"Trifler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... touched him into his work we should ask no more, and must not expect him to be more righteously minded than his Creator, or to add a finishing tag of moral to justify it all, to show that Deity is solemnly minded and no mere idle trifler ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... him to her birthday feast? He had thrown her kindness back into her face, had first accepted and then carelessly repudiated her friendship; and it was only too probable she had written him down as a casual and discourteous trifler with whom, in future, she ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... he not win her if he could. If, however, she had already become what Harry uneasily felt she might become, was it not his duty to go to the rescue of his friend and try to save him from any rash act on account of a woman that might prove to be entirely unworthy of him; for trifler and visionary as he was, Harry deserved a better fate ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... esteems trifles for their own sake is a trifler, but one who values them, rather, for the deductions that may be drawn ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Dead Card if she had not gone on a Visit to a neighboring City where she bumped into the Town Trifler. He had a Way of proposing to every Girl the first time he met her. It always seemed to him such a cordial Send-Off for a budding Friendship. Usually the Girl asked for Time and then the two of them would Fiddle around ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... this same Ossip was an artelui, and a director of the artel, his senior co-members bore him no affection, but, rather, looked upon him as a wag or trifler, and treated him as of no importance. And, similarly, the younger members of the artel liked well enough to listen to his tales, but declined to take him seriously, and, in some cases, regarded him with ill-concealed, or ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... branches of my education going on at this time outside the pale of the school, in which, though I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken up ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... expert in the art of testifying, like some of the others, he has not yet become expert; what he may descend to later cannot be known; he entered upon his first experience, I think, with my brother Duncan, who is no trifler when he comes to deal with these questions, and for several months Mr. Clarke was pursued up and down, over a range of suggestions of what he would have thought if he had thought something else had been said at some time when ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... not here, and you are," the Duke answered. "Remember that I am no trifler with words. I have said that I ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... accounts for nearly everything that is unsatisfactory in your life. If you had ever been sincerely devoted to a woman, be assured your powers would have developed in a way of which you have no conception. It's no answer to tell me that I am still a mere trifler, never likely to do anything of account; I haven't it in me to be anything better, and I might easily have become much worse. But you might have made yourself a great position—I mean, you might do so; you are still very young. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... speak the truth. For against all the world is my sermon; every one contradicts it. If I go about with lies, then I have Christ against me; therefore I have heaven and earth against me, and how then could I stand? As such a trifler with holy things how should I dare rise up? Believe me, I speak the truth, I have seen it with my eyes, and touched it with my hands. Believe it! If I speak not the truth, I consign myself body and soul to destruction; but ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... depended—the controversy with America. The course he took in the early stage of that conflict, and his disappearance from the theatre of politics at the time when it was ripening into the magnitude of its nature, have marked Junius in my mind as a man of small things—a splendid trifler, a ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... who was then only a courtier in Versailles, came to Madame Geoffrin's parties. He was a man who combined in a most surprising manner true philosophy and a deep knowledge of political economy, with the outward appearance of a fop and a trifler. Among the other distinguished men who lived in Paris, Marmontel names with high praise the Abbe Galliani, Caraccioli, who was afterward Neapolitan ambassador, and the Swedish ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... (1853,) I presume the reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years ago, supposed him. Assuredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler, but lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... much for Mr. Quirk; he would not resume argument with such a trifler; nor, indeed, was there any opportunity; for Lord Rockminster now suggested they should go into the drawing-room—and Ichabod had to ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... fashion is a trifler unworthy of his race; the mere gentleman is a character which may in time become somewhat tiresome; there is a just mean between the two, where a better conduct than either is to be found. It is that of a man who, yielding to others, still ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... "No, you trifler!—one of Edgar Allan Poe's. None of your scoffing, sir! You may go home in tears before I am through with you. This ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... When one among the prime of these rose up,— One, of whose name from childhood we had heard 495 Familiarly, a household term, like those, The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old Whom the fifth Harry talks of. [Y] Silence! hush! This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit, No stammerer of a minute, painfully 500 Delivered. No! the Orator hath yoked The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car: Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er Grow weary of attending ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... "flash his teeth,"' and Mr. John Collier gives his sitter 'a cheerful slap on the back, before he says, like a shampooer in a Turkish bath, "Next man!" Mr. Herkomer's art is, 'if not a catch-penny art, at all events a catch-many-pounds art,' and Mr. W. B. Richmond is a 'clever trifler,' who 'might do really good work' 'if he would employ his time in learning to paint.' It is obviously unnecessary for us to point out how luminous these criticisms are, how delicate in expression. The remarks on Sir Joshua Reynolds alone exemplify the truth of Sententia No. 19, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Both moods are, of course, described as they might actually be experienced by a highly cultivated and serious man like Milton himself. The gravity is the gravity of a man of thought, not of a man of affairs; the pleasures are those of a scholar and a poet, not those of a trifler, a sportsman, or a sensualist. Like all Milton's works they borrow freely from earlier poets, remain entirely original and Miltonic, and are imitated only at the peril of the imitator. Any one who looks at the parallel passages in ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... already said to disabuse the reader's mind of the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation of instability has ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air that boded ill to a trifler. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... little their theories correspond with their real desires. Incapacity, misrule, is everywhere. Narbonne has been made War Minister! At this crisis, when the allied armies are gathering on the frontier, when war is imminent against two hundred and fifty thousand of the finest soldiers in Europe, a trifler like Narbonne is placed in power! But if others were no worse than he! 'Tis incredible the villains who have pushed themselves into the high places. Can you believe it, boy?—your servant, that scoundrel Bertrand, that soldier of the ranks, that waiter of the Cafe de l'Ecole, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... convince the hearer, but enthralls him. Such is the effect of those words of Demosthenes:[16] "Supposing, now, at this moment a cry of alarm were heard outside the assize courts, and the news came that the prison was broken open and the prisoners escaped, is there any man here who is such a trifler that he would not run to the rescue at the top of his speed? But suppose some one came forward with the information that they had been set at liberty by the defendant, what then? Why, he would ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... the passage is incorrect and poor in detail compared with similar things in Scott. The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments, language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages and was not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, a fribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want of seriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied to such a subject as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... more confirmed as a trifler and an idler, and he suffered that terrible ennui, which dogs the shadow of wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of mind and lassitude of body, which at times crept over him, were the natural ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... been objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in the commentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so carefully preserved is, sometimes, the ease of a trifler. Every art has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common criticks may be tedious, but is less ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... beautifully to himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden, and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted trifler with ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came about that so able ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... arrest the dark apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett, Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous trifler. Mrs. Bassett, Dan was aware, valued her social position highly. As the daughter of Blackford Singleton she considered herself unassailably a member of the upper crust of the Hoosier aristocracy. And Dan suspected that Bassett ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Christ as Truth demands truth in heart and life. The insincere man; the trifler; the flippant jester who takes nothing seriously; the superficial man who uses the deepest expressions, as counters for society talk; the inconsistent man who is daily doing violence to his convictions, by ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifler I had been when I clerked in the ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... fine and humorous collector of European ladies and gentlemen, that savourer of the little lives of the Old World and the little adventures of those who have escaped from the New, that artist who brooded over his fellows in the spirit less of a poet than a man of science, that sober and fastidious trifler—this is the image which presides over his books, and which gives them their special character, and will attract tiny but enthusiastic companies of readers to them for many ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... cloth of the gaming table. Now, I tell you, my time has come—my day at last is here. I tell you that I shall prove to you everything which I said to you long ago, back there in old England. I shall prove to you that I have not been altogether an idler and a trifler. I shall bring to you, as I promised you long ago, all the ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... brief; never loud, vehement, or impassioned, but conciliating, persuasive, and impressive; and when his subject called for gravity or seriousness, his manner was stern and peremptory. He was too dignified