"Trifler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... peace of Utrecht. We are indeed no admirers of the statesmen who concluded that peace. Harley, we believe, was a solemn trifler, St. John a brilliant knave. The great body of their followers consisted of the country clergy and the country gentry; two classes of men who were then inferior in intelligence to decent shopkeepers ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spirit of the brain, Till with sounds like these it join? 'Twill not be! then change thy note; Let division shake thy throat. Hark! division now she tries; Yet as far the muse outflies. Cease then, prithee, cease thy tune; Trifler, wilt thou sing till June? Till thy business all lies waste, And the time of building's past! Thus we poets that have speech, Unlike what thy forests teach, If a fluent vein be shown That's transcendent to our own, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Mackenzie is a humorous writer, and that the wiseacres who want the novel to be 'serious' are barking up the wrong tree. At any rate, there the book is, and it is admitted to be a good book by all who have been condemning Mackenzie as a trifler; and Mackenzie is going on with his sequel to it in the pleasant land of Italy. I did not see him in Italy, but in Herm, one of the minor Channel Islands. It took me a night to reach the place—a night of fog and fog-signals—a night of mystery, with ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... freemasonry in love-affairs which is peculiar to women, to put the same ridiculous notion into the young lady's head. In fact, he suddenly finds to his astonishment that he must either propose—which is out of the question—or be considered a cold-blooded trifler with female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up his portmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an uncomfortable consciousness that his amiable hostess and pretty partner have a very poor opinion ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... the individual.—In society each individual raises or lowers the level of democracy according to what he is and does. The idler fails to make any contributions to the well-being of society and thus lowers the average of citizenship. The trifler and dawdler lower the level of democracy by reason of their inefficiency. They may exercise their right to vote but fail to exercise their right to act the part of efficient citizens. If all citizens emulated ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the sun, if they cannot lift their eyes to face a lamp?" And what will you do in important matters, if the king desires anything, or the people importune you, if you cannot decline to drink when your friend asks you, or evade the onset of some prating fellow, but allow the trifler to waste all your time, from not having nerve to say, "I will see you some other time, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... for their own sake is a trifler, but one who values them, rather, for the deductions that may be drawn from ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... became more and more confirmed as a trifler and an idler, and he suffered that terrible ennui, which dogs the shadow of wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of mind and lassitude ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... original factor in human progress. If they express moral and political greatness, and serve to enhance it, they acquire a certain dignity; but so soon as this expressive function is abandoned they grow meretricious. The artist becomes an abstracted trifler, and the public is divided into two camps: the dilettanti, who dote on the artist's affectations, and the rabble, who pay him to grow coarse. Both influences degrade him and he helps to foster both. An atmosphere of dependence and charlatanry gathers about the artistic attitude and spreads with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... not painfully conscientious, nor was she an intentional trifler; therefore she was good at that social game of ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... or elephant; Then with that force content, which Nature gave, Nor am I now displeased with what I have. When the young wrestlers at their sport grew warm, Old Milo wept, to see his naked arm; And cried, 'twas dead. Trifler! thine heart and head, And all that's in them (not thy arm) are dead; This folly every looker on derides, To glory only in thy arms and sides. Our gallant ancestors let fall no tears, Their strength decreasing by increasing years; 290 But they advanced ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... call "shifting the issue." I wanted to make one stab at just one man—not the whole party—on grounds that the rest of the crowd, who was plainly all good two-handed punchers, would see was perfectly fair. And I intended to land that stab so's they'd see I was no trifler. It was my bad luck that not a soul in the crowd knew me—even by reputation, or my hair would have made it easy for me. So I put a little ginger in the tone ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... is God's gift, therefore it shows in his noble looking face. No matter whether he were poor or rich; all the rags in the world, all the finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell. He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been a trifler: a kindly man, too, and honest—one that may have played merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for many a widow and orphan. Look what a bright, clear, straightforward, gentle ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... himself of his debt to Father Tom. And behind all Lever's conventional types there is a real fund of observation and knowledge which is absolutely wanting in Lover, who simply lacked the brains to be anything more than a trifler. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... several other branches of my education going on at this time outside the pale of the school, in which, though I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... truth. I shan't go away a coward. I can at least be honest, and then you may think what you please of my weakness and vacillation. You cannot think worse things than I think myself, but you must not imagine that I am a cold-blooded, deliberate trifler, for that has never been true. I know you don't care for ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... first novelty; to carry a point with a great man, or to borrow money from a rich one, may pass off an evening very well, with those who happen to be interested in such speculations; but, these things apart, the arrantest trifler in the circle must get weary at last, and be heartily rejoiced when the conclusion of the season spares him all further reiteration of the mill-horse operation. It is this insipidity of society that ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... to her birthday feast? He had thrown her kindness back into her face, had first accepted and then carelessly repudiated her friendship; and it was only too probable she had written him down as a casual and discourteous trifler with whom, in future, she ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... knew, to approach her at all with the semblance of love: that he should have dared,—oh, he knew, well he knew, how, once the light of clear truth was let down upon it, his conduct would appear,—not the mere trifler who had amused himself and meant no more, not the fool of society, who made a woman think he loved her, and "behaved badly," and left her plante la. What were these contemptible images to the truth! He shrank into ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... of his throat. In the next breath he felt genuinely guilty. As he looked deep into the anxious, appealing gray eyes of Miss Vost, he cursed himself for being, or having the tendencies to be, a trifler; and in his estimation a trifler was not far removed from the reptile class. Yet somehow, damn it, that trip to Ching-Fu on the Hankow appealed to him now as a most profitable excursion, for Ching-Fu was only a few hundred ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... beautifully to himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden, and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted trifler with another ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... needs must feel oppress'd, My heart to earth's low cares a prey. Too old the trifler's part to play, Too young to live by no desire possess'd. What can the world to me afford? Renounce! renounce! is still the word; This is the everlasting song In every ear that ceaseless rings, And which, alas, our whole life long, Hoarsely each passing moment sings. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... that I am! to fix all my happiness on such a trifler! 'Sdeath! to make herself the pipe and ballad-monger of a circle! to soothe her light heart with catches and glees!—What can ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... will let you go. There is more of you than I thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide your inmost ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... told him a great deal more than he should. Monte, big-hearted and good, had, as a consequence of all these things, imagined himself in love. This delusion might last a week or two; and then, when he came to himself again, the rude awakening would follow. He would see her then merely as a trifler. Worse than that, he might see himself as merely a trifler. ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of fashion is a trifler unworthy of his race; the mere gentleman is a character which may in time become somewhat tiresome; there is a just mean between the two, where a better conduct than either is to be found. It is that of a man who, yielding to ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... cried, with a brave pretense at lightness, "if only you weren't such a trifler! The dangerous thing about you is that you mean this now—almost; enough, anyway, to give it a ring of sincerity. Were I less sophisticated, I might go home believing it, and thinking what a wonderful man you are starting out to be; but in the morning find my ideals shattered, and ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to divorce his wife and marry a stepdaughter of his own. Caesar refused, and fled to the Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome, especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying, however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius." Caesar went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the idle life of pleasure he had been ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his great rugged forehead was fringed with bushy eyebrows, which gave him a somewhat fierce appearance. His nose was large, his mouth was large, and his chin, too, was large, square, and determined. He was no ordinary man. There was the stamp of unusual power upon him. He was no trifler, and yet beneath his look of determination and energy something was lacking. He seemed as though his determination needed to be roused, his energy to be stimulated. Yet I could see nothing in his appearance which justified the opinions we had heard expressed ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... so essential to Pastorals, that it ought to be confin'd to the State, Manners, Apprehension and even common phrases of Sheapards: for nothing can {23} be said to be Pastoral, which is not accommodated to their condition; and for this Reason Nannius Alcmaritanus in my opinion is a trifler, who, in his comments on Virgils Eclogues, thinks that those sorts of Composures may now and then be lofty, and treat of great subjects: where he likewise divides the matter of Bucolicks, into Low, Middle, and High: and makes Virgil the Author of this Division, who in ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... Lissac. "In those days, I dreamed of being Musset, I a gourmand, and what have I become? A spectator, a trifler, a Parisian, a rolling stone.—Nothing. And you who dreamed of being a second Barnave, Vergniaud or Barbaroux, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... that vigor of heart Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance, From a generous vanity native to France, With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry, Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles: But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles, No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind. Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... the mare's shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air that boded ill to a trifler. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... sir," he cried, "the very moral of him! Well, this one is better dressed, and p'raps a trifler taller; and in the face he don't favour him noways at all, sir. No, not when I come to look again, 'e don't seem to favour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fourth place, a willingness to be saved. "What must I do to be saved?" This man is not asking this question to gather material for a future argument. He is no speculator. He is no trifler. He is not even asking it because he is intellectually curious. He is not simply asking that he may know the conditions of salvation. He is asking with the earnest purpose in his heart to ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... dull, conscientious and depressing Pelkingham, at whose touch crystals became as puddings, bubble films like cotton sheets, transparency vanished from the world, and X rays dwarfed and died. And Hugh degenerated immediately into a scoffing trifler who wished to give up ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... They sang the same song which fills the breast, and our love for them was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor? The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use. He offers manhood to man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include the prose-works of the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous productions that he has shewn himself for what ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... time happy. He who was so alone of a sudden found that he possessed this relative, and it seemed to him almost too good to be true. That the relative had never before noticed his existence, that he was supposed to be a trifler and a ne'er-do-weel, didn't ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... me, John?" she answered, with a depth of grief which made me seem a trifler. "It can never matter now, when there ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Away, you trifler. Love! I know thee not, I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips; We must have ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... nature to drift with events, and to easily accommodate himself to circumstances. In France he had been a gay, fashionable trifler; in Germany cloudy philosophies and musical ideas had fascinated him; in Rome he had dreamed in old temples, and painted and smoked with the artists in their lofty shabby studios. He was equally ready to share the stirring danger and freedom ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... mind distress By vile remarks upon his speech, address, Attire, and voice?'—'All this I must confess.' 'Unhappy child! what labour will it cost To win him back!'—'I do not think him lost.' 'Courts he then (trifler!) insult and disdain?'— 'No; but from these he courts me to refrain.' 'Then hear me, Sybil: should Josiah leave Thy father's house?'—'My father's child would grieve.' 'That is of grace, and if he come again To speak of love?'—'I ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... letters are full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came about that so ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill. "Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober Henry blood ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... same tendency obtains; the direction of the motive power has no such consideration as the military functions in the navies of the Latin nations. The studious and systematic side of the French character also inclined the French officer, when not a trifler, to consider and develop tactical questions in a logical manner; to prepare himself to handle fleets, not merely as a seaman but as a military man. The result showed, in the American Revolutionary War, that despite a mournful history of governmental neglect, men who were first of all military ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Bolingbroke as a political philosopher is something that our age can hardly understand. "A solemn trifler," Lord Morley has called him; and it is difficult to know why his easy declamation was so long mistaken for profound thought. Much, doubtless, is due to that personal fascination which made him the inspiration of men so different as Pope and Voltaire; and the man who could supply ideas to Chatham ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... have found her. You may think me a trifler, Easelmann; but every nerve I have is quivering with agony at the thought of the pain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... specimen of the ignorance in which Americans usually remain during their flighty visits to these scenes, where they associate only with one another. And I do it the rather as this seemed a really thoughtful, intelligent man; no vain, vulgar trifler. He said, "The people seem only to be looking ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... been objected, with sufficient reason, that there is in the commentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so carefully preserved is, sometimes, the ease of a trifler. Every art has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common criticks may be tedious, but is less ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... amber," He after eagles clamber? Nay, faction's ante-chamber Were fitter place for him, A trifler transitory, To gasconade of "glory"! He'd foul fair France's story, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... the chair nearest the door, and Batty Langton was the one moderately sober man of the company. He had not heard, in time to interfere, the proposal to send for Ruth: it had started somewhere at the Collector's end of the table. But trifler though he was, he thought it cruel to the girl—a damnable shame—and pulled himself together to prevent what mischief he might. At the same time he felt curious to see her, curious to learn if ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the Man of the People are the artisans of the New Era, the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary and daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she is: the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a trifler. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of your agitation in order to work upon your sensibility. My desire is not to surprize, but to reconcile you to my plan. What is it I seek in Miss Beverley? An Heiress? No, as such she has seen I could resist her; nor yet the light trifler of a spring or two, neglected when no longer a novelty; no, no!—it is a companion for ever, it is a solace for every care, it is a bosom friend through every period of life that I seek in Miss Beverley! Her esteem, therefore, to me is as precious as her affection, for how can I hope her friendship ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... me trifler, faineant, And bid me give my life an aim!— You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out, And own your hastiness to blame. I live with but a single thought; My inmost heart and soul are set On one sole task—a mighty ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... your silent grave!— The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we—we learnt your lore ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... only a courtier in Versailles, came to Madame Geoffrin's parties. He was a man who combined in a most surprising manner true philosophy and a deep knowledge of political economy, with the outward appearance of a fop and a trifler. Among the other distinguished men who lived in Paris, Marmontel names with high praise the Abbe Galliani, Caraccioli, who was afterward Neapolitan ambassador, and the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... been already said to disabuse the reader's mind of the common misconception of Buffon, namely, that he was more or less of an elegant trifler with science, who cared rather about the language in which his ideas were clothed than about the ideas themselves, and that he did not hold the same opinions for long together; but the accusation of instability has been made in such high quarters that ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... doubt she thought I was a mere trifler. She couldn't understand that it isn't right for a man to stick to anything until he's found the right thing to stick to. I don't blame her the least bit in the world. She could only see what I wasn't doing. I knew ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... 'Volatile trifler!' said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. 'She is well, she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our currant wine, like the humming-bird! Ah! were she a little less giddy than she is; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... by people who know," wrote Mr. Carl Sandburg in Poetry, "ends with dragging in Ezra Pound somewhere. He may be named only to be cursed as wanton and mocker, poseur, trifler and vagrant. Or he may be classed as filling a niche today like that of Keats in a preceding epoch. The point is, ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... to the lively question of the Lady Frances in her usual straightforward and unpresuming manner: a manner that afforded considerable amusement to the merry trifler, by whom the little Puritan was commonly spoken of, while absent, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... paralyses it and drags it indoors, gathers the pollen-dust, prepares the honey in her crop, stores and mixes the paste. This severe labour, so imperious and so active, in which the insect's whole life is spent, manifestly demands a bodily strength which would be quite useless to the male, the amorous trifler. Thus, as a general rule, in the insects which carry on an industry the ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Agnes's sin of hypocrisy! Into how many ears have I poured tender words, until fair hands were as good as offered to me, and I turned their love to mockery! I hated and despised all womanhood; and even in Paris I became notorious as a heartless trifler with the affections I won and trampled under my feet. Whenever a brilliant and beautiful woman crossed my path, I attached myself to her train of admirers, until I made her acknowledge my power and give public and unmistakable manifestation of her preference ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans |
