"Trite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mode of explanation of monstrous births until the present century, while in the Middle Ages the superstitions were more ludicrous and observers more ignorant than before the time of Galen. In his able article on the teratologic records of Chaldea, Ballantyne makes the following trite statements: "Credulity and superstition have never been the peculiar possession of the lower types of civilization only, and the special beliefs that have gathered round the occurrence of teratologic phenomena have been common to the cultured Greek and Roman of the past, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... and hence a bit challenging, and hence a bit charming. The scheme has merit. More, it has been tried often, and with success. It is, indeed, a familiar observation that the happiest couples are those who are occasionally separated, and the fact has been embalmed in the trite maxim that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps not actually fonder, but at any rate more tolerant, more curious, more eager. Two difficulties, however, stand in the way of the widespread adoption ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... is so well turned and contempered with itself, and so everywhere conspiring, that, while it traverses many passions and humors and is accommodated to all sorts of persons, it still shows the same, and retains its semblance even in trite, familiar, and everyday expressions. And if his master do now and then require something of rant and noise, he doth but (like a skilful flutist) set open all the holes of his pipe, and their presently stop them again with ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Greendale be a mere corruption of the earliest name, or be not, in fact, a restoration of it to its original meaning, is a matter which I am not prepared to discuss. As a general rule, a sound etymologist will not hastily desert an obvious and trite explanation to go in search of a more recondite import. He will not have recourse to the devil for the solution of a nodus, till he has exhausted more legitimate sources ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... greater part of these once admired pieces will appear trite, prosaic, and tedious; but an uncultivated age—like the children and the common people of all ages—is most attracted and impressed by that mode of narration which leaves the least to be supplied by the imagination of the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... employing legal terms with which they were not familiar, and of which they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning, is very remarkable. Junius thought De Lolme's Essay deep," (13) and talks of property which "savours of the reality:" (14) he misapplies that trite expression of the courts, bona fide: (15) misunderstands mortmain, (16) and supposes that an inquisitio post mortem was an inquiry how the deceased came by his death. (17) Walpole talks of "the purparty ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Trite and common-place though it be, I mention this circumstance attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort of necessary evil, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... prouder and happier. As any other man would have done, he embraced or improved the opportunity afforded him by their journey up the hill, to urge the old commonplace that he would so assist her up the hill of life! And so on. The iterations of love never grow stale to a lover, and the saying was not so trite to her that it failed to give her the little thrill of loving joy which seemed, for the moment at least, to tame her restless spirit, that spirit of subtle yet merry mockery which charmed yet drove him mad. She was so unwontedly quiet and subdued that he stopped at ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... of generosity and condescension they are very suitable. To suppose that by our betters are meant the Gods, is very harsh, because to imitate the Gods has been hitherto reckoned the highest pitch of human virtue. The whole is a trite and obvious thought, uttered by Timon with a kind of affected modesty. If I would make any alteration, it should be only to reform ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... trite to say so—an act of baseness, a crime of some sort, may be the beginning, the first cause, of a man's salvation. It pulls him up, wakes his conscience. Aghast at what he has done, he reflects, repents, reforms. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... the cantons of the Swiss Confederation. The nine millions of square miles over which the British flag waves are dispersed over the whole surface of the globe. The fact that this consideration is so trite and obvious does not prevent it from being an essential element in the argument. Mr. Seeley's precedents are ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 9: The Expansion of England • John Morley
... respecting the equality of the sexes was to be determined by an appeal to the characters of sovereign princes, the comparison is, in proportion, manifestly in favor of woman, and that without having recourse to the trite and flippant observation, proved to have been ill-founded, of male and female influence. Elizabeth of England affords a glorious example ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... same, though our imagination determines the shape that love must assume; like and unlike, therefore, is love in every soul in which he dwells, and passion becomes a unique work in which the soul expresses its sympathies. In the old trite saying that love is a projection of self—an egoisme a deux—lies a profound meaning known only to philosopher and poet; for it is ourself in truth that we love in that other. Yet, though love manifests itself in such different ways that no pair ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... what tone to write, or even as to the propriety of writing to you at all; but the suspense I now suffer is my excuse. I need not reiterate to you how dearly I love you; you know this, dear one, as fully as any assertion of my own could possibly express it. It is trite that my love for you has partaken in no small degree of a character of presumption, daring, as an humble lieutenant of infantry, to lift my eyes to one as peerless and beautiful as yourself, and of a class of society so far above what my own humble position would authorize me ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... it, good your lordship," piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and withered Professor Woodlouse, "for we shall hear from your lordship's lips naught but wisdom." [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite, threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other dead languages.] "Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters pertaining ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thy lean as the weapon of ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: The manner of one that would expiate His share in grandmotherly Laws, Which do the dark thing to destroy, Under aspect of water so guilelessly white For the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beyond the need of a Savior. It is the