ever to be a trifler; and his sarcasm, sometimes indulged in, rarely created a laugh, but powerfully told upon those who had provoked it. His enunciation was slow, distinct, and emphatic; perhaps too emphatic; and this was pronounced, by his early ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Roman noblemen, and the security of their property be publicly vindicated: I am here to undo all that Lollius Corbulo supinely allowed to be done. You shall perceive that I am wholly unlike any such trifler. Of one feature only of his procedure do I approve. I highly acclaim his notions as to the right kind of torture. Slaves like you, however pampered, are property, like horses or cattle. Their value lies in their usefulness. Any slave, after torture, should be as useful to his owners ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... she had been left to herself; but she was not. My mother discovered, when too late, that there had been foolish, impertinent jokes of that unfortunate trifler, poor Henry Frost, that made her imagine herself suspected ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... character. We all have a dark feeling of resistance towards people we have never met, and a profound and manly dislike of the authors we have never read. It does not harm a man to be certain before opening the books that Whitman is an obscene ranter or that Stevenson is a mere trifler with style. It is the man who can think these things after he has read the books who must be in a fair way to mental perdition. Prejudice, in fact, is not so much the great intellectual sin as a thing which we may call, to coin a word, "postjudice," not ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... factor in human progress. If they express moral and political greatness, and serve to enhance it, they acquire a certain dignity; but so soon as this expressive function is abandoned they grow meretricious. The artist becomes an abstracted trifler, and the public is divided into two camps: the dilettanti, who dote on the artist's affectations, and the rabble, who pay him to grow coarse. Both influences degrade him and he helps to foster both. An atmosphere of dependence and charlatanry gathers about the artistic attitude and spreads ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Maynard arose chiefly from the feeling that his gallantry at such a time, with the dead and dying all about them, was "more shocking than a game of cards on Sunday." She regarded his attentions, glances, tones, as mere well-bred persiflage, indulged in for his own amusement, and she put him down as a trifler for his pains. That he, as she would phrase it, "was just smitten without any rhyme or reason" seemed preposterous. She had done nothing for him as she had for Scoville. The friendly or the frankly admiring looks of strangers, the hearty gratitude and goodwill ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... you are thinking," she cried impulsively "You are wrong—very wrong, Mr. Chase. Lady Deppingham is a born coquette—a born trifler. It is ridiculous to think that she can be ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Away, away you trifler: Loue, I loue thee not, I care not for thee Kate: this is no world To play with Mammets, and to tilt with lips. We must haue bloodie Noses, and crack'd Crownes, And passe them currant too. Gods me, my horse. What say'st thou Kate? what wold'st thou haue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... found her. You may think me a trifler, Easelmann; but every nerve I have is quivering with agony at the thought of the pain I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... this water-fly] A water-fly, skips up and down upon the surface of the water, without any apparent purpose or reason, and is thence the proper emblem of a busy trifler. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... woman is paramount. She is the stronghold of Hinduism at the beginning of this twentieth century. Man, under the growing influence of western thought, civilization, and faith, has largely lost his moorings and is growing increasingly insincere and a trifler with religious beliefs and institutions. The woman, on the other hand, is a conservative of the conservatives. In her superstition she is deeply sincere; her faith has no questionings, and her piety shapes her every activity. Were it not for the women of India, Hinduism, with all ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... a man yourself, to kiss him deliberately, unmistakably upon the lips, is a final seal and ultimate surrender, and that if you do not marry a man you have so kissed you would be no better than a worthless deceiver, an outrageous flirt, an abandoned trifler——" ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... of anything like general perfection! With the brevity of that sum of years his mind is exceptionally impressed; and this purpose makes him no frivolous dilettante, but graver than other men: his scheme is not that of a trifler, but rather of one who gives a meaning of his own, yet a very real one, to those old words—Let us work while it is day! He has a strong apprehension, also, of the beauty of the visible things around him; ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... Fortuny and Meissonier there lies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man of talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... for the peace of Utrecht. We are indeed no admirers of the statesmen who concluded that peace. Harley, we believe, was a solemn trifler, St. John a brilliant knave. The great body of their followers consisted of the country clergy and the country gentry; two classes of men who were then inferior in intelligence to decent shopkeepers or farmers of our time. Parson ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... like a perennial spring from the gnarled roots of some majestic tree, flowed within him. He would smooth over a rough place in his official intercourse with a funny story fitting the case in point, and they called him a trifler. He would round off a logical argument with a familiar example, hitting the nail squarely on the head and driving it home, and they called him a buffoon. Big wigs and little wigs were agreed that he lowered the dignity of debate; as if debates were intended to mystify, and not to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... lively question of the Lady Frances in her usual straightforward and unpresuming manner: a manner that afforded considerable amusement to the merry trifler, by whom the little Puritan was commonly spoken of, while ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Orleans the extinction of French independence seemed to be inevitable. The chivalry of France had been wasted in terrible wars, and the spirits of her soldiers were daunted by repeated disaster. The English king had been proclaimed in Paris, and the "native prince was a dissolute trifler, stained with the assassination of the most powerful noble of the land."[77] Anarchy and brigandage everywhere prevailed, and the condition of the peasantry was too ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... trifler!—Love?—I love thee not: I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips: We must have bloody noses, and cracked crowns, And pass them current, too. Godsme, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... fresh rays of truth, produce anything to the advancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this was instantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest of wine-presses into the vats of our memory ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... trifler. Love! I know thee not, I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips; We must have ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wind, were too brother-like to be denied. They sang the same song which fills the breast, and our love for them was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor? The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use. He offers manhood to man and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... trifler, can you disguise yourself as well now, as when you palmed yourself upon us all for ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... and sweet smile. Yes, I was desperately in love with Josephine, for besides being fair to look upon, she could do something to add to my comfort. I forgot all about Eleanor and ideals; not because I was a trifler with the hearts of women, but simply because in this matter, as in everything, I did not know my own mind. I was very reluctant to leave the hospital and remained as long as I could. Before going, however, I made love overtures toward Josephine. That lady smiled, not unkindly, and ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... inattention to matters that occur, is the characteristic of a weak mind; the man who gives way to it, is little else than a trifler, a blank in society, which every sensible person overlooks; surely what is worth doing is worth doing well, and nothing can be done well if not properly attended to. When I hear a man say, on being ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hypocrisy! Into how many ears have I poured tender words, until fair hands were as good as offered to me, and I turned their love to mockery! I hated and despised all womanhood; and even in Paris I became notorious as a heartless trifler with the affections I won and trampled under my feet. Whenever a brilliant and beautiful woman crossed my path, I attached myself to her train of admirers, until I made her acknowledge my power and give public and unmistakable manifestation of her preference ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... has embarked his all in it, fame, time, fortune, peace of mind—his hopes in youth, his consolation in age: and shall he not feel a more intense interest in whatever relates to it than the mere indolent trifler? Natural sensibility alone, without the entire application of the mind to that one object, will not enable the possessor to sympathise with all the degrees of beauty and power in the conceptions of a Titian or a Correggio; but it is he only who does this, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the truth, where had been the truth in his own young days, and in what ignorance had our forefathers been brought up?—Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist, and shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the Colonel's claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at the speakers, who were knocking the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie the shock was not so ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vain the foolish Pope shall fret, It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave, Loudly to damn, and loudly save, And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven! One hour, one little hour, is given, If thou could'st ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... trifler, faineant, And bid me give my life an aim!— You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out, And own your hastiness to blame. I live with but a single thought; My inmost heart and soul are set On one sole task—a mighty one— To simplify ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... take offense he slid the lines on Indian Summer into his breast pocket, to keep company with the lucky-stone. The situation had become riskily sentimental and intensely stimulating to Burr's disposition as a social trifler. He was reckless of consequences, vain of conquest over any woman, and scrupulous only to avoid failure in his amours. The more innocent and virtuous the victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap unsuspecting game without exciting alarm ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Vandalia experienced a warm suffusion in the vicinity of his throat. In the next breath he felt genuinely guilty. As he looked deep into the anxious, appealing gray eyes of Miss Vost, he cursed himself for being, or having the tendencies to be, a trifler; and in his estimation a trifler was not far removed from the reptile class. Yet somehow, damn it, that trip to Ching-Fu on the Hankow appealed to him now as a most profitable excursion, for Ching-Fu was only a few hundred li from ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Rue Racine!" said Lissac. "In those days, I dreamed of being Musset, I a gourmand, and what have I become? A spectator, a trifler, a Parisian, a rolling stone.—Nothing. And you who dreamed of being a second Barnave, Vergniaud or Barbaroux, your dream ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... yet he had acquired such a command over his heart that he was as little wretched as a man can be who is a living monument of the too common folly of being captivated by a sudden glare of person and parts; and of the fatal error of those men who seek in marriage for an amusing trifler rather than a rational and amiable companion, and too late find that the vivacity which pleases in the mistress is often a fatal vice in a wife. He lives chiefly in the country, has generally a ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... Jack Hinton of the way Ulick Bourke acquitted himself of his debt to Father Tom. And behind all Lever's conventional types there is a real fund of observation and knowledge which is absolutely wanting in Lover, who simply lacked the brains to be anything more than a trifler. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Holmes were rather ignorant). He is not over "the threshold of Eld" (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism). His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold's words, as "a belletristic trifler." ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... was grieved and indignant. With all my fair promises and pretended loyalty I seemed to be an idle trifler. How could my relation to Lettie Conlow be explained away in the light of this visit from a handsome cultured young lady, who had had an assurance of welcome or she would not have come. He loved Marjie as the daughter of his dearest friend. He ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the State, Manners, Apprehension and even common phrases of Sheapards: for nothing can {23} be said to be Pastoral, which is not accommodated to their condition; and for this Reason Nannius Alcmaritanus in my opinion is a trifler, who, in his comments on Virgils Eclogues, thinks that those sorts of Composures may now and then be lofty, and treat of great subjects: where he likewise divides the matter of Bucolicks, into Low, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... in the porch and, maybe inspired by secret antagonism to the Fynes, I said to myself deliberately that Captain Anthony must be a fine fellow. Yet on the facts as I knew them he might have been a dangerous trifler or a downright scoundrel. He had made a miserable, hopeless girl follow him clandestinely to London. It is true that the girl had written since, only Mrs Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents. They were unsatisfactory. They did not positively announce imminent nuptials as ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... forgive me, Paul," he said huskily. "I am not fitted for the work. I am broken down, a trifler, a worn out old dandy. You have got the right metal in Alexis. See to it that he does not follow my example, but keeps unstained the ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... do in important matters, if the king desires anything, or the people importune you, if you cannot decline to drink when your friend asks you, or evade the onset of some prating fellow, but allow the trifler to waste all your time, from not having nerve to say, "I will see you some other time, I have no ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... but a sad trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill. "Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... bed-room, Queen Anne—for one's washing-room; but it isn't proper for a salon. Do I spend my life at the auctioneer's?" Mr. Rosier pursued in answer to another question of Isabel's. "Oh no; I haven't the means. I wish I had. You think I'm a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression of your face—you've got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don't mind my saying that; I mean it as a kind of warning. You think I ought to do something, and so do I, so long as you leave it vague. But when you come to the point you see you ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... their influence over every other. The second generation of the statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of Grammont, and the tiring-room of Nell. In no other age could such a trifler as Buckingham have exercised any political influence. In no other age could the path to power and glory have been thrown open to the manifold infamies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and partly, perchance, From a generous vanity native to France, With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry, Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles: But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles, No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind. Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen Floating ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... omissum, quod is animo conceperit, si quae dictio, &c. If aught be omitted, or added, which he likes, or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucae lectionis, an idiot, an ass, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else it is a thing of mere industry, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. [113]Facilia sic putant omnes quae jam facta, nec de salebris cogitant, ubi via ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... chose to convey. He felt bewildered, and at the same time happy. He who was so alone of a sudden found that he possessed this relative, and it seemed to him almost too good to be true. That the relative had never before noticed his existence, that he was supposed to be a trifler and a ne'er-do-weel, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... herself that it was solely for the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see Senor Don't Care survive; solely for the sake of her conscience that she wanted to see him go aboard the train safe. After that, she could forget ever having owed this trifler the feeling of gratitude for a favor done. Literally, he must live in order to be a dead and unremembered incident of ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... that what we see before us is a great spirit carried away by passion—that something beyond reason, beyond all human power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain, and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... than he should. Monte, big-hearted and good, had, as a consequence of all these things, imagined himself in love. This delusion might last a week or two; and then, when he came to himself again, the rude awakening would follow. He would see her then merely as a trifler. Worse than that, he might see himself as merely a trifler. ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... all my life to be sincere and simple, to be unassuming and kindly. Ive lived a blameless life. Ive supported the Censorship in the face of ridicule and insult. And now I'm told that I'm a centre of Immoralism! of Modern Minxism! a trifler with the most sacred subjects! a ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... in loops of flight I watch you wayward go; Dance down a shaft of glancing light, Review my books a-row; Before the bust you flaunt and flit Of "blind Maeonides"— Ah, trifler, on his lips there lit ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... in the eyes. "I have seen her. A fair toy vessel to amuse an idle young man's leisure! You are he that in that fool's hole of a Bosekop, is known as the 'rich Englishman,'—an idle trifler with time,—an aimless wanderer from those dull shores where they eat gold till they die of surfeit! I have heard of you,—a mushroom knight, a fungus of nobility,—an ephemeral growth on a grand decaying old tree, whose roots lie buried in the annals ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... to me. Have your researches into English literature ever chanced to lead you into reading Horace Walpole, I wonder? That polite trifler is fond of a word which he coined himself—'Serendipity.' It derives from the name of a certain happy Indian Prince Serendip, whom he unearthed (or invented) in some obscure Oriental story; a prince ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... I, should there be a personal quarrel between us? We talked on many things for an hour or more, and his I found the keenest mind that ever I have met. There was in him a dispassionateness, a breadth, which seemed most strange in a trifler of the Court, in an exquisite—for such he was. I sometimes think that his elegance and flippancy were deliberate, lest he should be taking himself or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me, held me, and, later, as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in your silent grave!— The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we—we ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pollen-dust, prepares the honey in her crop, stores and mixes the paste. This severe labour, so imperious and so active, in which the insect's whole life is spent, manifestly demands a bodily strength which would be quite useless to the male, the amorous trifler. Thus, as a general rule, in the insects which carry on an industry the female is the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... the good sense which I have met with among the poor women who have had few advantages of education, and yet have acted heroically, strongly confirmed me in the opinion, that trifling employments have rendered women a trifler. Men, taking her ('I take her body,' says Ranger.) body, the mind is left to rust; so that while physical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enslave woman: and who can tell how many generations may be necessary ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... impression is that Mackenzie is a humorous writer, and that the wiseacres who want the novel to be 'serious' are barking up the wrong tree. At any rate, there the book is, and it is admitted to be a good book by all who have been condemning Mackenzie as a trifler; and Mackenzie is going on with his sequel to it in the pleasant land of Italy. I did not see him in Italy, but in Herm, one of the minor Channel Islands. It took me a night to reach the place—a night of fog and fog-signals—a night of mystery, with the moon full ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the people whom they had hitherto ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to encourage me, and then began to sing, perhaps to make me understand better; and felt with her hands for the doors, and with her feet for the steps of the staircase. Meanwhile I continually reflected: "this terrible malicious trifler is plotting to lead me into some flour-bin, shut the door upon me, and leave me there till the morning: or to let me step in the darkness into some flue, where I shall fall up to my neck into the rising dough;—for of ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... When the imperial trifler had exhausted his store of grain, and satisfied the cravings of his voracious favourites, he was relieved of his silver vase by two attendants. The flock of poultry was then ushered out at one door, while the flock of geniuses was ushered in at ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... more of you than I thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide your inmost self from ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... quaint philosopher frequently doggishly nicknamed Owd Bob, went to Washington lately to see President Harding. His eye fell upon the White House Airedale. Now Owd Bob is himself something of an Airedale trifler, and cherishes the memory of a certain Tristram Shandy, an animal that frequently appeared in the lighter editorials of the Bookman when Mr. Holliday (then the editor) could think of nothing else to write ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... main object he had daily haunted her uncle's residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him. Nor was that the worst of it. He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was the graceful, elegant young trifler from St. James's, Lord Julian Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted. And what chance had he, a desperate adventurer with a record of outlawry, against such a rival as that, a man of parts, moreover, as he ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... what punishment he moves nor can even guess what fitting one is decreed. But the time is surely appointed and the place. Poor trifler with Destiny, who ever had so ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... would as soon drag them under the eyes of my readers as I would mention a pimple I might chance to have (saving your presence) on my posteriors. What does it prove? what does it change? it has not hurt, it has not changed me in any essential part; and I should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friends at first laughed heartily; but then Froda advanced gravely towards the secretary, and said, "Thou trifler, doubtless the old duke would drive thee from his service did he know of thy folly, and teach thee to talk of the Emperor. Good-night, worthy sir, and trust me that when Edwald and I meet each other, it will be with all our ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... fashions of life in harmony therewith; and totally averse to the purer, manlier and nobler duties and pleasures of a better state of society. To dress and exhibit themselves; to crowd the saloon of every foreign trifler, who, under the abused name of art, and for the sake of gold, seeks to minister to us those meretricious excitements which associate themselves with declining states and artificial forms of life; to waste the most precious hours of night, set apart by ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... and his plans—and at night he drifted into the land where were warmth and light and lawlessness. He had his duty there, such as it might be, for he was both a gambler and a protector, and, young as he was, callow as he was, within a year he had become one in demand, no trifler at the table, and an object of rivalry among those whose regard means fee of body and of soul. He, himself, at that time, did not appreciate the remarkable nature of his changing. So rapidly he aged in knowledge of all undercurrents that he passed ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... each individual raises or lowers the level of democracy according to what he is and does. The idler fails to make any contributions to the well-being of society and thus lowers the average of citizenship. The trifler and dawdler lower the level of democracy by reason of their inefficiency. They may exercise their right to vote but fail to exercise their right to act the part of efficient citizens. If all citizens emulated ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... as calmly as if there had been no ardent impetuous girl of eighteen under his roof, leaving Clarissa to find occupation and amusement as best she might. He was not a profound student; a literary trifler rather, caring for only a limited number of books, and reading those again and again. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Southey's Doctor. Montaigne, and Swift, he read continually. He was a collector of rare editions of the Classics, and would ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... and Mont Blanc, together with the Alpine range, is never to be forgotten by one who has the good fortune to see it. I feel that I am acquiring new emotions and gathering up new sources of thought in this journey, and that I cannot be a trifler and waster away of life in such a world as that I live in. I find in every place so much to read about, and study over, and think upon, that I now feel as if life itself would not be long enough to do all I should like to effect. One thing is certain, Charley; I ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... "Being the eldest she has had a great deal of experience. She is like a mother to the younger ones. She has not been spending her time in fooling around idly and dancing and being out on the river, like so many girls. Rose is not worth half of Marie, and I do not see how I shall ever get the trifler trained to take Marie's place. But there need ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... nature to drift with events, and to easily accommodate himself to circumstances. In France he had been a gay, fashionable trifler; in Germany cloudy philosophies and musical ideas had fascinated him; in Rome he had dreamed in old temples, and painted and smoked with the artists in their lofty shabby studios. He was equally ready to share the stirring ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. This character is great, original ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... with such unctuous satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... that which beset him; it was unbearable, because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call to him. She was not a trifler who could play with meanings. Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he could believe ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... must feel oppress'd, My heart to earth's low cares a prey. Too old the trifler's part to play, Too young to live by no desire possess'd. What can the world to me afford? Renounce! renounce! is still the word; This is the everlasting song In every ear that ceaseless rings, And which, alas, our whole life long, Hoarsely each passing moment sings. But to new ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... mother expressed an ardent desire to hear my viva voce corroboration of this statement, informing me that she was but a poor weak widow-woman, but that, if it should appear that I was merely the giddy trifler of her daughter's young, artless affections, it would be her dolesome duty to summon instantaneously every male able-bodied inmate of her establishment, and request them to inflict deserved corporal chastisement ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Huet asserts that, like the rest of the world, he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the time who are not mentioned in these pages. We see Queen Anne holding a Drawing-room in her bedroom: "she looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her." We see Harley, afterwards the Earl of Oxford, "a pure trifler," who was always putting off important business; Bolingbroke, "a thorough rake"; the prudent Lord Dartmouth, the other Secretary of State, from whom Swift could never "work out a dinner." There is Marlborough, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... mother a court-beauty, the favourite of the Queen, and the glass which reflected the smiles and frowns of royalty. He afterwards saw her the idol of the party which opposed government, sung by Waller, flattered by Holland, presiding with all the frivolity and pride of a pretty trifler at the dark divan, while Pym and St. John disclosed their hopes of extending their aggressions to seizing the remaining prerogatives of the alarmed and conceding King. Weak, vain, passionate, and unprincipled, with no determined object but her own aggrandizement—no claim to attention ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... extracted the most important results. The invention of pendulum clocks took place about the middle of the seventeenth century; and the honour of the discovery is disputed between Galileo and Huygens. Becher contends for Galileo, and states that one Trifler made the first pendulum clock at Florence, under the direction of Galileo Galilei, and that a model of it was sent to Holland. The Accademia del Cimento also expressly declared, that the application of the pendulum to the movement of a clock, was first proposed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... below, Where deep th' unsullied waters flow. Here Gilpin's eye transported scan'd Views by no tricks of fancy plan'd; Gray here, upon the stream reclin'd, Stor'd with delight his ardent mind. But let the vacant trifler stray From thy enchantments far away; For should, from fashion's rainbow train, The idle and the vicious vain, In sacrilege presume to move Through these dear scenes of peace and love, The spirit of the stream would rise In wrathful mood, and tenfold size, And nobly guard his COLDWELL SPRING, ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... doubt will prove so in after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented, what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... made with the despatch which characterized Mrs. Hardy. She was a stickler for precedent; any departure from the beaten paths was in her decalogue the unpardonable sin, but when she had arrived at a decision she was no trifler. She accepted the situation with the resignation which she deemed to be correct under such circumstances, but the boundless prairies were to her so much desolation and ugliness. It was apparent that ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... I got spies out and they say he's been in every cafe in town looking for me. Wants to make up. Watch little birdie here. If he comes monkeying around me again I'll pick up one of these and knock him clean out from under his hat. Trifler. How I ever fell for him certainly gets me. How anybody could love a press agent or an actor gets me for that matter. I have been crossed in love and ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... come too early in a man's life—not till he has fully enjoyed his youth—for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into the sombre texture ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... resolution that they forthwith swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... love you. I am no trifler, believe me; I love you. I am the man who loves you because he has found in you qualities that are inestimable. You are one of those perfect creatures who have as much brains as sentiment; and the sentimentality that permeates you is not the sickly sentimentality ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... youthful strength to want, Than, young, that of a bull, or elephant; Then with that force content, which Nature gave, Nor am I now displeased with what I have. When the young wrestlers at their sport grew warm, Old Milo wept, to see his naked arm; And cried, 'twas dead. Trifler! thine heart and head, And all that's in them (not thy arm) are dead; This folly every looker on derides, To glory only in thy arms and sides. Our gallant ancestors let fall no tears, Their strength decreasing by increasing years; 290 But they advanced ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... him no chance to change his mind again," cried Madam Bowker. "What a trifler you are! No seriousness! Your intelligence all in the abstract; only folly and fritter for your own affairs. You should have given him ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... that I am! to fix all my happiness on such a trifler! 'Sdeath! to make herself the pipe and ballad-monger of a circle! to soothe her light heart with catches and glees!—What can ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... family. But at this time a sickness attacked him which brought him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French [165] language. ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... honour, or the model of the monks of La Trappe; to remind you that you had forgotten every body on the other side of the Channel who was worth remembering, including herself; and commending me, as a truant and a trifler, to your especial, grave, and experienced protection. Apropos! She sent me a letter, to be delivered to you with my own hands. But for yourself it had nearly failed in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... gracious Harry, let me sound thy name, Lest this old rust of war, this knotty trifler, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... you won't consider me a trifler, I should like to see a further manifestation of ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... nor was she an intentional trifler; therefore she was good at that social game of lead ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley |
