"Trifling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enough for you to want me to muck up out of the window, wasn't it?" demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... first place he had not been in Quebec or Montreal during his absence from home. Most of the time he had spent disposing of pelts and furs at Detroit and in extending his trading relations with other posts; but what mattered a trifling want of facts when his meridional fancy once began to warm up? A smattering of social knowledge gained at first hand in his youthful days in France while he was a student whose parents fondly expected him to conquer the world, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... literary gentry; but if in my endeavors to appreciate and sympathize with their thoughts and theories I had been able to win their regard, was it for me to heed the envy of one who grudged me this trifling tribute to my enthusiasm? Assuredly not. Therefore I resolved to act exactly as if I were ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... influence which he exercises on public business is no doubt feeble and indirect; but the choice of the President, which is of small importance to each individual citizen, concerns the citizens collectively; and however trifling an interest may be, it assumes a great degree of importance as soon as it becomes general. The President possesses but few means of rewarding his supporters in comparison to the kings of Europe, but the places which are at his disposal are sufficiently numerous to interest, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... soldiers; they do fear the turning of certain social and moral forces against them. The German Government does not hesitate for a moment to send ten thousand of its own people to certain death under enemy guns even though the military advantage of so doing may be relatively trifling. But it dare not order the massacre of ten thousand foreign residents in Berlin. There is some force which makes it sometimes more scrupulous of the lives of its enemy than of the lives of its ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to the gate of the sultan's mud edifice, where a few of the court were assembled to receive them. One, a sort of chamberlain, habited in eight or ten tobes, or shirts, of different colours, carried an immense staff, and on his head was a turban of prodigious size, though but a trifling one compared to those they were destined to see at the audience on the following morning. A large marquee was pitched for their reception, which they found luxuriously cool. In the evening a plentiful repast ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the early spring-flowering small trees—indeed, the earliest one that blooms in white—is the shad-bush, or service-berry. Again the "common" names are trifling and inadequate; shad-bush because the flowers come when the shad are ascending the rivers along which the trees grow, and service-berry because the pleasant fruits are of service, perhaps! June-berry, another name, is better; but the genus ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... this, grave sir, which is in fact trifling in a person of your character and appearance," answered the Anglo-Saxon. "I am like the rocks of my country; the fierce winds cannot shake me, the soft rains cannot melt me; flattery and loud words are alike lost ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Tristan to Isoude. May God pity a poor fool, I loved you half as much again than I had love for myself. From the first to the last of our friendship, never by thought, or by word, or by deed, have I done amiss; there is no wrong doing, trifling or great, to make plain your hatred, or to excuse so vile a betrayal as this scorning of our love for a fresher face, this desertion of me, this proclaiming of our secret. Alas, my friend, I marvel greatly; ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... work in earnest, and labouring diligently from morning to night—and even into the night hours—they knew they would not be long in accomplishing a task so trifling as the stocking of a gun, or putting the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... of Dissenters-I ask how comes it that England is neither a sober nor a moral country, and that vice in every shape rears its horrid front? Does it not prove that there is a radical error in the system? By the union of the people of England advantages of no trifling amount have lately been gained: the barrier of the Test Acts has been broken down; the system of parliamentary corruption has been stormed with success; and I trust the time is not far distant when the consciences of men will be no longer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... would have given little heed to such a trifling matter, but now it seemed of so much importance that I spoke to my companions in misery regarding it, picturing the bedraggled condition of the fine feathers after they had become thoroughly saturated, and was talking with more ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... D. Adams's Gram., 48; and others. "Till religion, the pilot of the soul, have lent thee her unfathomable coil."—Tupper's Thoughts, p. 170. "Whether nature or art contribute most to form an orator, is a trifling inquiry."—Blair's Rhet., p. 338. "Year after year steals something from us; till the decaying fabric totter of itself, and crumble at length into dust."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 225. "If spiritual pride have not entirely vanquished humility."—West's Letters, p. 184. "Whether he ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... air fanned his burning face. He stood on the bank of the Plover Creek and looked with unseeing eyes around him, and found himself thinking of the most trifling things—he couldn't think about what he wanted to; his brain refused to act. Suddenly there came over him a great calmness, and with it a strong resolve. He would do the square thing. He loved Thursa, but there was something stronger even than ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... trifling. Far as Jericho I'd send All shilly-shally. Do, for goodness' sake Speak out and say, "As husband I thee take." I've married twice, and know how ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... upbringing. His talk was brilliant, if it bore no searching analysis, and he had his circle of listeners wherever he went. He was a born raconteur, and had proved himself in that particular, and his increasing acquaintance with the stage and the professors of its trifling art ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... psychic body; and, when he comes to be born again, that body will become his outermost vesture, upon which, with its wound still there, bodily tissue will be built up. So the man will be born maimed, or with the predisposition to some mortal injury; he is unguarded at that point, and any trifling accidental blow will pierce the broken Joints of his psychic armour. Thus do the dynamic mind-images manifest themselves, coming to the surface, so that works done in the past may ripen and come ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... anecdote which I had imagined to be wrapped up in that tale. So then, while he spoke, I wrote—no longer to Hohenfels, but to my own consciousness and memory—these little notes on Chamillo, or rather Chamilly, and obtained a trifling contribution to the back-stairs history ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Under these circumstances it has through its organs openly assailed the credit of the Government, and has actually made and persists in a demand of 15 per cent, or $158,842.77, as damages, when no damage, or none beyond some trifling expense, has in fact been sustained, and when the bank had in its own possession on deposit several millions of the public money which it was then using for its own profit. Is a fiscal agent of the Government which thus seeks to enrich itself at the expense of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies there were many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Greeks, both in music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. But as they are almost in everything equal to the ancient philosophers, so they far exceed our modern logicians for they have never yet fallen upon the barbarous niceties that our youth are forced to learn in those trifling logical schools that are among us. They are so far from minding chimeras and fantastical images made in the mind that none of them could comprehend what we meant when we talked to them of a man in the abstract as common to all ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... thrust, however). "No, not with you. And you know in your heart, in the bottom of your trifling and fickle and worthless heart, Helena Emory, that if it came to the test, and if life and all the world and all happiness were to be either all yours or all mine, I'd go anywhere, do anything, and leave it all to you rather than keep any ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... than any depth of serious love, however absorbing and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when called 'the ladies.' On the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... books, and keep them arranged and easily accessible, whether Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or others, maintaining also the rooms in good condition. He must preserve the books from damp and vermin, as well as from the hands of trifling, ignorant, dirty, and tasteless persons. To those of authority and learning, he ought himself to exhibit them with all facility, courteously explaining their beauty and remarkable characteristics, the handwriting and miniatures, but ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... As trifling as this Article in Brewing may seem at first it very worthily deserves the notice of all concern'd therein, for on this depends much the good of our Drink, because if it is ground too small the flower of the Malt will be the easier and more freely mix with the water, ...
— The London and Country Brewer • Anonymous
... night to Woe; For then, however drear and dark, My soul was suited to thy sky; One star alone shot forth a spark To prove thee—not Eternity. That beam hath sunk—and now thou art A blank—a thing to count and curse Through each dull tedious trifling part, Which all regret, yet all rehearse. One scene even thou canst not deform— The limit of thy sloth or speed When future wanderers bear the storm Which we shall sleep too sound to heed. And I can smile to think how weak Thine efforts ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the late and present Secretary of State with the British plenipotentiary during the negotiation. The British proposition of compromise, which would make the Columbia the line south of 49 , with a trifling addition of detached territory to the United States north of that river, and would leave on the British side two-thirds of the whole Oregon Territory, including the free navigation of the Columbia and all the valuable harbors on the Pacific, can never for a moment be entertained by the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Senator, of course, had to assist at Mr. Malt's, and they began to work themselves up, as Mr. Malt said, into the spirit of it. Mr. Malt was to insist that the windows should be shut, he said he had got a trifling cold, and the Senator was to require them open in the interests of ventilation. They rehearsed their arguments, and momma putting her head out of the window at the first small station cried, "Be quick and change ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... different degrees. In breeding from such he will exercise his judgment, and decide what are indispensable or desirable qualities, and will cross with animals with a view to establish them. This proceeding will be of the 'give-and-take' kind. He will submit to the introduction of a trifling defect, in order that he may profit by a great excellence; and between excellences perhaps somewhat incompatible he will decide on which is the greatest, and give it the preference. To a person commencing improvement, the best advice is to get as good a bull as he can; and ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie
... may appeal to the practice of inoculation, which as effectually saturated the system, and indisposed to subsequent attacks, as if the skin had formed a continuous pustular surface; and yet this benefit was often gained by the trifling tax of a few days' fever, and half a dozen of pustules. Where the fever runs high and the respiration is much affected, in the first period of measles, and before there is the slightest appearance of eruption, we conceive it often so be ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... advance of us, and as we hesitated and finally stopped, there appeared round it a body of men in whom we at once recognized the Japanese soldiers. There was a low but wide doorway on our right, and into it we at once slipped with no trifling celerity. It was intensely dark and offered a good concealment. We could not afford to extinguish our lantern, and I placed it behind an angle of the inner wall where it was impossible that its glimmer could be seen from the street. Crouching in the deep shadow, we anxiously awaited ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... never had many people to love; she had never (before) loved anybody very much; and the truth and dignity which had kept her from all forms of love-trifling, so kept the hidden treasures of her heart all sparkling with their own freshness. They had never been passed about from hand to hand; no weather-stains, no worn-out impressions were there. What the amount ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... mind like this could not construct a plot or outline an article. His writings, like his conversations, were long drawn out, meandering and painfully tiresome recitations of trifling and, for the most part, ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... indulgence.