same at heart now as it was when the blessed feet of Christ trod its hills and valleys. Men change, but man changes not. The same problems are confronting us as confronted them. It may be trite, but it is tremendously true, that our primary and ever-present duty is to seek and save the lost. We are to win them to faith in high and noble ends, and having won them to faith in our mission is not enough. They are to be instructed, cultured, enlarged, inspired, ennobled, ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... they did not talk much. What they said was trite enough. Underneath was the potent language, wave meeting wave with shock and thrill and exultation. These would not come, here and now, to outer utterance. But sooner or later they would come. Each knew that—though not always does one ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... knowledge, that kindle sacred fire in young hearts. It was his own career, intellectual as well as political, that gave to his discourse momentum. It was his own example that to youthful hearers gave new depth to a trite lesson, when he exclaimed: 'Believe me when I tell you that the thrift of time will repay you in after life with an usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... proportionate to the enormity of the offence would be to put Buondelmonti to death. And although some took into consideration the evils that might ensue upon it, Mosca Lamberti said, that those who talk of many things effect nothing, using that trite and common adage, Cosa fatta capo ha. Thereupon, they appointed to the execution of the murder Mosca himself, Stiatti Uberti, Lambertuccio Amidei, and Oderigo Fifanti, who, on the morning of Easter day, concealed themselves ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... curiosity it was nearly half-past eight when he arrived at Mr. Tredgold's that evening, and was admitted by his host. The latter, with a somewhat trite remark about the virtues of punctuality, led the way upstairs and threw open the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Westerling! It has become too trite!" she protested. "The end! If I really were helping toward that and to save lives and our country to its people, what would my private feelings matter' My honor, my soul—what would anything matter? For that, any sacrifice. I'm only one human ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... which the Pope gave him the reward he had promised, but, at the same time, to disable the satirist for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his boast that he had laid the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... not know what trite meant. How could I ever judge Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority? I doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for cinders with her,—she in a snowy cap, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... It is a trite saying, that every man has that in his heart, which, if known, would make all his fellow-creatures hate him. Was it this evil spirit which now struggled in Captain Rothesay's breast, and darkened his face with storms of passion, remorse, or woe? He gave no utterance to them in words. ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... of the senses pall upon repetition, but pleasures of the soul continue and increase. A delicate dish soon wearies the palate, but the power to appreciate a poem or a picture grows greater the more we study them—illustrations as trite, by the way, as those of the average divine in his weekly sermon, but calculated to comfort to the same extent in that they possess the charm of familiarity which satisfies self-love by proving that we know quite as much of some subjects as those who profess to teach them. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... other lips than yours. I thought you were a man of honor. You were only a wretch. You deceived me; you represented yourself to me as free—and you were married. Weakly—oh, I could kill myself at the very thought!—I listened to you! I took for love the trite phrases you had used to dozens of other women; half by violence, half by ruse, you became my lover. I do not know when—I do not know how. I try to forget that horrible dream; and when, deluded by you, thinking that what I felt for you was love, for I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... known to many, and now trite; and drawn from the midst of Fortune's heap."—Juvenal, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... dice, that our kingdom hath been snatched by Duryodhana. Like a weak offal-eating jackal snatching the prey from mighty lions, he hath snatched away our kingdom. Why, O monarch, in obedience to the trite merit of sticking to a promise, dost thou suffer such distress, abandoning that wealth which is the source of both virtue and enjoyments? It was for thy carelessness, O king, that our kingdom protected by the wielder of the Gandiva and therefore, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... madness that had fallen upon the world was prepared to confound and overturn, not religion alone, but all rule, nobility, pre-eminence and superiority—nay, all law and order. The reader, it may be feared, will tire of the frequency with which the same trite suggestions recur. It is, however, not a little important to emphasize the argument which the Roman Curia, and its emissaries at the courts of kings, were never weary of reiterating in the ears of the rich and powerful. And as they seized ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... action and all life, Burning for pleasure, not averse from strife; Woman—the Field—the Ocean, all that gave Promise of gladness, peril of a grave, In turn he tried—he ransacked all below, And found his recompense in joy or woe, 120 No tame, trite medium; for his feelings sought In that intenseness an escape from thought:[ji] The Tempest of his Heart in scorn had gazed On that the feebler Elements hath raised; The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high, And asked if greater dwelt beyond the sky: Chained ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... that penned the words, certain it is that yours was the mind that guided my pen throughout. It is to your sympathy, your judgment, your excellent taste, that I am indebted for every good thing that I have penned; and where I have put down aught that is trite or insipid, it is due to my own natural obstinacy in refusing, or carelessness in neglecting, to defer the matter to your better judgment. Thus it is only right that whatever praise may be bestowed upon this book should be ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Conyngham], my countess" [of Jersey], who may be seen close at hand in an adjoining thicket; "and I," answers Caroline, "to my child, my only comfort." The "only comfort" is seen coming to her mother's assistance in the distance, uttering the trite quotation, "The child that feels not for a mother's woes, can ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... bad), but because I learned from it—my ignorance, doubtless, did me little honour—that Bichat had died at thirty years of age, and this revelation was almost agitating. To have done so much in so short a life was to be truly great. This reflection, which looks deplorably trite as I write it here, had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it for my own benefit on the bare ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... civilizing, that is to say Europeanizing, China—just at the moment when Europe is coming to loathe her own grossness. Time is the master of paradox. Who shall say what surprises are too fantastic for his contriving? Can the classic distinction between East and West, that venerable mother of trite reflections and bad arguments, be, after all, mutable? Is the unchanging East changeable? Is Mr. Kipling's thrilling line no more than the statement of a geographical truism? England they tell ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it were ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... de crease' ap peal' dis creet' be queath' in crease' ap pear' en treat' re vere' de mean' ap pease' ex treme' be seech' fu see' ar rear' gran dee' bo hea' re peal' blas pheme' im peach' a light' de scribe' ac quire' dis guise' a wry' de spise' at trite' es quire' be guile' pre scribe' as sign' ig nite' be lie' de cline' de mise' in quire' de prive' re quite' com ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Trite and laboured and schoolgirlish enough those epistles seemed to their writer. To Saxham they were drops of rain upon the parching soil of his heart, the one good that life had for him in this final lap of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... appearance, and its course, until it swells into a broad expanse, gradually checking its career as it approaches, and at last mingles with the ocean of Eternity. I have been led into this somewhat trite metaphor, to account to the reader for the contents of this chapter. As in the river, after many miles of chequered and boisterous career, you will find that its waters will for some time flow in a smooth and tranquil course ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... of course; but marriages were an old story for her. She had loved to shine at watering-places, but the gayety no longer lured her. She had dazzled in diamonds, silks, and velvets, been admired on the right hand and on the left, until it was an old, trite story. Servants managed her house admirably. Mr. Lawrence never wearied her with any business details. Her clothes were ordered, and made, and hung in the closets. The carriage was always at hand. Not a want of any kind, hardly a desire, that could ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... A trite story is told of a man who was to be executed because of his persistent laziness. While being driven to the scaffold, he was given one more chance for his life by a kind-hearted individual who offered him a quantity of corn with which to make a new start. Upon hearing the ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... arithmetic, grammar—both Greek and Latin—reading, and repetition of the chief Latin poets. There was also a good deal of recitation and of theme-writing on all kinds of trite historical subjects. The arithmetic seems to have been mainly of a very simple and severely practical kind, especially the computation of interest and compound interest; and the philology generally, both grammar ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... his sense of his own ability urged him forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb—Poeta nascitur, non fit. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and now the spritely steps of a Parisian jig, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... inn, there was the postchaise in front of the door, the horses being led away to bait, and a little group of villagers standing round; for though the auction of the Why Not? was in itself a trite thing with a foregone conclusion, yet the bailiff's visit always stirred some show of interest. There were a few children with their noses flattened against the windows of the parlour, and inside were ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... privateer. My father, at the present time, would not, perhaps, be thought very respectable; but I assure you he was so considered in those days. So many people in Liverpool were, to use an old and trite sea-phrase, "tarred with the same brush" that these occupations were scarcely, indeed, were not at all, regarded as anything derogatory from a man's character. In fact, during the privateering time, there was scarcely a man, woman, or child in Liverpool, of any standing, that did ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... was not all his own; The plant by Socrates was sown; To Aristotle's greater name The Macedonian[10] owed his fame. 100 The Athenian bird, with pride replete, Their talents equalled in conceit; And, copying the Socratic rule, Set up for master of a school. Dogmatic jargon learnt by heart, Trite sentences, hard terms of art, To vulgar ears seemed so profound, They fancied learning in the sound. The school had fame: the crowded place With pupils swarmed of every race. 110 With these the swan's maternal care Had sent her scarce-fledged cygnet heir: ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... been the past, satisfactory as is the present, it is but a foretaste of the future. It is a trite saying, that we live in an age of great events. Nothing can be more true. But the greatest of all events of the present age is at hand. It needs not the gift of prophecy to predict, that the course of the world's trade is destined soon to be changed. But a few years can elapse before the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of mind or body. It is a very true and a very trite observation that no man is ridiculous for being what he really is, but for affecting to be what he is not. No man is awkward by nature, but by affecting to be genteel, and I have known many a man of common sense pass generally for a fool because he affected a degree of wit that God had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... than he had ever been in all his life; and so much in love that he found nothing to say for a moment save the few trite phrases in which a man in love says many commonplaces, all of which ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... pleasure and assiduity; but our present duties are so much beneath us, it seems degrading to spend our time and thoughts upon them. Here is a radical error of judgment, for it is not a high or low duty that degrades or elevates man, but the performing any duty well or ill. It is as true as it is trite, that the honor or shame lies in the mode of performance, not in the quality of the duty. We all, perhaps, know and say, and yet need to be reminded, that a bad president stands lower in the scale of being than a good town officer; a wicked statesman, let him ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... victory, but to a hasty retreat. I am alluding to the well-known stanzas on the Burial of Sir John Moore, who was killed at Corunna in 1809; and my apology for quoting anything so hackneyed must be that it is trite by reason of its excellence; for a short poem, like a single happy phrase, wins incessant repetition and lasting popularity, because the words precisely fit some universal feeling. Why have these verses made such an effect that they are familiar to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... thing is the human complexion! We are sent into the world naked, that all the variations of the blood might be made visible. However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophical ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... which doubtless will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are reformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce the slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past century become the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched upon this question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showing that we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also to posterity ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... polysyllabic language. And Swedish, which is the most sonorous of all Germanic tongues, and full of Gothic strength, produces the most delectable effects in the long, rolling line of slow-marching dactyls and spondees. The tempered realism of Tegner, which shuns all that is harsh and trite, accords well with the noble classical verse. He employs it, as it were, to dignify his homely tale, as Raphael draped the fishermen of Galilee in the flowing robes of Greek philosophers. The description of the church, the rustic youth, and the patriarchal ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... commotion, she seemed to have obtained a kind of stability which was a sufficiently good copy of the old order under the Popes, and won for her apparently the gratitude of mankind; but that stability is altogether illogical, and cannot long stand. There is an old, though now trite, saying to the effect that when you "sow the wind you must reap the whirlwind," and no one can fail to see the speedy realization of the truth of this adage on her part. Over the full tide of her prosperity there is a mighty, irresistible, and inevitable storm visibly gathering. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... philosophy: a mistake; for our intellect being the highest gift we have received from God, it follows that we shall please him best by using it assiduously. He spoke about the prayers before sunrise and asked Joseph if they did not seem to him somewhat trite and trivial and if he did not think that the moment would be more profitably spent by instituting a comparison between the light of the intellect and that of ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... the favours of fortune by seeking wisdom and knowledge in preference to them, has pathetically observed—"The heart knoweth its own bitterness; and there is a joy in which the stranger intermeddleth not." A simple question founded on a trite proverb, with a discursive answer to it, would scarcely suggest to an indifferent person any other notion than that of a mind at ease, amusing itself with its own activity. Once before (I believe about this ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that are gloomy, as 'The Sorrow of an Old Convict,' Loti; or old style, 'Christian Gellert's Last Christmas,' Auerbach; or trite, 'The Convict's Return,' Harben; or newspapery, 'Rescued by a Child;' or highly fantastic, 'The Egyptian Fire Eater,' Baumbach; or anecdotal, 'A Fishing Trip;' or sentimental, 'Hope,' Bremer; or ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... immersed in Hohenstaufen records, or searching after Roman antiquities, butterflies, minerals, or landscapes to paint—you will meet them in the most unexpected places; but never an Englishman. The adventurous type of Anglo-Saxon probably thinks the country too tame; scholars, too trite; ordinary tourists, too dirty. The accommodation and food in San Demetrio leave much to be desired; its streets are irregular lanes, ill-paved with cobbles of gneiss and smothered under dust and refuse. None the less, what noble names have been given to these ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... know about that!" McGee's half audible remark was the trite expression so commonly used by those who are ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... uttered these words, he produced, from inside a purse which he had handy, a transcribed office-philactery, which he handed over to Yue-ts'un; who upon perusal, found it full of trite and unpolished expressions of public opinion, with regard to the leading clans and notable official families in that particular ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... am going to say that life was going on as usual at Dunkirk; that is the obvious thing to say. The nearer the enemy, the more characteristic that trite observation of those who have followed the roads of war in Europe. At Dunkirk you might have a good meal within sound of the thunder of the guns of the British monitors which were helping the Belgians to hold their line. At Dunkirk most excellent patisserie was for sale in a confectionery ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... genius, stripped of the bare means of sustenance by the unsuccessful result of a literary engagement, or the non-completion of a purchase, on which probably depended the very day's existence. The subject is trite and hacknied; but all that has been written about the illusions and misgivings of genius will not alter its complexion. It is true that such details have raised a spirit of sympathetic forbearance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... remarkable. Mr. Monk, he said, had done the State good service by adding his wisdom and patriotism to the Cabinet. The sort of argument which Mr. Bonteen used to prove that a man who has gained credit as a legislator should in process of time become a member of the executive, is trite and common, and was not used by Mr. Bonteen with any special force. Mr. Bonteen was glib of tongue and possessed that familiarity with the place which poor Phineas had lacked so sorely. There was one moment, however, which was terrible ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... In a very trite, popular ballad, which we find in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn," we see, that, when the travellers came to Jerusalem, the Devil declined still another request. Faustus wishes him to make a picture of Christ crucified, and to write under it his holy name. But the Devil declared ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... "without her there would have been no 'Fiona Macleod.'" Sharp himself, when his "other self," with sense of humor alert, was more than willing to admit that it is easy to believe what one wishes to believe; and he delighted to tell a story at the expense of Mr. Yeats illustrative of the trite fact. Sharp went one day, in London, to call on Mr. Yeats. When lunch-time came, they set about cooking eggs. Mr. Yeats held them in a frying-pan over the little fire in the grate. As they slipped about, Mr. Yeats, all the while looking back in the room ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of Englishmen in India towards the natives of the country. That social relations between Englishmen and Indians seldom grow intimate is true enough, but not that the fault lies mainly with Englishmen. At the risk of being trite, I must recall ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... old saw"); modern means "moderate," "commonplace"; instances means what we mean by it today, "examples," "illustrations." (Line 18 as a whole gives us a vivid sense of the justice's readiness to speak sapiently, after the manner of justices, and to trot out his trite illustrations on the slightest provocation.) The word pantaloon in line 20 is interesting. The patron saint of Venice was St. Pantaleon (the term is from Greek, means "all-lion," and possibly refers to the lion of St. Mark's Cathedral). ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... of England chapt. vii), such as "It is the fashion of the heart to receive pleasure from those things which ought to give it," etc. etc. What is there the wise cannot understand? and so forth. He is liberal in trite reflections and frigid conceits (i. 19, 55, 97, 103, 107, in fact everywhere); and his puns run through whole lines; this in fine Sanskrit style is inevitable. Yet some of his expressions are admirably terse and telling, e. g. Ascending the swing of Doubt: Bound together (lovers) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... trite observation, that no two people are more different than the same man at different periods of his life, and this was illustrated by an anecdote Lord Holland told us of Tom Grenville last night—Tom Grenville, so mild, so refined, adorned with such an amiable, venerable, and decorous ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... one afternoon in the course of one of the grave discussions that used to grow up between Miss Fordyce, Emily, and me, over subjects trite to the better-instructed younger generation, we got quite out of our shallow depths. I think it was on the meaning of the 'Communion of Saints,' for the two girls were both reading in preparation for a Confirmation at Bristol, and Miss Fordyce knew more than ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seats together; Philip, amused, tried to extract from Burgess something besides the trite and obvious servant's patter—something that might signify some possibility of a latent independence—the germ of aspiration. And extracted nothing. Burgess had not changed, had not developed. His ways were Philip's ways; his loftier flights mounted ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... 'That's trite!' said Leonard, patting her fondly. 'I like you to do—as you call it—Miss May does, and every one that is worth anything. I say, Ave, when I go out to the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... take them to Chicago with us and find them some sort of a job, and thus rid ourselves of their presence," answered Slippery, intending to shed himself of their useless company, and ever wary of trouble he wisely added, "Kansas Shorty, you well know the trite saying: 'Two is company; three is a crowd; four is the road to disaster,' so let us give the lads a square deal and take them with us to Chicago and 'drop' them there after finding employment for them." But hardly had he finished this well-meant ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... chiefly used by lumberers for the transportation of themselves, their boats, and supplies, but also by hunters and tourists. There was another steamer, named Amphitrite, laid up close by; but, apparently, her name was not more trite than her hull. There were also two or three large sail-boats in port. These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Wagon Hill West, a few Boers at last attempted what numbers should have tried hours before. It is trite to say that at such a crisis proverbial truths receive double emphasis. "Not to gain ground is to lose ground." "He who hesitates is lost." At the hour named, a number—eight, it is said—at their head De ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... in the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in man; whereas Nature and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth from unworth in everything, and most of all in man. Your main problem is that ancient and trite one, 'Who is best man?' and the Fates forgive much,—forgive the wildest, fiercest, cruelest experiments,—if fairly made for the determination ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... nation is to listen to its music, and accordingly judge of the sentiments and emotions of Americans by their sheet-music, we should arrive at very discouraging results. The characteristics of our sheet-music, briefly summed up, are: (1) trite and vulgar melody, devoid of all originality, repeating what has been heard a thousand times already; (2) equally trite and monotonous accompaniments, the harmony limited to half a dozen elementary chords, the rhythm mechanical and commonplace, and the cadences unchanging as the laws of Nature; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... fallacious idea that sound expediency demands that every ballot shall be defended by a bullet. The theory of representative government does not admit of any connection between military service and the right and duty of suffrage, even among men. It is trite to point out that the age required for military service begins at eighteen years, when a man is too young to vote, and ends at forty-five years, when he is usually in the prime of his usefulness as a citizen. Some very slight physical defects will incapacitate a man under ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... him very obliging, and after some little "dickering" (for he had heard that Western steamboats were not particularly uniform in their charges), he engaged a passage, applying to the bargain the trite principle that "no berth is secured till paid for," which had been reduced to writing, and occupied a conspicuous place in the cabin. Without waiting to see the berth he had paid for, he hastened to the hotel for the large hair trunk, which contained ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... her heart was very full and she was thinking of other matters. But as he continued she answered at length, hesitating, using phrases as trite and quaintly stilted as the theme itself, gently defending the old names he sneered at. And in her words he savoured a certain old-time flavour of primness and pride—a vaguely delicate hint of resentment, which it amused him to excite. Pacing the dunes with ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our knowledge—that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. With a quotation rather too trite, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and ancient wines are good, that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that country life is delightful, that old age comes on us apace, that our friends leave us sorrowing and our sorrow does not bring them back. Trite sayings no doubt; but embellished one and all with an adorable force and novelty at once sadly earnest and vividly exact; not too simple for the profound and not too artful for the shallow; consecrated by the verbal felicity which belongs only to an age of peculiar intellectual ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had better have remained ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He hit the House just between wind and water. And not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious or more earnest than the preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... pens and commence writing," said I, in as dry and trite a voice as if I had been addressing only Jules Vanderkelkov ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... trite reflection—as apposite to the subject as most random reflections are—passed through the mind of a young man who came out of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine morning in spring, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Mademoiselle de Fontrailles, the little Coislin, and I know not how many others. And you walked over their hearts in such a cavalierly way, rumor had it, that I could not resist the temptation to see what manner of man you were. You were only the usual lord of creation, a trite pattern. You amused me, and I was curious to see how long ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... tragedy, as I could not return her love and might make her unhappy. I am not so conceited as to think that no woman could resist me, but I am of the opinion that no woman can resist the man she truly loves. It is a trite saying that "a fortress besieged is a fortress surrendered," but there is some truth in it when adapted to woman, especially when behind the entrenchment of her virtues she harbors such a traitor as her own heart. ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... so unkind, he never sends To tell when he invites his friends: I wish ye may but have enough!" And while with all this paltry stuff She sits tormenting every guest, Nor gives her tongue one moment's rest, In phrases batter'd, stale, and trite, Which modern ladies call polite; You see the booby husband sit In admiration at her wit! But let me now a while survey Our madam o'er her evening tea; Surrounded with her noisy clans Of prudes, coquettes, and harridans, When, frighted at ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... happy to stay till you are at leisure,' said Neigh, in the unimpassioned delivery he used whether his meaning were a trite compliment or the expression of his ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... of a thought which I understood not, but must even take as my sole light, had suddenly modified my opinion of Foedora. Trite or profoundly significant, frivolous or of deep import, the words might be construed as expressive of either pleasure or pain, of physical or of mental suffering. Was it a prayer or a malediction, a forecast or a memory, a fear or a regret? A whole life lay in that utterance, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... carriage-wheels defective! Add this to the carpet bag, and people will agree in the trite observation that misfortunes never come single. This is not true; they do come single very often, and when they do, they are more annoying than if they come in heaps. You growl at a single mishap, but if you find that Fortune is down upon you and attempts to overload ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... discussion of a principle now too trite, for humankind, at least in Europe, is satisfied that unlimited liberty is nowhere consistent with a properly-regulated state of society. I have touched lightly on the matter, only to give to my readers some idea of my conduct in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... It was trite enough to a few of the audience, but, to others, it was new, and to many it was revolutionary. She was destined to again set a stake in Bradley's mental horizon. The woman question had not engaged his attention; at least ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... with eager sympathy appropriated in every bosom. If Byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a British heart, now that the whole matter is no longer new,—is indeed old and trite,—we may judge with what vehement acceptance this /Werter/ must have been welcomed, coming as it did like a voice from unknown regions; the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge, which, in country after country, men's ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... how bored I am by this trite, moralising way of regarding natural phenomena—this crying of vanity on the beautiful manifestations of mechanical forces. This desire of mine to appear out of doors in appropriate apparel, if it can thus defy and overcome the law of gravitation, if it can lift twelve stone of matter thirty ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... something truly original in this choice of trite examples. You will remark how adroitly Whitman begins, hunters and woodmen being confessedly romantic. And one thing more. If he had said "the love of healthy men for the female form," he would have said almost a silliness; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... with a number of members of the legal profession, had to reply to the toast, "The Bench of Scotland." In illustration of a trite remark that all litigants could not be expected to have the highest regard for the judges who have tried their cases, he told the following story: A worthy but unfortunate south-country farmer had fought his case in the teeth of adverse decisions in the Lower Courts to the bitter end in ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... most parts of North Africa. The one I saw was a most unsightly creature. The construction of the eyes is remarkable; they turn on a swivel, or seem to do so, and are directed every way in a moment of time. It is a trite observation, that the lower brute animal has many advantages over the more perfect and rational animal. I often, en route, admired the beautiful facility with which the camel turned its head and neck completely round, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... her father bided near and talked to me of the community I had left, and which had given me my certificate to friend Hicks's Meeting. And yet I fear me that I made several dubious replies to his many trite questions as we sat on the porch in the quiet of the evening, for friend Barbara's eyes were upon me, and she had a little dint in either cheek which affected me amazingly. (I have heard such dints ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... Providence for our comfort and well-being; yet they are often misapplied to trifling purposes, and still more frequently turned into so many agents of misery and death. On this fact indeed is founded the well-known maxim, not more trite than just, that "the best things when corrupted become the worst;" a maxim which is especially just in the instance of Religion. For in this case it is not merely, as in some others, that a great power, when mischievously applied, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... ingenious and cruel satires that from the beginning till now have been stuck like knives into womankind, surely there is not one so lacerating to them, and to us who love them, as the trite old fact, that the most wretched of men can, in the twinkling of an eye, find a wife ready to be more wretched still for the sake of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a listless forbearance. "Don't go on. I know everything you are going to say.—That's always the way with you calm, quiet people, who are not easily moved yourselves. You still but faith in these trite remedies; for you've never known the ills they're supposed ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... grate, Behold the child whose birth was as a fate! Far from the land in which his life began; Walled from the healthful air of hardy man; Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes, His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies. Each trite convention courtly fears inspire To stint experience and to dwarf desire; Narrows the action to a puppet stage, And trains the eaglet to the starling's cage. On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, What weary thought the languid lines bespeak; Till drop ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... All this is trite enough, and has been said a thousand times already, but, unfortunately, with the saying of it the matter ends. Co-operation has been brought into practice in relation to distribution with considerable success, but co-operation, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... your father talks a little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. At least, he is MAJOR and SUI JURIS, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loves a lover!" is a trite but beautiful saying, which touches a responsive chord in the great heart of humanity! We cannot remain indifferent to the magnetic effect of the strong tide of his eloquent and impetuous wooing. Nor can we withhold ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... in for this same exam.!" It was a trite commonplace, but it broke the ice. Everybody looked relieved. The atmosphere ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... quantities of cartridges having been discovered in his house, the story began to wear an appearance of truth. Mystery began to enwrap the affair, enveloping it in clouds; there were whispered conversations, coughs, suspicious looks, suggestive comments, and trite second-hand remarks. Those who were on the inside were unable to get over their astonishment, they put on long faces, turned pale, and but little was wanting for many persons to lose their minds in realizing certain things ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the paper from which he had made the great discovery. There was nothing in it, of course, but somehow the sight impressed him very much. It seemed months since he awoke to find the lamp gone out. How much may happen between the lighting of a candle and its burning away! Smiling at this trite reflection, he blew that light out, and, taking another, went to his room. Here he found a stout hand-bag, with which he made haste to return ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... ribbon. No, the writing is her own, corrected, altered, underlined. He opens a second, a third. Then with a smile he sits down to read. What can they be like, these poems, these stories? He laughs, smoothing the crumpled paper, foreseeing the trite commonness, the shallow sentiment. The poor child! So she likewise would have been a litterateure. Even she had her ambition, ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... have been advised that David Elden was among those who fell at Courcelette. It is trite to say that you have the sympathy of a grateful nation. How grateful the nation really is we shall know by its treatment of the heroes who survive the war, and of the dependents of those who have crossed over. But nothing can rob you of the knowledge that he played a man's part. Nothing can ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... this very feeling, and the inability to defend that which he knew to be wrong and foolish, which made him so certain that he would not be able successfully to persist in his claim to Miss Wyndham's hand in opposition to the trite and well-weighed objections, which he knew her guardian would put forward. He consoled himself, however, with thinking that, at any rate, they could not prevent his seeing her; and he was quite sanguine as to her forgiveness, if he but got a fair opportunity of asking it. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... and blossoming which shall mature the apples of Sodom. O, how often have our legislators had reason to recall those pregnant words of Jefferson,—sad indeed is it that they should have become almost too trite for repetition, without having worked their way into the national conscience,—"I tremble for my country, when I consider that God is just!" The nations that have passed away, the decaying nations, the convulsed thrones, the smouldering rebellion-fires of the Old World, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... summer morn, When all the glistening field was softly stirred And like a child's in happy sleep I heard The low and healthful breathing of the corn. Late when the sumach's red was dulled and worn, And fainter grew the trite and troublous word Of tristful cricket, that replaced the bird, I sought the slope, and found a ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... than half dreaded his arrival, had been wondering how they should meet after the strange revelation of the afternoon, had been thinking of the most trite and commonplace remark with which she might greet him. But when it actually came to the point, she could not say a word, only looked up at him with eyes full of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... had been teaching for twenty years, but she had never grown old. And her influence was—to use a trite description—like a stone flung into a still pool of water; the ever widening circles set moving by it lapped the very outer ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... of this nature, whether it be to make money by means of cruising ships, or cruising scrip. It is true, these rovers encountered very differently-looking victims, in the first place; but it is a somewhat trite remark, that the aggregate of human beings is pretty much the same in all situations. There were widows and orphans as much connected with the condemnation of prizes, as with the prices of condemned stock; ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... This, however, did not wholly efface the distinction, which he shares with all who have ever tried to lead the minds of men into new tracks, of refusing to accept the current coins of philosophical speech without test or measurement. Such a treatment of the great trite words which come so easily to the tongue and seem to weigh for so much, must always be the first step towards bringing thought back into the region of real matter, and confronting phrases, terms, and all the common form of the discussion ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... altogether. This on his right hand. On his left, Netta, looking literally like 'a rose in June,' and receiving the very marked attentions of Captain Dancy, on one side, and of Mr Rice Rice, junior, on the other. He scarcely knew which was most irritating, 'the idioms,' or her affected giggle. Trite but true is the proverb, 'There is no rose without its thorn;' and Howel was pricked severely by the thorns surrounding the rose of his first step ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... preferred New York or Washington, but she had to live here. Thus she patronized nearly all of those with whom she condescended to associate, using an upward tilt of the head, a tired droop of the eyelids, and a fine upward arching of the brows to indicate how trite it all was. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... story in England, rather trite here, and a sort of philosophic common-place, like Buridan's 'Ass between two bundles of hay,' but possibly unknown in Germany: and, as it is pertinent to the case between ourselves, I will tell it: the more so, as it involves a metaphysical ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... makes a happy wedlock? What has fate Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? Good sense—good humor;—these are trivial things, Dear M——, that each trite encomiast sings. But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt From every low-bred passion, where contempt, Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found A harbor yet; an understanding sound; Just views of right and wrong; perception full ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... truth almost too trite for reference, that in the experience of every one of us there are some days in in which everything seems to go wrong. Such a day was this 13th of November to the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... "Trite phrase," scoffed he. "I'll wager my head that every woman living has uttered that same worn expression a hundred times. 'Known him all my life!' Ha, ha! It's a stock apology, my dear. Women, good and bad, trade ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the broad, vulgar middle of the day, when Madame Beck's large school turned out rampant, and externes and pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys' college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when the externes were gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... and even dull tone of address. He accused Mr. Disraeli with delivering a two hours' speech on fiscal and economical subjects, from which a single proposition could not be extracted, and concluding by trite reflections upon the necessity of maintaining public credit, couched in highflown language about the empire of the Caesars, with its triple crown, the mines of Golconda, pillared palanquins, and other things having as little to do with the question. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... universities and schools at the present moment, the like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire—so little, that ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... Places, under Pretence of Devotion. 2. That Vows are not to be made rashly over a Pot of Ale: but that Time, Expence and Pains ought to be employ d otherwise, in such Matters as have a real Tendency to promote trite Piety. 3. Of the Insignificancy ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... trite remarks on commonplace subjects; also all egotism and anecdotes of personal adventure and exploit, unless they should be called out by persons you ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... about anything beforehand!" Mr. Pellew was really talking at random. Even the value of this trite remark was spoiled. For he added:—"Nor afterwards, for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... school which bases its scheme of education on the actualities of child life, it is but natural that the dramatic instinct should be fostered in every possible way. "Work while you work, and play while you play," is one of those trite maxims which have been unintelligently repeated till they have lost whatever value they may once have possessed. "Work while you play, and play while you work," seems to be Egeria's substitute for it; and she would, I think, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the worship of the first sweet months in marriage, had gone. Of course that incense had been foolish, but it was sweet. Instead, he felt these suspicious, intolerant eyes following his soul in and out on its feeble errands. He comforted himself with the trite consolation that he was suffering from the natural readjustment in a woman's mind. It was ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... to have been very limited, for it is somewhat scarce, though a specimen may easily be procured of any dealer in coins for a few shillings. This bears the bust of the {84} Queen, with the legend ANNA DEI GRATIA—reverse, BRITANNIA around the trite figure of Britannia with the spear and olive-branch: the date 1714 in the exergue. Those with Peace in a car, Britannia standing with olive-branch and spear, or seated under an arch, are patterns; the second has the legend BELLO ET PACE in indented letters, a mode revived in the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody's mouth; but in few people's practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials, likewise all over Europe, have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time, without ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... chilled by the public distress; and his conspiracy with the Turks and the schismatics had already disturbed the peace of his country. The funeral of the late emperor was accelerated with singular and even suspicious haste: the claim of Demetrius to the vacant throne was justified by a trite and flimsy sophism, that he was born in the purple, the eldest son of his father's reign. But the empress-mother, the senate and soldiers, the clergy and people, were unanimous in the cause of the lawful successor: and the despot Thomas, who, ignorant of the change, accidentally ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... little more trite conversation between Mr Arabin and Mr Harding; trite, and hard, and vapid, and senseless. Neither of them had anything to say to the other, and yet neither at such a moment liked to remain silent. At last Mr Harding, taking advantage of a pause, escaped from the room, and Eleanor ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... reporter approached on a run.... "No, no! I'm sorry, Harper," he said hastily, cutting into the reporter's questions. "Nothing new! You may say that the police have thrown out a dragnet—" and he grinned at the trite phrase "—for the gunman who killed Mrs. Selim, and will offer a reward for the recovery of the weapon—a Colt's .32 equipped with a Maxim silencer.... Come along, George, and I'll explain just what Mrs. Sanderson and I have ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... I continually had to check, on the part of the Medium to wander off from matrimonial to theological subjects; and the latter, though trite, were scarcely so heterodox as I expected. I had found most "spiritualistic" teaching to be purely Theistic. Love to God and man were declared to be the great essentials, and creeds to matter little. If a man loved truth, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... and the measure of punishment can not be determined by a study of the illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it," he expressed an idea which has, in late years, come to be regarded as a trite truism. This called forth as an unavoidable consequence a more lively interest on the part of various social agencies in the personality of the criminal, with the resultant gradually increasing conviction that the suppression ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck |
