"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequently, if a document has been analysed upon fifty different slips, the same references must be repeated fifty times. Hence a slight increase in the amount of writing to be done. It is certainly on account of this trivial complication that some obstinately cling to the inferior note-book system. Again, in virtue of their very detachability, the slips, or loose leaves, are liable to go astray; and when a slip is lost how is it to be replaced? To begin with, its disappearance is not perceived, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the purpose of interpreting the laws and of applying them to particular cases. The legislature makes the laws, but it can not execute them. The governor recommends the passage of certain laws, and holds the veto power; but he has no law-making power, nor can he try the most trivial suit. ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman
... travelling, to do five shillings' worth of work. He showed us, among other things, an account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be plunged for boiling—all this joined to the utter absence of anything like party feeling, which ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... dispensed with the same thoroughness as in England. The day's offenders against discipline were punished with what seemed to us unusual severity. But we were now on active service, and offenses which were trivial in England were looked upon, for this reason, in ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... various. They worked if they had something to do, or could invent a pretext. They told and retold stories until all were wearisome. They sang songs. Mercedes taught Spanish. They played every game they knew. They invented others that were so trivial children would scarcely have been interested, and these they played seriously. In a word, with intelligence and passion, with all that was civilized and human, they fought the ever-infringing loneliness, the savage ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... natural; but at a distance from home the mind is doubly anxious for the details of what is going on there, and attaches an interest to particulars which, under other circumstances, it would consider as too trivial to be worthy of attention. During my stay on the Continent, I felt very forcibly the truth of Dr. Johnson's observation, "that it is difficult to conceive how man can exist without a newspaper." I was, however, for a considerable time, forced to be satisfied with the ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... own personal interests, and which at other times might irritate and wound their feelings, pass by them like the idle wind which they regard not. He himself must have had his intervals of comparative happiness, in which the causes of his present grief would have appeared trivial and absurd. He should not, then, expect persons whose blood is warm in their veins, and whose eyes are open to the blessed sun in heaven, to think more of the apparent causes of his sorrow than he would himself, were his mind and ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... left behind him his hat, which apparently trivial loss cost him and one of his fellow conspirators their lives. Fearing that the lack of it would arouse suspicion, he abandoned his horse, instead of making good his escape, and hid himself in the woods east of Washington ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... of speculation. But it seemed very extraordinary, even to him, that the attention of the bishop should have been at once abstracted from all reflection on the marvellous cure which they had witnessed, and upon the probability it afforded of Richard being restored to health, by what seemed a very trivial piece of information announcing the motions of a beggardly Scottish knight, than whom Thomas of Gilsland knew nothing within the circle of gentle blood more unimportant or contemptible; and despite ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Bulwer, "a man may be so trivial you would mistake him for an imbecile—at best, a grown infant. Put him into his art, and how high he soars above you! How quietly he enters into a heaven of which he has become a denizen, and unlocking ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... disadvantages, and at moderate heights not the smallest feeling of nausea is ever experienced. The only unpleasant sensation, and that not of any gravity, ever complained of, is a peculiar tension in the ears experienced in a rapid ascent, or more often, perhaps, in a descent. The cause, which is trivial and easily removed, should be properly understood, and cannot be given in clearer language than that used by Professor Tyndall:—"Behind the tympanic membrane exists a cavity—the drum of the ear—in part crossed by a series of bones, and in part occupied by ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... and defiant. It was unjust that anyone, knowing himself to be brilliantly clever, should yet be made an oaf by an incident so trivial. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... accessories to dress; and the use of them, except to define its chief terminal outlines, or soften their infringement upon the flesh, is a confession of weakness in the main points of the costume, and an indication of a depraved and trivial taste. When used, they should have beauty in themselves, which is attainable only by a clearly marked design. Thus, the exquisite delicacy of fabric in some kinds of lace does not compensate for the blotchy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... That close sly being used—to worm out the secrets of men's innermost hearts; and his impassive mask never showed a sign of emotion. To illustrate his mode of extracting the information of which he made such terrible use, I may tell one trivial anecdote which has never before been made public. When Greville was very old, he went to see a spiritualistic "medium" who was attracting fashionable London. The charlatan looked at the gray worn old man and thought himself ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... "moral" was sought to be extracted. The technical language, too, of the early Heralds, had its expressive simplicity travestied by a complicated jargon, replete with marvellous assertions, absurd doctrines, covert allusions devoid of consistent significance, quaint and yet trivial conceits, and bombastic rhapsodies. Even the nomenclature of the Tinctures was not exempt from a characteristic course of "treatment," two distinctive additional sets of titles for gold, silver, blue, red, &c., having been devised and substituted for those in general ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... the emotion by which she was agitated. Sometimes she cast her eyes with terror upon a letter which she held in her hand, a letter that had been delivered by post in the course of the evening, and which had been placed by the housekeeper (the dyer) upon the table, while she was rendering some trivial domestic services during the recognitions of Dagobert and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to make up this true history; it would be lost labor, were not the flower and the blade of grass, the very thistle down upon the breeze, each and all, as wonderful as the grand forests of the splendid tropics. What character or human deed is too small or trivial for study? Never did a great writer utter truer philosophy than when ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... Jahn's testimony that these afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and adds that "some of his first ideas for pieces which are now among the jewels of the opera are so extremely trivial and commonplace, that one would hardly dare to attribute them to Beethoven, were they ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... it is a "monstrous absurdity" that women who are "discharging their supreme social function, that of rearing children, should do it in their spare time, as it were, while they 'earn their living' by contributing some half-mechanical element to some trivial industrial product." Nevertheless, such a woman whose wages are fixed on the basis of individual subsistence, who is quite unable to earn a family wage, is still held by a legal obligation to support her children with the desperate penalty ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... interest, no humor, and plenty of faults, may be granted. His Paradise Lost especially is overcrowded with mere learning or pedantry in one place and with pompous commonplaces in another. But such faults appear trivial, unworthy of mention in the presence of a poem that is as a storehouse from which the authors and statesmen of three hundred years have drawn their choicest images and expressions. It stands forever as our supreme example of sublimity and harmony,—that sublimity which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... upon so unlimited a subject, come out with so poor, so jejune a production. Should we pity or be amazed at so perverse a talent, which, instead of qualifying an author to give a new turn to old matter, disposeth him quite contrary to talk in an old beaten trivial manner upon topics wholly new. To make so many sallies into pedantry without a call, upon a subject the most alien, and in the very moments he is declaiming against it, and in an age too, where it is so violently exploded, especially among those readers ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... he was too far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. He didn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the most amazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he could always be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequential detail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point lace adjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig up a long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a story without a quotation from one ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... knowing it, know also that it is the only way to do your necessary work. The absurd and disgusting thing is the ignorance and cowardice of those who can slaughter an army corps every day for lunch, with words, and would not be able to make so trivial a start toward the "crushing" they are forever talking about as to fire into another man's open eyes or jam a bayonet into a single man's stomach. Among the Utopian steps which one would most gladly support would be an attempt to send the editors and politicians of all belligerent countries ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... makin' a onseemly uproar an' disturbin' the gen'ral peace for purely private causes. Then ag'in it would be beneath the dignity of a high grade savage an' a big medicine sharp to conduct himse'f like he'd miss so trivial a ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... best I'd ever known except theirs, not for any reason at all only just that I wanted to see your face, hear your voice, and have you pick me up and take me in your arms when I was tired. That was when I almost quit writing. I couldn't say what I wanted to, and I wouldn't write trivial things, so I went on day after day ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... design. You cannot begin by just throwing about sprays of natural flowers. It calls peremptorily for treatment—by which test the decorative artist stands or falls. Effective it must be; coarse it may be; vulgar it should not be; trivial it can hardly be; mere prettiness is beyond its scope; but it lends itself to dignity of design and nobility of treatment. Of course, it ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... thought which enters your mind, fanned by curiosity's wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed, commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its presence, seems insignificant at first sight; that unguarded ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... the messenger, and his heart beat quickly. An uncontrollable presage of evil racked his nerve-centres. Something had gone wrong; and yet the whole thing was so absurd, trivial. In a crisis—well, he could always apologize. He smiled confidently at ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... King John's reign; the last within the past two hundred years. In England, America, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia—every country without exception—witches have lived, flourished, and been burned at the stake. Laws were enacted against witches, and they were condemned on the most trivial and even ridiculous evidence imaginable. If an old woman were seen to enter a house by the front door, and a black cat was seen to leave the house by the back door, it was deemed sufficient evidence that the old woman ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Tappertit, scrutinising it attentively, while a breathless silence reigned around; for he had constructed secret door-keys for the whole society, and perhaps owed something of his influence to that mean and trivial circumstance—on such slight accidents do even men of mind depend!—'This is ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... The trivial wound the wrathful knight Disdains to search with care. But soon he finds, the wound tho' slight, Death lurks in ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... Tanya, pressing her hands to her temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come, come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind, noble. You will be just to ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... acquiring an ornamental style, gave many useful precepts to expedite and improve the invention of an Orator. For in this System we have a collection of fixed and determinate rules for public speaking; which are delivered indeed without any shew or parade, (and, I might have added, in a trivial and homely form) but yet are so plain and methodical, that it is almost impossible to mistake the road. By keeping close to these, and always digesting his subject before he ventured to speak upon it, (to which we may add, that he had a tolerable fluency of expression) he so far ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... after all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, this same morning, came a note from Mrs. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the present population of New York is the result of a great number of selective acts, some regular, others more or less haphazard. Selection is no less selection because it occurs by what we call chance—for chance is only our name for the totality of trivial and unconsidered causes. When, however, we count man and man's efforts in the sum of natural objects and forces, we have to reckon with his intelligence in these selective processes. I desire to call attention to the place that they play in ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... voices, and pitiful seriousness about prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people, of ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... Tree, "always seemed to me an epicure in life. He was always intent on extracting the last drop of honey from every flower that came in his way. He was absorbed in the business of the moment, however trivial. As a companion, he was delightfully witty; as a personality, as much a creature of romance as his ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... through one country in the cast-off finery of another." For the privilege of citizenship in what, at present, is the freest country in the world my direct taxation amounts to 1 5s. per annum; and, since "luxuries" are not in demand, indirect contributions to State and Commonwealth are so trivial that they fail to excite the most sensitive of the emotions. All our household is in harmony with this quiet tune, and yet we have not conquered our passion for thrift but merely ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... analysis which is a leading feature in his later works, and in them is applied with such effect to women and to the tender passion, neither of which elements enters into his early works in any appreciable degree. He displays the most astounding genius in detecting and understanding the most secret and trivial movements of the human soul. In this respect his methods are those of a miniature painter. Another point must be borne in mind in studying Tolstoy's characters, that, unlike Turgeneff, who is almost exclusively objective, Tolstoy is in the highest degree subjective, and has presented a study of his ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... sincerity in Narcissus that has always made us take him so seriously. And here I would remark in parenthesis, that trivial surface insincerities, such as we have had glimpses of in his dealings, do not affect such a great organic sincerity as I am speaking of. They are excrescences, which the great central health will sooner or later clear away. It was because he never held an opinion to which he was not, when called ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... heard anybody, whom you knew to be dead, alluded to in a light, easy going manner by another person who did not know of his death—alluded to as doing that or this, as performing some trivial everyday operation—when you know that he has vanished away from the face of this earth, and separated himself forever from all living creatures and their commonplace pursuits in the awful solemnity of death? Such a chance ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... not ask for sedatives, but for some high stimulus to call into play her strong and well-trained faculties. Money-making, the natural sphere of man, has become a more and more absorbing pursuit, while the usual feminine occupations have become more than ever trivial and unimportant at the very moment when the feminine mind has taken a new start in its development. The woman who is fresh from reading Gauss and Pindar, and who has taken sides in the discussion between the adherents of Roscher and of Mill, cannot ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... away from her. To this day I remember, with a tenderness which attaches to no other memories of mine, the books that I read to her, the sunny corner on the seashore where I sat with her, the games of cards that we played together, the little trivial gossip that amused her when she was strong enough for nothing else. These are my imperishable relics; these are the deeds of my life that I shall love best to look back on, when the all-infolding shadows of death ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... scattered sources, everything germane that diligent and faithful research could discover, or the careful study and re-analysis of known data determine. No new and relevant item of fact discovered, however trivial in itself, has failed of mention, if it might serve to correct, to better interpret, or to amplify the scanty though priceless records left us, of conditions, circumstances, and events which have meant so much ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... little sentimental excursion feeling somewhat like a sneak. The country was empty of Grace Kerr. In going out to seek her in the folly of a romance too trivial for a man of his serious mien, he was guilty of an indiscretion deserving Vesta Philbrook's deepest scorn. He burned with his own shame as he dismounted to adjust the wire, like one caught in a reprehensible deed, and rode home feeling ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Museum. This work of song-making, begun during his second winter in Edinburgh, was carried on with little intermission during all the Ellisland period. The songs were on all kinds of subjects, and of all degrees of excellence, but hardly one, even the most trivial, was without some small touch which could have come from no hand but that of Burns. Sometimes they were old songs with a stanza or two added. Oftener an old chorus or single line was taken up, and made the hint out of which a new and original song was woven. At other times they were entirely ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... exceedingly trivial instances,[64] but in them, if we have anything at all, we have the method of experiment and verification. For the point I am driving at now, it makes no difference whether you consider the patients to be deluded ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... blessing lay in this, that they became so at once: there had not been time for them to court their power: their fancies had not been fed to wantonness by ever-changing temptations: obstinacy in them would not have leagued itself with trivial opinions: petty hatreds had not accumulated to masses of strength conflicting perniciously with each other: vanity with them had not found leisure to flourish—nor presumption: they did not assume their authority,—it was given them,—it was thrust upon them. The perfidy ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... degenerates into restlessness and buffoonery in the Neapolitan, or the native of Languedoc, assumes a more dignified character in the Catalan, who is certainly a gentleman of Nature's own making. One of the crew, a tall athletic fellow, was holding forth to the rest on some trivial matter with a varied and graceful action, which might have served as a model to a painter. The rest were at breakfast; but even their mode of pouring the wine on their tongues at arm's length, from the long spout of a sort of glass kettle, had somewhat ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the blood in her fingers, as he took her hand and lifted her to her feet. There was shame in this tempest that swept through her veins, because he did not share it; for to her, though this meeting was an epoch, to him it was no more than a trivial incident. She would have keyed his emotions to hers, if she could, but since she had had years of preparation, he a single moment, perhaps she might have been consoled for the disparity, could she have read his eyes. ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... with the suddenness of its kind. During Hervey's long wait Chintz did not leave him entirely alone. Several times, on some trivial pretext the little man visited the sitting-room. And his object was plainly to keep an eye upon his master's unbidden guest. At last there came a clatter of galloping hoofs splashing through the underlay of the forest, and presently Iredale pulled ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... struggle, throwing out his arms and legs instinctively in a powerful effort to return to the surface. Then, in a moment, he lost all consciousness of his dreadful situation and found himself once more back among the scenes of his childhood, a multitude of trivial and long-forgotten incidents recurring to his memory with inconceivable rapidity. He was a dying man; the agony of drowning was over, and he had entered upon that curious phase of retrospection that most drowning people experience, and ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were discussing affairs in town-meetings, the French inhabitants of Canada were never allowed to take part in public assemblies but were taught to depend in the most trivial matters on a paternal government. Canada was governed as far as possible like a province of France. In the early days of the colony, when it was under the rule of the Company of the Hundred Associates, the governors practically ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... work, could begin to feel that she too had a real share in it. With what seemed to her most creditable energy and self-sacrifice she tried again to interest herself in newspapers. But the trivial parts bored her; the chronicles of crime repelled her; and the politics and most of the other serious articles were beyond the range of her knowledge or of her interest. "I shall wait until we are married," she said, "then he will teach me." ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... his vast empire-building power. The Mormons have been taught to revere Joseph Smith as a direct prophet from God. He saw the face of the All Father. He held communion with the Son. The Holy Ghost was his constant companion. He settled every question, however trivial, by revelation from Almighty God. But Brigham was different. While claiming a divine right of leadership, he worked out his great mission by palpable and material means. I do not know that he ever pretended to have received a revelation from the time ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns
... the department of La Vendee, whatever serves, trivial as it may be, to recall or illustrate the history of its wars and the character of its inhabitants, must ever possess a charm for those who delight to sympathize with the noble struggles of a gallant people, conscientiously ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... making love at the back of my house. Is it for a Transcendental Philosopher to feel any curiosity on such an occasion? Or can I, whose life is worth only eight and a half years' purchase, be supposed to have leisure for such trivial employments? However, to put this out of question, I shall say one thing, which will perhaps shock some readers, but I am sure it ought not to do so, considering the motives on which I say it. No man, I suppose, employs much ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... the science of religion, the prayers of the lower races of mankind have not been recorded to any great extent by those who have had the best opportunities of becoming acquainted with them, if and so far as they actually exist. This is probably due in part to their seeming too obvious and too trivial to deserve being put on record. It may possibly in some cases be due to the reticence the savage observes towards the white man, on matters too sacred to be revealed. The error of omission, so far as it can be remedied henceforth, will ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... and used to ask after them by name, which pleased Carrie, and made a bond of sympathy between them. At such times I somehow felt a little sad, though I would not have owned it for worlds, for it seemed to me as though my work were so trivial compared to Carrie's—as though I were a poor little Martha, "careful and troubled about many things" about, Deborah's crossness and Jack's reckless ways, occupied with small minor duties—dressing ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... gleam Of Freedom glimpsed afar in youthful dream, Henceforth was true as needle to the pole. The vision he had caught remained the goal Of manhood's aspiration and the theme Of those high luminous musings that redeem Our souls from bondage to the general dole Of trivial existence. Calm and free He faced the Sphinx, nor ever knew dismay, Nor bowed to externalities the knee, Nor took a guerdon from the fleeting day; But dwelt on earth in that eternity Where Truth and Beauty shine with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a mirror, she unpinned her straw hat, smoothed her dark hair, resting her eyes pensively for a few moments on her reflected face. Then she sauntered listlessly about the little room in performance of those trivial, aimless offices, entirely feminine, such as opening all the drawers in her clothes-press, smoothing out various frilly objects and fabrics, investigating a little gilded box and thoughtfully inspecting ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... had too long occupied himself with the trivial affairs of the world, the countenance of Trujano resumed its expression of ascetic gravity, and when the eye of Don Rafael was interrogating it, in hopes of reading there the true signification of the last words, the ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... "The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask: Room to deny ourselves—a road To bring ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... stood face to face, she with that deadly matter openly in her hand - his very presence on the spot another link of proof. It was plain she was about to speak, but this was more than he could bear - he could bear to be lost, but not to talk of it with his destroyer; and he cut her short with trivial conversation. Arm in arm, they returned together to the train, talking he knew not what, made the journey back in the same carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed the evening in the drawing-room as in the past. But suspense and fear drummed in the dreamer's bosom. "She has not denounced ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... diplomatist of the first rank. A certain stateliness and formality of character appears, however, to have made him many enemies in England, and they did not scruple to gratify their dislike or jealousy during his mission to Canada. Their enmity is echoed in a trivial paragraph in The Times, describing an incident which happened on ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... obstacles, to the dictates of their consciences, that their wills were not developed past the reasonable limit of nature. What wonder is it that their descendants inherit this peculiarity, though they may develop it for much less worthy and more trivial causes than the exiling themselves for a question of faith, even the carrying-out of personal and ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... He does not believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too. Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I am a sea-gull—no—no, ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... connected with the trivium, the initiatory course taught in the schools, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, S3; trivial, ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... had said, "that you do not wish to be rescued at all. Most of your reasons for postponing the trip have been trivial and ridiculous—possibly you are afraid of the dangers that may lie before us," ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you knock-kneed naturally? Or could you, with an effort, do you think, contrive to give yourself less the appearance of a marionette whose strings have become loose? Thank you, that is better. These little things appear trivial, I know, but, after all, we may as well try and look ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... placed joints, discoloration may not appear on the surface for some days, especially if the violence has been indirect. The joint is kept in the flexed position, and is painful only when moved. In haemophilic subjects, considerable effusion of blood into a joint may follow the most trivial injury. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a dreadful schism in the smoking world, and has agitated every divan in the metropolis to its very centre. The question is, "Whether should a cheroot be smoked by the great or the small end?" On this apparently trivial subject the great body of cheroot smokers have taken different sides, and divided themselves, as the Lilliputians did in the famous egg controversy, into the Big-endians and Little-endians. The dispute ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... Miss Gray," he said; and without any apparent reason the two shook hands. Afterward they were to think of this trivial act and vow that it was truly the beginning. They were young, heart-free, and full ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... told of a well-known New York society matron who gave a formal dinner party on every occasion that warranted it, no matter how trivial, for the reason that it gave her keen pleasure and enjoyment to do so. At one of her dinners recently a famous world-touring lecturer was the guest of honor—and the hostess was as happy and proud as it is possible for a hostess ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... discovery. In fact, I had considered popular traditions of the kind as fair foundations for authors of fiction to build upon, and made use of the one in question accordingly, I am not disposed to contest the matter, however, and indeed consider myself so completely overpaid by the public for my trivial performances, that I am content to submit to any deduction, which, in their after-thoughts, they may think ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... bill were merely talking against time, hoping in this unbecoming way to tire out the friends of the measure and so defeat it. Such conduct might be respectable enough in a village debating society, but it was trivial among statesmen, it was out of place in so august an assemblage as the House of Representatives of the United States. The friends of the bill had been not only willing that its opponents should express their opinions, but had strongly desired it. They courted the fullest and freest ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... even in apparently trivial matters, is of no light moment, inasmuch as it is constantly becoming inwoven with the lives of others, and contributing to form their natures for better or for worse. The characters of parents are thus ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... money, which is usually made upon the conclusion of any sort of treaty; but although the people of the tribe were so miserably poor, they seemed to look upon the pecuniary part of the arrangement as a matter quite trivial in comparison with the teskeri. Indeed the sum which Dthemetri promised them was extremely small, and not the slightest attempt was made to extort any ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... twigs; and we are in the topmost branches. Each of us is trying to bend the tree by a twig: to alter England through a distant colony, or to capture the State through a small State department, or to destroy all voting through a vote. In all such bewilderment he is wise who resists this temptation of trivial triumph or surrender, and happy (in an echo of the Roman poet) who remembers ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... only passport to posterity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius, and true nobility of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... resigning to avoid removal; by which measure this provision of the act has proved as unoperative as all the rest. By this management a mere majority may bring in the greater delinquent, whilst the person removed for offences comparatively trivial may remain ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... knoll was doing the princess good, and was certainly better for her than life with the crimson baroness at the Grange, she was not going to annoy and discourage her charitable offspring by interfering in their good work for trivial social reasons. The baroness was bitterly angry at their failure to recover ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... obtained. His want of success arose from the insufficiency, not the fallacy, of theory. Your object, dear Julia, we will suppose is "to please." If general observation and experience have taught you, that slight accomplishments and a trivial character succeed more certainly in obtaining this end, than higher worth and sense, you act from principle in rejecting the one and aiming at the other. You have discovered, or think you have discovered, the secret causes which produce ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... as perhaps to seem an unimportant part of this narrative of a strange voyage, yet really as necessary to the foundation of the story as the single bricks and the single dabs of mortar at the base of a tall chimney are necessary to the completed structure. I later had cause to remember each trivial incident as if it had been ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... is subjected to choleric outbursts should never send for anything but food an hour before dinner, for the reason that a very trivial thing looks, at that time, big enough to wreck the nation. Bissell, however, failed to recollect this simple truth, and greeted his daughter with smoldering eyes, that gradually softened, however, the longer he ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... a notable exception. On no occasion was Annixter prepared to accept another man's opinion without reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... of Charles' expedition appear at first sight trivial; in reality they were momentous. In the first place, it was now clear to Europe that the Italians had no real national feeling, however much they might despise the "barbarians" who lived north of the Alps. From this time down to ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... effect is traceable even in that produced by our different and changeful moods. We make and unmake a world more than once in the space of a single day. In trifling moods all seems trivial. In serious moods all seems solemn. Is the song of the nightingale merry or plaintive? Is it the voice of joy or the harbinger of gloom? Sometimes one, and sometimes the other, according to our different moods. We hear the ocean furious or exulting. The thunder-claps are grand, or angry, ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... institutions, habits, and manners, differing in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed to form the matrix in which original thought was formed, and new truth communicated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... d'Aristippe! O Jardin d'Epicure, &c. had been imparted as a secret to the gentleman by whom I was introduced. He allowed me to read it twice; I knew it by heart; and as my discretion was not equal to my memory, the author was soon displeased by the circulation of a copy. In writing this trivial anecdote, I wished to observe whether my memory was impaired, and I have the comfort of finding that every line of the poem is still engraved in fresh and indelible characters. The highest gratification which I derived from Voltaire's residence at Lausanne, was the uncommon ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... three or four shillings stood between him and utter destitution; and the only person in the world to whom he could apply for even the most trivial assistance, was Huckaback—whom, however, he knew to be really little better off than himself; and whom, moreover, he felt to be treating him more and more coldly, as the week wore on, without his hearing of any the least tidings from Saffron ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... be difficult for me to express the satisfaction we felt on landing at Angostura, the capital of Spanish Guiana. The inconveniences endured at sea in small vessels are trivial in comparison with those that are suffered under a burning sky, surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, and lying stretched in a canoe, without the possibility of taking the least bodily exercise. In seventy-five days we had performed a passage of five hundred leagues (twenty to a degree) on ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... from your character in his estimation, and he will not believe the statement any the sooner for the oath connected with it. Can you think that the high and holy name of God is intended to be debased by association with every trivial and impertinent truth which may be uttered? "No oath," says Bishop Hopkins, "is in itself simply good, and voluntarily to be used; but only as medicines are, in case of necessity. But to use it ordinarily and indifferently, without being constrained by any ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... forget the dumplings!" Upon this, the loons, all down the lake, who had hitherto been silent, took up the strain with vehemence, hurling their wild laughter at the presumptuous mortal who thus dared to invade their solitudes with details as trivial as Mr. Pickwick's tomato-sauce. They repeated it over and over to each other, till ten square miles of loons must have heard the news, and all laughed together; never was there such an audience; they could not get over it, and two hours after, when we had rowed over to the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... as a punishment for any crime other than insurrection or treason. He gave as a reason for proposing this amendment that in North Carolina, and other States where punishment at the whipping-post deprives the person of the right to vote, they were every day whipping negroes for trivial offenses. He had heard of one county where the authorities had whipped every adult ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... It is a trivial grammar-school text, but yet worthy a wise man's consideration: question was asked of Demosthenes, what was the chief part of an orator? He answered, action: what next? action: what next again? action. He said it that knew it best, and had by ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... observed these things, which are perfectly well known to those who have been able to familiarize themselves with the ordinary effects of compressed air as used in caissons and submarine works of various kinds, when my attention became attracted by what at first appeared to be a phenomenon of trivial importance. In a word, I observed that some of the men exposed to the effects of the compressed air were more exhilarated by it than others. Upon superficial reflection one might have supposed that this discrepancy in ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... in his dotage!" thinks Brian, disgustedly; and, rising from the table, he makes a few more trivial remarks, and then walks from the dining-room on to the balcony and so to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... that precisely this was the intention of this provision of the Constitution; namely, that the prerogative was to be conceded to science that it should not lie under the limitations which the general criminal code imposes upon every-day, trivial expressions of opinion. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... boys arose the following morning, each somewhat stiff and sore from the experiences of the night before, it was with a feeling of happy anticipation that made their physical discomforts seem like trivial things. ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... this we have not far to go. Looking out of the window of the snug little parlour we are occupying, we see before us what an Irishman might call a triangular square—a sort of “Trivium,” where three ways meet, and where men not seldom congregate for trivial converse, although on market days it is the scene of busy barter, and at mart, or fair, transactions in horse, and other, flesh are negotiated with dealers of many kindreds, peoples, and tongues; but more of this anon. On the far side of this open ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... are subject to the errors and passions of human nature, like their fellow creatures. No sister, for instance, ever loved another with stronger affection than poor Maura did her brother Felix, notwithstanding the repeated scoldings which, for very trivial causes, he experienced at her tongue. Woe, keen and scathing, be to those who dared, in her presence to utter an insinuation ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Our sages here are actually about to play its game. Orders have come to divide the army. What folly! What inconceivable infatuation! In the very face of the most fantastic and furious population of mankind, whom the most trivial success inflames into enthusiasts; they are going to break up their force, and seek ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... This would undoubtedly have made him popular had his motives been good, but the memory of his former life made his conduct seem cheap and discreditable. He constantly attended the senate, even when the debates were on trivial matters. It once happened that Helvidius Priscus,[434] then praetor-elect, opposed Vitellius' policy. At first the emperor showed annoyance, but was content to appeal to the tribunes of the people to come to the rescue of his slighted authority. Afterwards, when his friends, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... and, presently, he returned. Peter is an excellent servant; but the fashion of his speech, even when conveying the most trivial information, is slightly sesquipedalian. He would have made a capital cabinet minister at question time,—he wraps up the smallest petitions of meaning in ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Trivial as the matter seemed, looked at in this light, it had yet enough of human interest about it to decide him to leave the grouse alone, and wait patiently for the partridges at Millstead. After all, he had shot grouse ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... for truth; and those suspicions respecting his own accuracy, which every philosophical experimenter will entertain concerning his own researches, ought never to be considered as a reproach, when they are kept in view in examining the experiments of others. The minute circumstances and apparently trivial causes which lend their influence towards error, even in persons of the most candid judgment, are amongst the most curious phenomena of ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the gaping street; but the idea of that ordeal gave him no uneasiness. Those who saw him would forget him the next moment, or confuse him with some other in the same wretched plight. His mind always reverted from such reflections, as comparatively trivial, to the issue of the trial itself. Indeed, that thought might be said to be constant, though others intruded on it occasionally without obscuring it, like light clouds that cross the moon. As to the details of the scene of which he was about to be so prominent ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and other trifles. It is so to this hour. Could you watch the true investigator—your Henry or your Draper, for example—in his laboratory, unless animated by his spirit, you could hardly understand what keeps him there. Many of the objects which rivet his attention might appear to you utterly trivial; and if you were to ask him what is the use of his work, the chances are that you would confound him. He might not be able to express the use of it in intelligible terms. He might not be able to assure you that it will put a dollar into the pocket ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... noble music which forbids unreality, rebukes frivolity into silence, subdues ignoble passions, soothes the heart's sorrow, and summons to the soul high and holy thoughts. It was difficult to begin the conversation; the trivial themes of the earlier part of the evening seemed foreign to the mood that had fallen upon the company. At length Mr. Sims ventured to remark, with a giggle: "It's awfully fine, don't you know, but a trifle funereal. Makes one think of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... undetermined than ever to break open the fearful cause of her disturbance. Yet she durst not seek repose another night with such a companion. Her apprehensions were not easily allayed, however disposed she might be to treat them as trivial and unfounded. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... much. It would probably have ruined a less amiable temper, a less loving heart, than yours. It is well for parents to be sometimes a little blind to trivial faults. And I was so strict, so stern, so arbitrary, so severe. My dear, be more lenient to your child. But of course she will never find sternness in ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... substance on the one side, form, treatment, handling on the other, are the field through which I especially want, in this lecture, to indicate a way. It is a field of battle; and the battle is waged for no trivial cause; but the cries of the combatants are terribly ambiguous. Those phrases of the so-called formalist may each mean five or six different things. If they mean one, they seem to me chiefly true; taken as the general reader not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me false ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... and how, and why, you know—but I thought it pedantry and worse to hold by my words and increase their fault. You have forgiven me that one mistake, and I only refer to it now because if you should ever make that a precedent, and put any least, most trivial word of mine under the same category, you would wrong me as you never wronged human being:—and that is done with. For the other matter,—the talk of my visits, it is impossible that any hint of them can ooze out of the only three persons in the world to whom ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... mysterious splendor from on high Forth-darted to illuminate This dreary wilderness; Of superhuman fate, Of fortunate realms, and golden worlds, A token, and a hope secure To give our mortal state; To-morrow, for some trivial cause, Loathsome to sight, abominable, base Becomes, what but a little time before Wore such an angel face; And from our minds, in the same breath, The grand conception it inspired, Swift vanishes and leaves no trace. What infinite desires, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Steel," formed among the absentee Lord Downshire's tenants, in 1762; the "Oak Boys," so called from wearing oak leaves in their hats; and the "Peep o' Day Boys," the precursors of the Orange Association. The infection of conspiracy ran through all Ireland, and the disorder was neither short-lived nor trivial. Right-boys, Defenders, and a dozen other denominations descended from the same evil genius, whoever he was, that first introduced the system of signs, and passwords, and midnight meetings, among the peasantry of Ireland. The celebrated ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... clearest way of stating a proposition, and that alone ought to be chosen: yet how often do we find the same argument repeated and repeated and repeated, with no variety except in the phraseology? In developing any thought, we ought not to encumber it by trivial circumstances: we ought to say all that is necessary, and not a word more. We ought likewise to say one thing at once; and that concluded to begin another. We certainly write to be understood, and should therefore never write in a language that is unknown to a majority ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... very nearly come. He did not again speak intelligibly to any of them. In his last hours he suffered considerably, and his own thoughts seemed to irritate him. But when he did mutter a few words, they seemed to refer to trivial matters—little plagues which dying men feel as keenly as those who are full of life. To the last he preferred George either to his niece or to his granddaughter; and was always best pleased when his nephew was by him. Once or twice he mentioned Mr. Pritchett's name; but ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the absence of any pomp or pride in their romantic past, which characterises the old buildings of a German town. These quaint and stately houses, wedged one into the other, with their many storeys, their steeply sloping roofs and eye-like roof-windows, were still in sympathetic touch with the trivial life of the day which swarmed in and about them. He wandered leisurely along the narrow streets that ran at all angles off the Market Place, one side of which was formed by the gabled RATHAUS, with its ground-floor ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... ill and not to know how ill! To feel the threatening arm of the law hovering constantly over her head and neither to know the instant of its fall nor be given the least opportunity to divert it. To realise that some small inadvertance on her part, some trivial but incriminating object left about, some heedless murmur or burst of unconscious frenzy might precipitate her doom, and I remain powerless, bearing my share of suspicion and ignominy, it is true, but not the chief share ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... simple persons according to the world—old men, young men, and poor women—who in that same place (the Place de Greve) had endured fire and knife." D'Aubigne's narrative, as usual, is vivid, and mentions somewhat trivial details, which, however, are additional pledges of its accuracy; e.g., he alludes to the fact that, having spoken as above to those who stood on the side toward the river, he repeated his remarks to those on the other side of the Place de Greve, beginning with the words, "I was saying ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... such words, like others, require that their accents should be settled, their sounds ascertained, and their etymologies deduced, they cannot be properly omitted in the Dictionary. And though the explanations of some may be censured as trivial, because they are almost universally understood, and those of others as unnecessary, because they will seldom occur, yet it seems not proper to omit them; since it is rather to be wished that many readers should ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Its efforts were directed especially against the Albigenses and Waldenses, who were guilty of no crime, except the unpardonable one of opposing the errors of the church of Rome. Twenty-seven canons were framed by this council; all of them on matters of trivial importance with the exception of the last, which is directed against the poor exiles who were bold enough to prefer their own salvation to a blind submission to the church. The Twenty-seventh canon imposes a curse on all those who maintained or favoured the Waldensian opinions. In ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... a long table, with the most conglomerate groups of Neapolitans of a seemingly doubtful class at their elbows. Each biologist has a caraffa of light wine on the table before him, and all are smoking. And, staid men of science that they are, they are chattering away on trivial topics with the animation of a company of school-boys. The stock language is probably German, for this bohemian gathering is essentially a German institution; but the Germans are polyglots, and you will hardly find yourself lost ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... of the secret committee, it appeared that the then minster had commenced prosecutions against the mayors of boroughs who opposed his influence in the election of members of parliament. These prosecutions were founded on ambiguities in charters, or trivial informalities in the choice of magistrates. An appeal on such a process was brought into the house of lords; and this evil falling under consideration, a bill was prepared for securing the independency of corporations; but as it tended to diminish the influence ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... thoughts which swelled the breast Of generous Boswell; when with nobler aim And views beyond the narrow beaten track By trivial fancy trod, he turned his course From polished Gallia's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to share in the sufferings of Christ because he looked upon these sufferings as trivial. Few men have ever understood the sufferings of Christ as did Paul. He had an appreciation of their intensity and of their bitterness far beyond most other men. He understood as few have ever understood the physical agonies of the Cross. ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... slight—the turning of a pebble, a slip, even the most trivial, and the Apache would turn like lightning, and be upon him in a flash. Two more steps were taken, and only eight feet separated the lad and the Indian, and still the latter remained all unconscious of what was ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... fingers; it was the eternal adieu. For years I believed this mazurka to be a marvellous inspiration, and it was not till long after, when age had dispelled my illusions and obliterated the adored image, that I discovered it was only a vulgar and trivial commonplace: the gold was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... civilized nations, disarm and leave the despotisms and barbarisms with great military force, would be a calamity compared to which the calamities caused by all the wars of the nineteenth century would be trivial. Yet it is not easy to see how we can by international agreement state exactly which power ceases to be free and civilized and which comes near the line of barbarism or despotism. For example, I suppose ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Angelique, making some trivial excuse, hurried up to her room as quickly as possible. Then she gave free course to her tears. Ah, how intensely happy she was, yet how she suffered! Her poor, dear beloved; he was sad enough when ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... would have dictated its terms, sabre in hand. Michel indeed stood high with his chief in the embassy, and he was very much sought after in society. Before the day he met Marsa, he had, to tell the truth, only experienced the most trivial love-affairs. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... ribbons they wear, or for anything else in the world. I fancy that you, if you came once to love your friend, would find it very easy to do without the admiration of those who go to make up society; they would come to seem to you very trivial and empty people, and afterwards, perhaps, ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... himself.” Her brother, she adds, was very reluctant to take this advice, “because he saw its danger.” At length, however, he yielded, “considering himself obliged to do all he could to restore his health, and because he thought that trivial amusements could not harm him. So he set himself on the world.” When this definite change in Pascal’s life began is left uncertain, but there are indications that he had largely abandoned his studies in 1649 and the following year. During these years there is nothing from his pen. The interval ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... a good one to follow in bedroom pictures; no "rogue's gallery" of photographs, no useless, meaningless, and trivial pictures, but just a madonna or two, perhaps a photographic copy of some old master, with a favorite illuminated quotation—something to help and ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... firm and solemn pause, and meditate dispassionately on the importance of this interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... called him, there may have been other motives, such as have been hinted at. People who have been living for a long time in dreary country-places, without any emotion beyond such as are occasioned by a trivial pleasure or annoyance, often get crazy at last for a vital paroxysm of some kind or other. In this state they rush to the great cities for a plunge into their turbid life-baths, with a frantic thirst for every exciting pleasure, which makes them the willing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... The episode, trivial as it seemed to Morriston, gave Gifford food for disagreeable reflection. Why, indeed, should Henshaw be hanging about in the grounds of Wynford, and give so unconvincing a reason? What troubled Gifford most was that the man's reticent attitude precluded all hope of his ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... of Italy, through the Flemish dominions of Germany, through a large portion of France, and through the entire of Spain, a great monastic body was established, which, professing a secondary and trivial obedience to the sovereign, gave its first and real obedience to the pope. The name of spiritual homage cloaked the high treason of an oath of allegiance to a foreign monarch; and whoever might be king of France, or Spain, the pope was king of the Dominicans. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... own. I see among them an absence of any desire for beauty—for physical beauty. If the artists have fulfilled a mission in abolishing 'the sweetly pretty Christmas supplement kind of work,' I think they dwell too long on the trivial and the ignoble. They put a not very interesting domesticity into their frames. Rossetti, of course, wheeled about the marriage couch, but his was itself an interesting object of virtu. Modern art ceased to express the better aspirations and thoughts of the day ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross |
