventured to speak upon it, (to which we may add, that he had a tolerable fluency of expression) he so far ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, this same morning, came a note from Mrs. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the present population of New York is the result of a great number of selective acts, some regular, others more or less haphazard. Selection is no less selection because it occurs by what we call chance—for chance is only our name for the totality of trivial and unconsidered causes. When, however, we count man and man's efforts in the sum of natural objects and forces, we have to reckon with his intelligence in these selective processes. I desire to call attention to the place that they play in ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people, of ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... Tree, "always seemed to me an epicure in life. He was always intent on extracting the last drop of honey from every flower that came in his way. He was absorbed in the business of the moment, however trivial. As a companion, he was delightfully witty; as a personality, as much a creature of romance as his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... through one country in the cast-off finery of another." For the privilege of citizenship in what, at present, is the freest country in the world my direct taxation amounts to 1 5s. per annum; and, since "luxuries" are not in demand, indirect contributions to State and Commonwealth are so trivial that they fail to excite the most sensitive of the emotions. All our household is in harmony with this quiet tune, and yet we have not conquered our passion for thrift but merely ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... analysis which is a leading feature in his later works, and in them is applied with such effect to women and to the tender passion, neither of which elements enters into his early works in any appreciable degree. He displays the most astounding genius in detecting and understanding the most secret and trivial movements of the human soul. In this respect his methods are those of a miniature painter. Another point must be borne in mind in studying Tolstoy's characters, that, unlike Turgeneff, who is almost exclusively objective, Tolstoy is in the highest degree subjective, and has presented a study of his ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... sincerity in Narcissus that has always made us take him so seriously. And here I would remark in parenthesis, that trivial surface insincerities, such as we have had glimpses of in his dealings, do not affect such a great organic sincerity as I am speaking of. They are excrescences, which the great central health will sooner or later clear away. It was because he never held an opinion to which he was not, when called ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... heard anybody, whom you knew to be dead, alluded to in a light, easy going manner by another person who did not know of his death—alluded to as doing that or this, as performing some trivial everyday operation—when you know that he has vanished away from the face of this earth, and separated himself forever from all living creatures and their commonplace pursuits in the awful solemnity of death? Such a chance ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... not ask for sedatives, but for some high stimulus to call into play her strong and well-trained faculties. Money-making, the natural sphere of man, has become a more and more absorbing pursuit, while the usual feminine occupations have become more than ever trivial and unimportant at the very moment when the feminine mind has taken a new start in its development. The woman who is fresh from reading Gauss and Pindar, and who has taken sides in the discussion between the adherents of Roscher and of Mill, cannot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... away from her. To this day I remember, with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... scattered sources, everything germane that diligent and faithful research could discover, or the careful study and re-analysis of known data determine. No new and relevant item of fact discovered, however trivial in itself, has failed of mention, if it might serve to correct, to better interpret, or to amplify the scanty though priceless records left us, of conditions, circumstances, and events which have meant so much ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... little sentimental excursion feeling somewhat like a sneak. The country was empty of Grace Kerr. In going out to seek her in the folly of a romance too trivial for a man of his serious mien, he was guilty of an indiscretion deserving Vesta Philbrook's deepest scorn. He burned with his own shame as he dismounted to adjust the wire, like one caught in a reprehensible deed, and rode home feeling ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and of all degrees of excellence, but hardly one, even the most trivial, was without some small touch which could have come from no hand but that of Burns. Sometimes they were old songs with a stanza or two added. Oftener an old chorus or single line was taken up, and made the hint out of which a new and original song was woven. At other times they were entirely ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... exceedingly trivial instances,[64] but in them, if we have anything at all, we have the method of experiment and verification. For the point I am driving at now, it makes no difference whether you consider the patients to be deluded ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... blessing lay in this, that they became so at once: there had not been time for them to court their power: their fancies had not been fed to wantonness by ever-changing temptations: obstinacy in them would not have leagued itself with trivial opinions: petty hatreds had not accumulated to masses of strength conflicting perniciously with each other: vanity with them had not found leisure to flourish—nor presumption: they did not assume their authority,—it was given them,—it was thrust upon them. The perfidy ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... degenerates into restlessness and buffoonery in the Neapolitan, or the native of Languedoc, assumes a more dignified character in the Catalan, who is certainly a gentleman of Nature's own making. One of the crew, a tall athletic fellow, was holding forth to the rest on some trivial matter with a varied and graceful action, which might have served as a model to a painter. The rest were at breakfast; but even their mode of pouring the wine on their tongues at arm's length, from the long spout of a sort of glass kettle, had somewhat ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the blood in her fingers, as he took her hand and lifted her to her feet. There was shame in this tempest that swept through her veins, because he did not share it; for to her, though this meeting was an epoch, to him it was no more than a trivial incident. She would have keyed his emotions to hers, if she could, but since she had had years of preparation, he a single moment, perhaps she might have been consoled for the disparity, could she have read his eyes. ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... with the suddenness of its kind. During Hervey's long wait Chintz did not leave him entirely alone. Several times, on some trivial pretext the little man visited the sitting-room. And his object was plainly to keep an eye upon his master's unbidden guest. At last there came a clatter of galloping hoofs splashing through the underlay of the forest, and presently Iredale pulled ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... struggle, throwing out his arms and legs instinctively in a powerful effort to return to the surface. Then, in a moment, he lost all consciousness of his dreadful situation and found himself once more back among the scenes of his childhood, a multitude of trivial and long-forgotten incidents recurring to his memory with inconceivable rapidity. He was a dying man; the agony of drowning was over, and he had entered upon that curious phase of retrospection that most drowning people experience, and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were discussing affairs in town-meetings, the French inhabitants of Canada were never allowed to take part in public assemblies but were taught to depend in the most trivial matters on a paternal government. Canada was governed as far as possible like a province of France. In the early days of the colony, when it was under the rule of the Company of the Hundred Associates, the governors practically ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... work, could begin to feel that she too had a real share in it. With what seemed to her most creditable energy and self-sacrifice she tried again to interest herself in newspapers. But the trivial parts bored her; the chronicles of crime repelled her; and the politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the range of her knowledge or of her interest. "I shall wait until we are married," she said, "then he will teach me." ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... his vast empire-building power. The Mormons have been taught to revere Joseph Smith as a direct prophet from God. He saw the face of the All Father. He held communion with the Son. The Holy Ghost was his constant companion. He settled every question, however trivial, by revelation from Almighty God. But Brigham was different. While claiming a divine right of leadership, he worked out his great mission by palpable and material means. I do not know that he ever pretended to have received a revelation from the time ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... the department of La Vendee, whatever serves, trivial as it may be, to recall or illustrate the history of its wars and the character of its inhabitants, must ever possess a charm for those who delight to sympathize with the noble struggles of a gallant people, conscientiously ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... making love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... the science of religion, the prayers of the lower races of mankind have not been recorded to any great extent by those who have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with them, if and so far as they actually exist. This is probably due in part to their seeming too obvious and too trivial to deserve being put on record. It may possibly in some cases be due to the reticence the savage observes towards the white man, on matters too sacred to be revealed. The error of omission, so far as it can be remedied henceforth, will ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... and used to ask after them by name, which pleased Carrie, and made a bond of sympathy between them. At such times I somehow felt a little sad, though I would not have owned it for worlds, for it seemed to me as though my work were so trivial compared to Carrie's—as though I were a poor little Martha, "careful and troubled about many things" about, Deborah's crossness and Jack's reckless ways, occupied with small minor duties—dressing ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gleam Of Freedom glimpsed afar in youthful dream, Henceforth was true as needle to the pole. The vision he had caught remained the goal Of manhood's aspiration and the theme Of those high luminous musings that redeem Our souls from bondage to the general dole Of trivial existence. Calm and free He faced the Sphinx, nor ever knew dismay, Nor bowed to externalities the knee, Nor took a guerdon from the fleeting day; But dwelt on earth in that eternity Where Truth and Beauty shine with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a mirror, she unpinned her straw hat, smoothed her dark hair, resting her eyes pensively for a few moments on her reflected face. Then she sauntered listlessly about the little room in performance of those trivial, aimless offices, entirely feminine, such as opening all the drawers in her clothes-press, smoothing out various frilly objects and fabrics, investigating a little gilded box and thoughtfully inspecting ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... had too long occupied himself with the trivial affairs of the world, the countenance of Trujano resumed its expression of ascetic gravity, and when the eye of Don Rafael was interrogating it, in hopes of reading there the true signification of the last words, the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... "The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask: Room to deny ourselves—a road To bring ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... stood face to face, she with that deadly matter openly in her hand - his very presence on the spot another link of proof. It was plain she was about to speak, but this was more than he could bear - he could bear to be lost, but not to talk of it with his destroyer; and he cut her short with trivial conversation. Arm in arm, they returned together to the train, talking he knew not what, made the journey back in the same carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed the evening in the drawing-room as in the past. But suspense and fear drummed in the dreamer's bosom. "She has not denounced ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diplomatist of the first rank. A certain stateliness and formality of character appears, however, to have made him many enemies in England, and they did not scruple to gratify their dislike or jealousy during his mission to Canada. Their enmity is echoed in a trivial paragraph in The Times, describing an incident which happened on ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... obstacles, to the dictates of their consciences, that their wills were not developed past the reasonable limit of nature. What wonder is it that their descendants inherit this peculiarity, though they may develop it for much less worthy and more trivial causes than the exiling themselves for a question of faith, even the carrying-out of personal and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... He does not believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too. Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I am a sea-gull—no—no, ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... connected with the trivium, the initiatory course taught in the schools, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, S3; trivial, ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... had said, "that you do not wish to be rescued at all. Most of your reasons for postponing the trip have been trivial and ridiculous—possibly you are afraid of the dangers that may lie before us," ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you knock-kneed naturally? Or could you, with an effort, do you think, contrive to give yourself less the appearance of a marionette whose strings have become loose? Thank you, that is better. These little things appear trivial, I know, but, after all, we may as well try and look ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... placed joints, discoloration may not appear on the surface for some days, especially if the violence has been indirect. The joint is kept in the flexed position, and is painful only when moved. In haemophilic subjects, considerable effusion of blood into a joint may follow the most trivial injury. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a dreadful schism in the smoking world, and has agitated every divan in the metropolis to its very centre. The question is, "Whether should a cheroot be smoked by the great or the small end?" On this apparently trivial subject the great body of cheroot smokers have taken different sides, and divided themselves, as the Lilliputians did in the famous egg controversy, into the Big-endians and Little-endians. The dispute ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... Miss Gray," he said; and without any apparent reason the two shook hands. Afterward they were to think of this trivial act and vow that it was truly the beginning. They were young, heart-free, and full ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... told of a well-known New York society matron who gave a formal dinner party on every occasion that warranted it, no matter how trivial, for the reason that it gave her keen pleasure and enjoyment to do so. At one of her dinners recently a famous world-touring lecturer was the guest of honor—and the hostess was as happy and proud as it is possible for a hostess ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... discovery. In fact, I had considered popular traditions of the kind as fair foundations for authors of fiction to build upon, and made use of the one in question accordingly, I am not disposed to contest the matter, however, and indeed consider myself so completely overpaid by the public for my trivial performances, that I am content to submit to any deduction, which, in their after-thoughts, they may think ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... bill were merely talking against time, hoping in this unbecoming way to tire out the friends of the measure and so defeat it. Such conduct might be respectable enough in a village debating society, but it was trivial among statesmen, it was out of place in so august an assemblage as the House of Representatives of the United States. The friends of the bill had been not only willing that its opponents should express their opinions, but had strongly desired it. They courted the fullest and freest ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... even in apparently trivial matters, is of no light moment, inasmuch as it is constantly becoming inwoven with the lives of others, and contributing to form their natures for better or for worse. The characters of parents are thus ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... money, which is usually made upon the conclusion of any sort of treaty; but although the people of the tribe were so miserably poor, they seemed to look upon the pecuniary part of the arrangement as a matter quite trivial in comparison with the teskeri. Indeed the sum which Dthemetri promised them was extremely small, and not the slightest attempt was made to extort any ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender, and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet) who remembers ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... only passport to posterity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius, and true nobility of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... resigning to avoid removal; by which measure this provision of the act has proved as unoperative as all the rest. By this management a mere majority may bring in the greater delinquent, whilst the person removed for offences comparatively trivial may remain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... knoll was doing the princess good, and was certainly better for her than life with the crimson baroness at the Grange, she was not going to annoy and discourage her charitable offspring by interfering in their good work for trivial social reasons. The baroness was bitterly angry at their failure to recover ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... obtained. His want of success arose from the insufficiency, not the fallacy, of theory. Your object, dear Julia, we will suppose is "to please." If general observation and experience have taught you, that slight accomplishments and a trivial character succeed more certainly in obtaining this end, than higher worth and sense, you act from principle in rejecting the one and aiming at the other. You have discovered, or think you have discovered, the secret causes which produce ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... as perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage, yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks and the single dabs of mortar at the base of a tall chimney are necessary to the completed structure. I later had cause to remember each trivial incident as if it had been ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... is subjected to choleric outbursts should never send for anything but food an hour before dinner, for the reason that a very trivial thing looks, at that time, big enough to wreck the nation. Bissell, however, failed to recollect this simple truth, and greeted his daughter with smoldering eyes, that gradually softened, however, the longer he ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... a notable exception. On no occasion was Annixter prepared to accept another man's opinion without reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of Charles' expedition appear at first sight trivial; in reality they were momentous. In the first place, it was now clear to Europe that the Italians had no real national feeling, however much they might despise the "barbarians" who lived north of the Alps. From this time down to ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... effect is traceable even in that produced by our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according to our different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The thunder-claps are grand, or angry, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... institutions, habits, and manners, differing in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed to form the matrix in which original thought was formed, and new truth communicated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... d'Aristippe! O Jardin d'Epicure, &c. had been imparted as a secret to the gentleman by whom I was introduced. He allowed me to read it twice; I knew it by heart; and as my discretion was not equal to my memory, the author was soon displeased by the circulation of a copy. In writing this trivial anecdote, I wished to observe whether my memory was impaired, and I have the comfort of finding that every line of the poem is still engraved in fresh and indelible characters. The highest gratification which I derived from Voltaire's residence at Lausanne, was the uncommon ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... three or four shillings stood between him and utter destitution; and the only person in the world to whom he could apply for even the most trivial assistance, was Huckaback—whom, however, he knew to be really little better off than himself; and whom, moreover, he felt to be treating him more and more coldly, as the week wore on, without his hearing of any the least tidings from Saffron ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... be difficult for me to express the satisfaction we felt on landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana. The inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial in comparison with those that are suffered under a burning sky, surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched in a canoe, without the possibility of taking the least bodily exercise. In seventy-five days we had performed a passage of five hundred leagues (twenty to a degree) on ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... from your character in his estimation, and he will not believe the statement any the sooner for the oath connected with it. Can you think that the high and holy name of God is intended to be debased by association with every trivial and impertinent truth which may be uttered? "No oath," says Bishop Hopkins, "is in itself simply good, and voluntarily to be used; but only as medicines are, in case of necessity. But to use it ordinarily and indifferently, without being constrained by any ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... forget the dumplings!" Upon this, the loons, all down the lake, who had hitherto been silent, took up the strain with vehemence, hurling their wild laughter at the presumptuous mortal who thus dared to invade their solitudes with details as trivial as Mr. Pickwick's tomato-sauce. They repeated it over and over to each other, till ten square miles of loons must have heard the news, and all laughed together; never was there such an audience; they could not get over it, and two hours after, when we had rowed over to the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they were every day whipping negroes for trivial offenses. He had heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every adult ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... It is a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise man's consideration: question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? He answered, action: what next? action: what next again? action. He said it that knew it best, and had by ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... observed these things, which are perfectly well known to those who have been able to familiarize themselves with the ordinary effects of compressed air as used in caissons and submarine works of various kinds, when my attention became attracted by what at first appeared to be a phenomenon of trivial importance. In a word, I observed that some of the men exposed to the effects of the compressed air were more exhilarated by it than others. Upon superficial reflection one might have supposed that this discrepancy in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... in his dotage!" thinks Brian, disgustedly; and, rising from the table, he makes a few more trivial remarks, and then walks from the dining-room on to the balcony and so to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... that precisely this was the intention of this provision of the Constitution; namely, that the prerogative was to be conceded to science that it should not lie under the limitations which the general criminal code imposes upon every-day, trivial expressions of opinion. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... boys arose the following morning, each somewhat stiff and sore from the experiences of the night before, it was with a feeling of happy anticipation that made their physical discomforts seem like trivial things. ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... this we have not far to go. Looking out of the window of the snug little parlour we are occupying, we see before us what an Irishman might call a triangular square—a sort of “Trivium,” where three ways meet, and where men not seldom congregate for trivial converse, although on market days it is the scene of busy barter, and at mart, or fair, transactions in horse, and other, flesh are negotiated with dealers of many kindreds, peoples, and tongues; but more of this anon. On the far side of this open ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... are subject to the errors and passions of human nature, like their fellow creatures. No sister, for instance, ever loved another with stronger affection than poor Maura did her brother Felix, notwithstanding the repeated scoldings which, for very trivial causes, he experienced at her tongue. Woe, keen and scathing, be to those who dared, in her presence to utter an insinuation ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Our sages here are actually about to play its game. Orders have come to divide the army. What folly! What inconceivable infatuation! In the very face of the most fantastic and furious population of mankind, whom the most trivial success inflames into enthusiasts; they are going to break up their force, and seek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... This would undoubtedly have made him popular had his motives been good, but the memory of his former life made his conduct seem cheap and discreditable. He constantly attended the senate, even when the debates were on trivial matters. It once happened that Helvidius Priscus,[434] then praetor-elect, opposed Vitellius' policy. At first the emperor showed annoyance, but was content to appeal to the tribunes of the people to come to the rescue of his slighted authority. Afterwards, when his friends, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and, presently, he returned. Peter is an excellent servant; but the fashion of his speech, even when conveying the most trivial information, is slightly sesquipedalian. He would have made a capital cabinet minister at question time,—he wraps up the smallest petitions of meaning in ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... for truth; and those suspicions respecting his own accuracy, which every philosophical experimenter will entertain concerning his own researches, ought never to be considered as a reproach, when they are kept in view in examining the experiments of others. The minute circumstances and apparently trivial causes which lend their influence towards error, even in persons of the most candid judgment, are amongst the most curious phenomena of ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the gaping street; but the idea of that ordeal gave him no uneasiness. Those who saw him would forget him the next moment, or confuse him with some other in the same wretched plight. His mind always reverted from such reflections, as comparatively trivial, to the issue of the trial itself. Indeed, that thought might be said to be constant, though others intruded on it occasionally without obscuring it, like light clouds that cross the moon. As to the details of the scene of which he was about to be so prominent ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and other trifles. It is so to this hour. Could you watch the true investigator—your Henry or your Draper, for example—in his laboratory, unless animated by his spirit, you could hardly understand what keeps him there. Many of the objects which rivet his attention might appear to you utterly trivial; and if you were to ask him what is the use of his work, the chances are that you would confound him. He might not be able to express the use of it in intelligible terms. He might not be able to assure you that it will put a dollar into the pocket ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... noble music which forbids unreality, rebukes frivolity into silence, subdues ignoble passions, soothes the heart's sorrow, and summons to the soul high and holy thoughts. It was difficult to begin the conversation; the trivial themes of the earlier part of the evening seemed foreign to the mood that had fallen upon the company. At length Mr. Sims ventured to remark, with a giggle: "It's awfully fine, don't you know, but a trifle funereal. Makes one think of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... undetermined than ever to break open the fearful cause of her disturbance. Yet she durst not seek repose another night with such a companion. Her apprehensions were not easily allayed, however disposed she might be to treat them as trivial and unfounded. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... much. It would probably have ruined a less amiable temper, a less loving heart, than yours. It is well for parents to be sometimes a little blind to trivial faults. And I was so strict, so stern, so arbitrary, so severe. My dear, be more lenient to your child. But of course she will never find sternness in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... substance on the one side, form, treatment, handling on the other, are the field through which I especially want, in this lecture, to indicate a way. It is a field of battle; and the battle is waged for no trivial cause; but the cries of the combatants are terribly ambiguous. Those phrases of the so-called formalist may each mean five or six different things. If they mean one, they seem to me chiefly true; taken as the general reader not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me false ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... and how, and why, you know—but I thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it now because if you should ever make that a precedent, and put any least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would wrong me as you never wronged human being:—and that is done with. For the other matter,—the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to whom ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... mysterious splendor from on high Forth-darted to illuminate This dreary wilderness; Of superhuman fate, Of fortunate realms, and golden worlds, A token, and a hope secure To give our mortal state; To-morrow, for some trivial cause, Loathsome to sight, abominable, base Becomes, what but a little time before Wore such an angel face; And from our minds, in the same breath, The grand conception it inspired, Swift vanishes and leaves no trace. What infinite desires, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Steel," formed among the absentee Lord Downshire's tenants, in 1762; the "Oak Boys," so called from wearing oak leaves in their hats; and the "Peep o' Day Boys," the precursors of the Orange Association. The infection of conspiracy ran through all Ireland, and the disorder was neither short-lived nor trivial. Right-boys, Defenders, and a dozen other denominations descended from the same evil genius, whoever he was, that first introduced the system of signs, and passwords, and midnight meetings, among the peasantry of Ireland. The celebrated ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... clearest way of stating a proposition, and that alone ought to be chosen: yet how often do we find the same argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to encumber it by trivial circumstances: we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded to begin another. We certainly write to be understood, and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a majority ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... very nearly come. He did not again speak intelligibly to any of them. In his last hours he suffered considerably, and his own thoughts seemed to irritate him. But when he did mutter a few words, they seemed to refer to trivial matters—little plagues which dying men feel as keenly as those who are full of life. To the last he preferred George either to his niece or to his granddaughter; and was always best pleased when his nephew was by him. Once or twice he mentioned Mr. Pritchett's name; but ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the absence of any pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the old buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the Market Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, with its ground-floor ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... ill and not to know how ill! To feel the threatening arm of the law hovering constantly over her head and neither to know the instant of its fall nor be given the least opportunity to divert it. To realise that some small inadvertance on her part, some trivial but incriminating object left about, some heedless murmur or burst of unconscious frenzy might precipitate her doom, and I remain powerless, bearing my share of suspicion and ignominy, it is true, but not the chief share ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... simple persons according to the world—old men, young men, and poor women—who in that same place (the Place de Greve) had endured fire and knife." D'Aubigne's narrative, as usual, is vivid, and mentions somewhat trivial details, which, however, are additional pledges of its accuracy; e.g., he alludes to the fact that, having spoken as above to those who stood on the side toward the river, he repeated his remarks to those on the other side of the Place de Greve, beginning with the words, "I was saying ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... such words, like others, require that their accents should be settled, their sounds ascertained, and their etymologies deduced, they cannot be properly omitted in the Dictionary. And though the explanations of some may be censured as trivial, because they are almost universally understood, and those of others as unnecessary, because they will seldom occur, yet it seems not proper to omit them; since it is rather to be wished that many readers should ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Its efforts were directed especially against the Albigenses and Waldenses, who were guilty of no crime, except the unpardonable one of opposing the errors of the church of Rome. Twenty-seven canons were framed by this council; all of them on matters of trivial importance with the exception of the last, which is directed against the poor exiles who were bold enough to prefer their own salvation to a blind submission to the church. The Twenty-seventh canon imposes a curse on all those who maintained or favoured the Waldensian opinions. In ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... a long table, with the most conglomerate groups of Neapolitans of a seemingly doubtful class at their elbows. Each biologist has a caraffa of light wine on the table before him, and all are smoking. And, staid men of science that they are, they are chattering away on trivial topics with the animation of a company of school-boys. The stock language is probably German, for this bohemian gathering is essentially a German institution; but the Germans are polyglots, and you will hardly find yourself lost ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... of the secret committee, it appeared that the then minster had commenced prosecutions against the mayors of boroughs who opposed his influence in the election of members of parliament. These prosecutions were founded on ambiguities in charters, or trivial informalities in the choice of magistrates. An appeal on such a process was brought into the house of lords; and this evil falling under consideration, a bill was prepared for securing the independency of corporations; but as it tended to diminish the influence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to share in the sufferings of Christ because he looked upon these sufferings as trivial. Few men have ever understood the sufferings of Christ as did Paul. He had an appreciation of their intensity and of their bitterness far beyond most other men. He understood as few have ever understood the physical agonies of the Cross. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... slight—the turning of a pebble, a slip, even the most trivial, and the Apache would turn like lightning, and be upon him in a flash. Two more steps were taken, and only eight feet separated the lad and the Indian, and still the latter remained all unconscious of what was ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... fingers; it was the eternal adieu. For years I believed this mazurka to be a marvellous inspiration, and it was not till long after, when age had dispelled my illusions and obliterated the adored image, that I discovered it was only a vulgar and trivial commonplace: the gold was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... civilized nations, disarm and leave the despotisms and barbarisms with great military force, would be a calamity compared to which the calamities caused by all the wars of the nineteenth century would be trivial. Yet it is not easy to see how we can by international agreement state exactly which power ceases to be free and civilized and which comes near the line of barbarism or despotism. For example, I suppose ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Angelique, making some trivial excuse, hurried up to her room as quickly as possible. Then she gave free course to her tears. Ah, how intensely happy she was, yet how she suffered! Her poor, dear beloved; he was sad enough when ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... would have dictated its terms, sabre in hand. Michel indeed stood high with his chief in the embassy, and he was very much sought after in society. Before the day he met Marsa, he had, to tell the truth, only experienced the most trivial love-affairs. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... ribbons they wear, or for anything else in the world. I fancy that you, if you came once to love your friend, would find it very easy to do without the admiration of those who go to make up society; they would come to seem to you very trivial and empty people, and afterwards, perhaps, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... himself.” Her brother, she adds, was very reluctant to take this advice, “because he saw its danger.” At length, however, he yielded, “considering himself obliged to do all he could to restore his health, and because he thought that trivial amusements could not harm him. So he set himself on the world.” When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his studies in 1649 and the following year. During these years there is nothing from his pen. The interval ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... a good one to follow in bedroom pictures; no "rogue's gallery" of photographs, no useless, meaningless, and trivial pictures, but just a madonna or two, perhaps a photographic copy of some old master, with a favorite illuminated quotation—something to help and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... firm and solemn pause, and meditate dispassionately on the importance of this interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... called him, there may have been other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond such as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state they rush to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths, with a frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them the willing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... The episode, trivial as it seemed to Morriston, gave Gifford food for disagreeable reflection. Why, indeed, should Henshaw be hanging about in the grounds of Wynford, and give so unconvincing a reason? What troubled Gifford most was that the man's reticent attitude precluded all hope of his ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... of Italy, through the Flemish dominions of Germany, through a large portion of France, and through the entire of Spain, a great monastic body was established, which, professing a secondary and trivial obedience to the sovereign, gave its first and real obedience to the pope. The name of spiritual homage cloaked the high treason of an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch; and whoever might be king of France, or Spain, the pope was king of the Dominicans. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... own. I see among them an absence of any desire for beauty—for physical beauty. If the artists have fulfilled a mission in abolishing 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ignoble. They put a not very interesting domesticity into their frames. Rossetti, of course, wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting object of virtu. Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations and thoughts of the day ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
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