—Thus far it may be well;—but, so mistaken are we in our road, as to run on in the very opposite tract, which leads directly to our ruin. Whatever else we indulge ourselves in, is attended with some small degree of relish, and has some trifling satisfaction in the enjoyment, but, in this, the farther we go, the more we are lost; and when arrived at the mark proposed, we are as far from the object we pursue, as when we first set out. Here then, are we inexcusable, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... indifference, while his companion seemed charmed by her; but the young man noticed the signs of her inward distress, which escaped the old libertine, who had, however, noticed and feared the gun. The natures of the two men were disclosed in this trifling ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... this hour the events of one hundred years ago, it is certain that the small armies and the smaller appliances of force then in use will seem trifling, in contrast with those which have so recently wearied science and have tasked invention in the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... answered for themselves with two more sharp reports, and these four shots resulted in checking the enemy's advance and in raising a wildly exultant, though feeble, cheer from the defenders along the little line; for, trifling as was the addition to the failing force, the shots seemed to give as much encouragement to the enfeebled men as ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... beside his calm and comely partner. The first impression was one of disappointment. It looked so like a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no local character in costume or customs. Men and women sat politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evidently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually laughing at or with somebody. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... at the station, I found that I was the only traveler, by a first-class carriage, who left the train. A young lady, remarkable by her good looks and good dressing, seemed to have noticed this trifling circumstance. She approached me with a ready smile. "I believe I am speaking to my father's friend," she said; ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... success, and amidst this hour of interest how many hearts beat with all hopes and fears that are incident even to the most circumscribed contest of human life. Opposite Dora stood the youth whom we have already noticed, James Cavanagh, whose salvation seemed but a very trifling thing when compared or put into opposition with her success. Be this as it may, the moment was a most exciting one even to those who felt no other interest than that which naturally arises from human competition. And it was unquestionably ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... she keeps a severe eye on him all through dinner, and so forbids any trifling with the sacred topic. "It would have put the poor things out so!" She had said to herself; and, indeed, it must be confessed that the lovers are very shy and uncomfortable, and that conversation drifts a good deal, and is only carried on irregularly ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... Timmins by his outrageous demands for 'a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham', on behalf of the stock-pot. But the 'Reform' housekeeper need be under no apprehension on that score, for she can have the choicest and most wholesome materials fresh from the garden to her pot-au-feu, at a trifling cost. Of course it is quite possible to be as extravagant with vegetarian foods as with the other, as when we demand forced unnatural products out of their season, when their unwholesomeness is matched only by their cost. No one who knows what sound, ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill
... with great eagerness; I promise supreme and eternal things, but the hearts of mortals are torpid. Who serves and obeys Me in everything with so great care as the world and its lords are served? Men run a long way for a trifling reward, but for eternal life many scarcely lift a ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... until the world is disgusted with them; a woman gives herself to God only when the world no longer wants her. Her vanity finds in religious devotion a role which occupies her and consoles her for the ruin of her charms. She passes her time in the most trifling practices, parties, intrigues, invectives, and slander; zeal furnishes her the means of distinguishing herself and becoming an object of consideration in the religious circle. If the bigots have the talent to please God and His priests, they rarely possess that of pleasing society ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... "That's too trifling. Say a bit," returned the man, but half concealing the eager impatience he felt to get hold ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... there was scarcely a trifling incident in his everyday life which escaped her. She saw each sign of his poverty and physical weakness. He grew paler day by day. There were days when his step flagged as he went up and down the staircase; some mornings he did not go out at all. She discovered that ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... livres, nine sols and two deniers. It is perhaps even more interesting to know that of this vast sum more than three millions went for marble, twenty-one millions for masonry, two and a half millions for the rougher woodwork and a like sum for marquetry. Other additional "trifling" embellishments of Versailles and the Trianon during the same period counted up another six million and ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... close upon sixteen. One day, I heard some one say, speaking of some trifling thing of which I was ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... offices, and there busy themselves about their affairs, after a fashion, energetic or desultory, till after two o'clock. The dinner hour varies from three to half-past five. Post-prandial labor is generally declined; wisely, too, for few American digestions will bear trifling with; though Nature must have gifted some of my acquaintance with a marvellous internal mechanism. How, otherwise, could they stand a long unbroken course of free living, with such infinitesimal correctives of exercise? The evening is spent after each man's fancy—at ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... and the French, with some small sprinklings of Greek, Italian, and Spanish, are some relief in poetry, and help us to soften our uncouth numbers; which, together with our English genius, incomparably beyond the trifling of the French, in all the nobler parts of verse, will justly give us the pre-eminence. But, on the other hand, the effeminacy of our pronunciation, (a defect common to us and to the Danes,) and our scarcity of female rhymes, have left the advantage of musical ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... and threw leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Wakem's had had a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the boy who served in the mill. Once before, since his illness, he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had left a lasting terror in Maggie's mind. The thought had risen, that some ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... but rather to lead on the witnesses than to entangle them. He succeeded, however, in creating a violent altercation between the Waterhouses on the one hand, and Agnes Brown on the other, over trifling matters of detail.[3] At length he offered to release Mother Waterhouse if she would make the spirit appear in the court.[4] The offer was waived. The attorney then asked, "When dyd thye Cat suck of thy bloud?" ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... voice, the fierceness of his eye, and the manner in which he held the loaded weapon, within a hand's-breadth of Chiffinch's head, convinced the last there was neither room for compromise, nor time for trifling. He thrust his hand into a side pocket of his cloak, and with visible reluctance, produced those papers and despatches with which Julian had been entrusted ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... render those trifling services which it was usual to ask from holy folk and sometimes from magicians. Before the coronation ceremony the nobles and knights had been given gloves, according to the custom. One of them lost his; he asked the Maid to find them, or others ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as possible. From some trifling details, from the way they made the coffee together, for instance, and from the way they understood each other at half a word, I could gather that they lived in harmony and comfort, and that they were glad of a visitor. After dinner they played a duet ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Lindsay's offer to Dresser, who was rising at laborious hours and toiling in the McNamara and Hill's offices, he realized how unmentionable and trifling were his grounds for hesitation. Dresser's enthusiasm almost persuaded him that Lindsay had given him something valuable. And if he found it difficult to explain his distaste for the thing to Dresser, what would he have to say to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... already understood, though perhaps others more proper might sometimes be invented. Sylburgius, and other innovators, whose new terms have sunk their learning into neglect, have left sufficient warning against the trifling ambition of teaching ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great "barin"—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they never ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... the upkeep of this mighty host, and for this general comforting of the Allies, the British taxpayer is now paying cheerfully and willingly, in addition to such trifling impositions as a 60 per cent tax on his commercial profits, income tax at the rate of twenty-five cents ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... about a salary. I promised you a pension; and, not wishing to maintain you in absolute idleness, I lay upon you these absurd and trifling duties." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... others seem cheerful, airy, and beautiful, but they know not why. The first exclamation, on entering John's parlors, was so often "How beautiful!" that it became rather a byword in the family. Estimated by their mere money value, the articles in the rooms were of very trifling worth; but, as they stood arranged and combined, they had all the effect of a lovely picture. Although the statuary was only plaster, and the photographs and lithographs such as were all within the compass of limited means, yet every ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... later a large number of the Catholic princes bound themselves together in the /League/ and accepted Maximilian of Bavaria as their leader (1609). Thus Germany was divided once again into two hostile camps, and only a very trifling incident was required to plunge the country into another civil war. For a time it seemed as if the succession to the Duchy of Cleves was to be the issue that would lead to the catastrophe. Duke John ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... gift which I shall bring you myself, my Katy; but I have a fancy also that you shall wear some trifling thing on your wedding-day which comes from me, so for fear of being forestalled I will say now, please don't buy any stockings for the occasion, but wear the pair which go with this, for the sake ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... of a pig-stye. We should as soon think of erecting the Nelson Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. Indeed, were it not necessary to show some kind of respect to fashion, we should hasten at once into the midst of things, instead of trespassing on the patience of our readers, and possibly, trifling with their time. We should not like to be kept waiting at a Lord Mayor's feast by a long description of the bill of fare. Our preface, however, shall at least have the merit of novelty; it shall ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... continued by the apostolic librarians and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries; and that the last and smallest part is the work of Anastasius, whose name it bears. The style is barbarous, the narrative partial, the details are trifling—yet it must be read as a curious and authentic record of the times. The epistles of the popes are dispersed in the volumes ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give; and much less take What I shall die to want.[422-10] But this is trifling; And all the more it seeks to hide itself, The bigger bulk it shows. Hence, bashful cunning! And prompt me, plain and holy innocence! I am your wife, if you will marry me; If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow[423-11] You may deny me; but I'll be your servant, Whether you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... was nothing but a trifling debate in an empty House, occasioned by a motion from the ministry, to order another physician and surgeon to attend Wilkes; it was carried by about seventy to thirty, and was only memorable by producing ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... explain to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and memorizing accidental, superficial, or even purely artificial relations. This double faculty of observing trifling and irrelevant details, and of remembering them, became phenomenally and ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... You don't need glory. Friendship is a simple story. Pass by trifling errors blindly, Gaze on honest effort kindly, Cheer the youth who's bravely trying, Pity him who's sadly sighing; Just a little labor spend On the duties of ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... can't have his head pumped out like a vacuum pan, or stuffed full of odds and ends like a bologna sausage, and do his work right. It doesn't make any difference how mean and trifling the thing he's doing may seem, that's the big thing and the only thing for him just then. Business is like oil—it won't mix ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... June between the British and Americans in the Dismal Swamp region, and in one of them Gregory was repulsed and driven from his position. But in July he wrote to Colonel Blount reporting that his losses were trifling, and that he had regained his old post from the enemy. In August, 1781, a letter from General Gregory conveyed the joyful tidings that the enemy had evacuated Portsmouth. As his troops were no longer needed to guard against the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... it were only in having seen what they have not seen." Such an accidental advantage, since it neither implies merit, nor confers dignity, one would think should not be desired so much as to be counterfeited: yet even this vanity, trifling as it is, produces innumerable narratives, all equally false; but more or less credible in proportion to the skill or confidence of the relater. How many may a man of diffusive conversation count ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... this?" Witherspoon asked. He had paid no attention to this trifling set-to and had caught merely the ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... a man happy in matrimony in the style that young gentlemen use who think their happiness a point of great consequence in the creation; and Mara, always cool, and firm, and sensible, would talk with him in the most maternal style possible, and caution him against trifling with her affections. Then again he would be lavish in his praise of Sally's beauty, vivacity, and energy, and Mara would join with the most apparently unaffected delight. Sometimes he ventured, on the other side, to rally her on some future ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knew that Harriet meant exactly what she said. She knew that it was time to stop trifling and to explain. "If you must see them, here they are." She drew the "specs" from a pocket in her skirt, holding them at arm's-length suspended from a string that the wearer had fastened to them to keep the glasses ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... launched against him a more tremendous excommunication. In return the partisans of Frederick in Rome, raising an insurrection, expelled the pope from that city. And now the free-thinking emperor, to convince the world that he was not trifling with his word, set sail of his own accord for the East, with as numerous an army as he was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... indistinct, that few seem to have reaped the benefit of them. For these reasons it was necessary to methodize the whole work; to abridge some parts of it; and to leave out many things that appear to be trifling. This we have endeavored to do in the translation, by reducing the whole work to four general heads or books; and {ii} by bringing the several subjects treated of, the accounts of which lie scattered up and down in different ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... wholesome fear of the penalty for contravening the law, refrains from giving it, the agency of degraded whites is readily secured by the Indian, and, with their connivance, the unlawful object compassed. Of course the white abettor in these cases risks trifling, if any, publicity in the matter, and is inspired with the less fear of detection. There are some few hotel-keepers who, though they more than suspect the purpose to which the liquor these whites are demanding is to ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... this just what spiritualists pretend to do? Many may call it only trifling and play. The Lord does not. The Scriptures continue: "For the Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations He will destroy them at thy coming." I certainly do not mean to say that all that passes for spiritualism is thus downright deviltry to-day, nor was it so in pagan ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... minutes and listening to the talk but learning nothing new, they went through the little village, made a few trifling purchases and then returned to the Academy, Jack managing the car and quite exciting Dick's admiration by the cool manner in which he took the trying hills, sharp turns and ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... been wholly unprepared for the demand that had been thrust upon her by the man, Peterman. It had frightened her at first. She had shrunk from it. Then, finally, she had accepted it as her duty, under pressure. Peterman had made it appear so trifling. A journey, a trying journey, perhaps, but one to be made with all the comfort he could provide. And then to preach to those ignorant forest-men the disaster towards which their employers were heading. As Peterman had put it, it had almost seemed a legitimate thing to do. Convinced ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... supplied with provisions and tobacco from the town, and every effort had been used to renew their hopes and courage. Cathelineau had passed the greater portion of the morning among them, going from one quarter to another, assuring the men that their loss was most trifling, that their future victory was certain—it was nearly in vain; they declared that they could do ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... considerable interest is the quantity per acre different soils contain of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. Although the amount of these ingredients when stated in percentage seems very trifling, yet when calculated in lb. per acre, it is seen to be in large excess of the amount removed by the different crops. This question will be dealt with in ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... very small part of the land was under cultivation. A few miniature olive and currant orchards, attempts at vineyards, and trifling patches of beans and grain, represented the sole efforts at tillage. There were no railways, and the few roads in existence were in poor condition. In or near what afterwards became the British zone, the only communities were those grouped around the fortifications ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... in a back room and searched him some more, and found his roll, and then a man who said he was a lawyer offered to help pa, and keep him out of the penitentiary. He told pa the law of Kentucky made the crime of trifling with a slot machine the same as breach of promise, or arson, and that he would be lucky if he got off with ten years in the pen, with 30 days' solitary confinement in a Turkish bath cell, with niggers ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... staggered by the shot from my gun. Many were wounded, but they were trifling small shot-wounds, which only infuriated them as they saw their prey escaping, and with a rush they came tearing through the water, whirling their clubs above ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... at the disconcerting providence which has overwhelmed us in the journey of life. There are compensating circumstances which should alleviate our sorrow. Our lives are spared, and the immeasurable forests are undisturbed by the trifling event which has overtaken us ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... trifling, and in part false and contradictory charges, will not, I should hope, be thought necessary. By turning to Chapter 3 (December), and comparing my reasons for putting in at Mauritius with what the Moniteur says, it will be seen ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... is the creature of that circle. And I ask myself if she is obeying the uneasiness of an instinct seeking its satisfaction, or is it a revulsion of feeling, or is she merely deceiving her own heart by this dangerous trifling with romantic images. And everything is possible—except sincerity, such as only stark, struggling humanity can know. No woman can stand that mode of life in which women rule, and remain a perfectly ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... bow-man had charge of the boat-hook and painter, and the coxswain of the rudder, yoke, and stern-sheets. Our duty was to carry the captain and agent about, and passengers off and on; which last was no trifling duty, as the people on shore have no boats, and every purchaser, from the boy who buys his pair of shoes, to the trader who buys his casks and bales, were to be taken off and on, in our boat. Some days, when people ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Trifling as it may seem, the first measure of the new government pertained to the etiquette to be observed at receptions, dinners, etc., in which there was more pomp and ceremony than at the present time. Washington himself ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... paper, though it is altogether too light and trifling in its treatment of serious subjects. Besides, it never treats of any thing serious. This won't do. The earnest men and women of the nation require something better at your hands. I have an essay on the "Origin of Evil," which I forward ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... delight his sence; The youth that doted on Minerva's[177] picture Had some contentment for his eye; [soft Musique. But love, or rather an infernall hagge, Envying Saxons greatnes and his joyes, Hath given me nothing but a trifling glove, As if by the proportion of the case Art had the power to know the jewels nature. Or Nimph, or goddesse, woman, or faire devill, If anything thou art, within my braine Draw thine owne picture, let me see ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... In Mexico the curious class of miners known as 'gambusinos' rove through the valleys of the Sierra Madre armed with pick and pan, passing their lives in hunting mines, as pigs hunt truffles. If they come upon a mine, they never try to work it, but sell the secret for a trifling sum, and, drinking out the money, start on again to find the mines worked by the Aztecs, till an Apache bullet or arrow stops them, their El Dorado still ahead, or they are found beside their pick and ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... This trifling circumstance served to arouse me, and I began to look about me with some attention. I discovered, at length, that the forest glade was not tenantless, for the part farthest removed from me was crowded with ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... child nor woman that I should weakly yield to guidance or misleading! Some trifling matter of free-will remains to me in spite of mine affliction,—and that I have supped with Sah-luma at the Palace of the High Priestess, has been as much my choice as his example. Who among men would turn aside from high feasting and mirthful company? ... not I, believe me! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... away all that gorgeous array whereof they were so proud; and especially when they had talked familiarly with the Utopians, and had learned all their fashions and opinions. For they marvel that any man be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the glistering of a little trifling stone, which may behold any of the stars, or else the sun itself; or that any man is so mad as to count himself the nobler for the smaller or finer thread of wool, which self-same wool (be it now in never so fine a spun thread) did once a ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... had raised his fortune. With the common people his reputation stood still worse. They would neither yield him the territorial appellation of Ellangowan nor the usual compliment of Mr. Glossin: with them he was bare Glossin; and so incredibly was his vanity interested by this trifling circumstance, that he was known to give half-a-crown to a beggar because he had thrice called him Ellangowan in beseeching him for a penny. He therefore felt acutely the general want of respect, and particularly when he contrasted ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... her to confide in him, to tell him the cause of her anguish. If Clinton had been trifling with her happiness, he should not depart without feeling ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... leave her boys to the mercy of the pavement; she tried to make her home happy and taught them all to have a share in adding to its sunshine. "It makes boys selfish," she would say, "to have their sisters do all the work and let the boys go scot-free. I don't believe there would be so many trifling men if the boys were trained to be more helpful at home and to feel more for their mothers and sisters." All this was very well for the peace and sunshine of that home, but as the children advanced in life the question came to ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... you answer I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... but it knocked the "love motive" and the "heart interest" higher than a kite, utterly ruining some of his prettiest bits of writing, besides letting him in for a call-down from Naylor. Still, the old man couldn't be very hard on him—he'd understand that some trifling little inaccuracies were bound to creep into a great big story like this, dug out and worked ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... Venice on the mainland, which were then small, were assailed by Francesco Carrara and the Hungarians. Her only ally in the war, Bernabo Visconti of Milan, gave her little help on this side, but his mercenaries invaded the territory of Genoa. The danger on land seemed trifling to Venice so long as she could keep the sea open to her trade and press the war against ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... other for various smaller irregularities, like the sale of appointments to West Point cadetships, and that sort of thing—mere trifling pocket-money enterprises that might better, be passed over in silence, perhaps, but then one of our Congresses can never rest easy till it has thoroughly purified itself of all blemishes—and that is a thing to ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion- -an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. 'Our ancient' is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... not a man who raked cinders over the fire, but rather raked them off and that in true kindness and love; but with terrible and awful plainness he showed the danger of trifling with the Gospel, and presuming upon God's love ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... campaign, not a milrea was suffered to find its way into the pockets of the officers and men, and the squadron would have been wholly defrauded of its reward, had I not refused to give up to the prize tribunal the comparatively trifling sums received in redemption of the seizures at Maranham; these being retained on board the flagship in consequence of the unjustifiable course which the tribunal was pursuing. A plot was, however, formed to seize it by force, but this was met by such ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the earth thus sheds, this crystal thread, scorned by the unobserving passer-by, is arrested in its timid course by some trifling obstacle—a rising path, a fallen branch or tree. This little streamlet swells, frets the immediate spot of ground, imperceptibly increases in size, and becomes after many efforts, the patient work of months and years, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the most depressing trials, and the unconquerable ardour, in spite of every obstacle, characteristic of British seamen. About 2000 miles altogether were traversed by the different parties. Mr Penny made every effort to ascend Wellington Channel; but his success was trifling compared to his unwearied endeavours. When his sledge was stopped by open water, and after incredible labours a boat was brought to the spot, thick-ribbed ice had collected to impede its progress. All the efforts of the heroic explorers were in vain. Lieutenant De Haven's ships returned ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... colleges, seventeen academies, fifty high schools, five law schools, five medical schools and twenty-five theological seminaries. It is true that all of the education he is obtaining is not practical; and also true that many so-called educated ones are shiftless and trifling; but this is no more than was to be expected under ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... need of a reply, as their voices were already audible from below, talking with Mrs. McGuire. The distance was so trifling that they had seen Phil enter the house, and the padrone, having a contempt for the physical powers of ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... flourish apart from the sophistry and fictions of selfishness. He would have rejoiced to have been as light of heart as at the moment he handed his fair-haired partner into the gondola that night; but his head had pressed the pillow for many hours, before sleep drew a veil over the solemn trifling with the most serious of your duties, in which he ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the head of the bed and bent down to examine the bedposts. A slight groove in the deep pile carpet showed clearly enough that the bed had been pushed back a few inches. The change in position was so trifling that it might have been attributed to the act of a servant in sweeping the room if a closer examination had not revealed the continuance of the groove under the bed. The inference was unmistakable: the bed, in the first instance, had been ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the present what would suffice for competence to one of few wants, and freeing his name from that title of Adventurer, which is so prodigally given in rich old countries to those who have no estates but their brains. He thought of Violante but as the civilized trader thinks of a trifling coin, of a glass bead, which he exchanges with some barbarian for gold dust; he thought of Frank Hazeldean married to the foreign woman of beggared means, and repute that had known the breath of scandal,—married, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... direction for which she would all her life be thankful. It would have been surprising if her presence in the doctor's house had not after some time made changes in it, but there was no great difference outwardly except that she gathered some trifling possessions which sometimes harmonized, and as often did not, with the household gods of the doctor and Marilla. There was a shy sort of intercourse between Nan and Mrs. Graham's grandchildren, but it was not very valuable to any of the young people at first, the country child ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... times adopt the vulgar suspicion, that Maurice conspired to destroy the troops whom he had labored to reform; the misconduct and favor of Commentiolus are imputed to this malevolent design; and every age must condemn the inhumanity of avarice [42] of a prince, who, by the trifling ransom of six thousand pieces of gold, might have prevented the massacre of twelve thousand prisoners in the hands of the chagan. In the just fervor of indignation, an order was signified to the army of the Danube, that they should spare the magazines of the province, and establish their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... silence in the midst of an excitement which was great for so trifling an incident, and then ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... her not to steal sugar for the future," observed Michael, as he and his son righted the kettle. They had to pull down some of the shed before they could put the fire out; but such trifling events were too common in the bush to disturb their tempers, and they were thankful that matters ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... tried, for General John E. Wool the department commander, had not at command a sufficient number of officers of appropriate rank to constitute a court in the case of Rains, and the charges against Ord were very properly ignored on account of their trifling character. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... have bent on the last struggle of life in a beloved object. Without any show of surprise Grandcourt nodded to Deronda, gave a second look at Gwendolen, passed on, and seated himself easily at a little distance crossing his legs, taking out his handkerchief and trifling with it elegantly. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... I'll engage no page remains a blank, But ere we leave the range of our design, E'en scrup'lous dames shall to our wish incline, Our persons handsome, with engaging air, And sprightly, brilliant wit no trifling share,— 'Twere strange, possessing such engaging charms, They should not ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... undertaking the same service for 60,000 rupees a year for nine years, and the terms of Mr. Frazer's contracts: preferring the latter, because these were "to effect a complete repair, which could hardly be concluded in one season, and the subsequent expense would be but trifling." ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the spirit of wanton mischief fairly bristles through the crowd, evidently needing but the merest friction to set it ablaze and render my situation desperate. My coat-tail is jerked, the bicycle stopped, my helmet knocked off, and other trifling indignities offered; but to these acts I take no exceptions, merely placing my helmet on again when it is knocked off, and maintaining a calm ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... with the numbers of the Propositions, and the words included within brackets, are supplied from Foxe. Also a few trifling corrections in the orthography. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... was done to ward off the danger, "the throats of all the white people of Virginia will be cut." The other replied, "No, the whites cannot be conquered—the throats of the blacks will be cut." Faulkner's rejoinder was that the difference was a trifling one, "for the fact is conceded that one race or ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... With these appeals for trifling allowance,—leaving the larger need to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no slight fiction can adequately handle,—I give you leave ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... to explain, O father. Did not you give us leave to take from the Sheep a trifling contribution for our pelisses in winter? It is only because they are stupid sheep that they cry out. They have only a single fleece taken from each of them, but they grumble about ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... mission; and when informed by Illo of its failure, he broke out into the bitterest complaints against the court. "Thus," said he, "are our faithful services rewarded. My recommendation is disregarded, and your merit denied so trifling a reward! Who would any longer devote his services to so ungrateful a master? No, for my part, I am henceforth the determined foe of Austria." Illo agreed with him, and a close alliance ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... the middle and high, to the vox humana of some organs; lastly, the harmonical sounds are exactly like those of the harmonica. It is conceived, that this diversity of tones affords already a great variety in the execution, which is always looked upon as being feeble and trifling, on account of the smallness of the instrument. It was not thought possible to derive much pleasure from any attempt which could be made to conquer the difficulties of so limited an instrument; because, in the extent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... cannot think how comic it looked hopping about the bar, quite as much at home as a tame squirrel would have been. I had a bed made up for me at this place, on one end of a long dining-table. It was very comfortable, with the trifling drawback that I had to rise earlier than I wished, in order that what had been a bed at night might become a table ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... my memory, that in committing it to paper I did not omit one material circumstance; however, upon strict review, I blotted out several passages of less moment, which were in my first copy, for fear of being censured as tedious and trifling, whereof travellers are often, perhaps ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... mystic meaning to a shibboleth of their own; roared over old jokes with a delight they had never since given to new; reawakened idiotic nicknames and bywords with intense enjoyment; grew grave, anxious, and agonized over forgotten names, trifling dates, useless distances, ineffective records, and feeble chronicles of their domestic economy. It was the thoughtful and melancholy Demorest who remembered the exact color and price paid for a certain shirt bought from a Greaser peddler amidst the envy of his companions; ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... 'dreadful things.' They were good if put to the proper uses. I do not think that there was ever much real 'effeminacy' to be knocked out of him. It is too harsh a word for the slowness with which a massive and not very flexible character rouses itself to action. His health was good, except for a trifling ailment which made him for some time pass for a delicate child. But the delicacy soon passed off and for the next fifty years he enjoyed almost ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... are promiscuously admitted, men or women, and have places every way fitted for both concealing and entertainment. The man and woman of the house frequently take their commodities off their hand at low prices, and the women who frequent these sort of places help them off with what trifling sums of money they receive; for though they are utterly devoid of education, yet dinning and flattery are so perfectly practised by them, that these bewitched young robbers make no scruple of venturing soul and body ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... dairy-produce and plenty of beef and leather, these Heathen Preussen, of uncertain miscellaneous breed, contrived to support existence in a substantial manner; they figure to us as an inarticulate, heavy-footed, rather iracund people. Their knowledge of Christianity was trifling, their aversion to knowing anything of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... of a recitation, and delivered the short Latin presentation-address, I thought him to be a god." This fascination is hard to be explained. The great seriousness of Horner's character may in part account for it. He could not bear trifling on important subjects, and could not help frowning on all jests which were not more wise than witty. The calm determination, the unvarying earnestness of his character, may aid in explaining it. From a boy, he never swerved from great purposes, pursued the most useful though difficult knowledge, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... some trifling act I had offended the Frenchman, and ever after did he make it a point to insult and annoy me by every means in his power, until at length, on one occasion, he struck me a cruel blow on the face. That blow did the business. ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... and critics, Dickens, looking about superciliously, or Anthony Trollope, breathing hard, or Trollope mere, or Harriet Martineau, or Captain Marryat, or Mayne Reid, or Samuel Lover. For in a case like this a trifling matter like an anachronism or a misstatement counts ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... disapproved. She would have preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of busy representations to the provincial officials which secured some good-will and even trifling favor to the family. But the results were otherwise unsatisfactory, for the mulberry money ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... cutter to receive the syndic's letters was fully reported the same evening to the commandant, who, knowing that the syndic was suspected, reported the same to the authorities, and this trifling circumstance only increased the suspicions against the unfortunate Mynheer Van Krause; but we must follow the cutter and those on board of her. Smallbones had remained concealed on board, his wounds had been nearly healed, and ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat |
