"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She bent her brows, and it was clear that the name suggested only a trivial recollection to her mind. "There used to be some Blake children in the old overseer's house—is this ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... hidden. Their inmates lead lives which have little or no relation to anything in the nineteenth century. For them wars and rumors of wars, Russian aggression, Austrian annexation, conspiracies by Kara Georgewitch, Hungarian domination in the Cabinet at Vienna, and all such trivial matters, do not exist. The members of these religious communities are not like the more active members of the clergy of their Church, who unquestionably have much to do with promoting war and supporting it when it is in aid of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... which he received from this increase of his poetical reputation was sufficient for some time to overbalance the miseries of want, which this performance did not much alleviate; for it was sold for a very trivial sum to a bookseller, who, though the success was so uncommon that five impressions were sold, of which many were undoubtedly very numerous, had not generosity sufficient to admit the unhappy writer to any part of the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... thus I'll sling Our store, a trivial load to bear: Yet, ere night comes, should hunger sting, I'll not encroach on Rover's share. The fresh breeze bears its sweets along; The Lark but chides us while we stay: Soon shall the Vale repeat my song; Go ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... apt to degenerate into the "trivial round" of the golf links varied by polo, or polo varied by golf, with occasional gymkhanas and picnics. There are, doubtless, many delightful excursions to be made, but upon the whole it seems difficult ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the child; and third, by suggestions for practical activities that may be carried out in hours of work or play, in such a way as to direct into useful channels energy which when left undirected is apt to express itself in trivial if not in anti-social forms. No part of a book is more significant to the child than the illustrations. In preparing the illustrations for this series as great pains have been taken to furnish the child with ideas that will guide him in his ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... seem that we two should talk on so trivial a matter, when there was so much else that we had need to exchange thought upon; for were a man in this present day to have speech with those who may live within that red planet of Mars within the sky, scarce could the wonder of it exceed ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... and, having glanced through it, he at last said, rather solemnly, "Yes; VillAri''—accenting strongly the second syllable—"is an admirable writer.'' I accepted his correction meekly and made no reply. A thing so trivial would not be worth remembering were it not one of those evidences, which professors from other institutions in our country have not infrequently experienced, of a "certain condescension'' in sundry men who do honor to one or two of our oldest ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... money. The priests were clamorous for money. The neighbours were clamorous for money. Had not they all sworn anything that was wanted, and were they not to be paid? Some moderate payment was made to the hideous, screeching, greedy old woman; some trivial payment—as to which Mr. Flick was heartily ashamed of himself—was made to the old priest; and then Mr. Flick hurried home, fully convinced that a compromise should be made as to the money, and that the legality of the titles claimed by the two English ladies ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... spoke for some time, and my duties, as he detailed them, sounded astonishingly light. Indeed, he paused occasionally as if seeking to augment them by the addition of trivial household tasks. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... to another combination. A swift gesture summoned Weldon to the table, while Frazer dropped into his vacant chair. Ethel met the Captain with only a half-concealed eagerness. This was not the first time that a consciously trivial word of hers had been crushed out of life by Weldon's serious dignity. She was never quite able to understand his mood upon such occasions. The man was no prig. At times, he was as merry as a boy. At other times, he showed an inflexible seriousness which left her with the vague ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... speaks of it as a common practice in India thus to smuggle men into the women's apartments in female attire. In the Introduction to the "Katha Sarit Sagara," Vararuchi relates how King Yogananda saw his queen leaning out of a window and asking questions of a Bahman guest that was looking up. That trivial circumstance threw the king into a passion, and he gave orders that the Brahman should be put to death) for jealousy interferes with discernment. Then as that Brahman was being led off to the place of execution in order that he should be put to death, a fish ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... speech, other than the musical sounds indicative of emotion, will be regarded as a comic and clumsy archaism,—apart from all this, the fathomless riches of wisdom to be gathered from the commonest daily objects and outwardly most trivial occurrences, will put an end to all craving for merely physical change of place and excitement. Gradually the human race will become stationary, each family occupying its own place, and living in patriarchal simplicity, though endowed with power and wisdom that we should ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... meat-ration can for a shovel; wading rivers by day and sleeping exposed to the elements by night, are all sandwiched with numerous mirthful incidents. Soldiers, above all people, have an eye for the ridiculous, and are ever ready to make merry and laugh over the most trivial matter. Even the horrors of battle are unable to quench the spark of gaiety ever present in the make-up of a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... seem to the reader trite and trivial; but how many of us, let me ask, give thought to their ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... governess. Probably, as the person of most education in the house, she had been charged to meet and receive the doctor, for she began immediately, in great haste, stating the causes of the illness, giving trivial and tiresome details, but without saying who was ill or ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was aroused between those holding the longer and those holding the shorter chronology, but after all the difference between them, as we now see, was trivial; and it may be broadly stated that in the early Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," it was held as certain, upon the absolute warrant of Scripture, that man was created from four to six thousand years ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... arms, thought nothing of such trivial things. She put her arms about his neck and kissed him, while the years passed ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... are defective in completeness and accuracy of statement, and in indexes and tables of contents. Neither can any one who has not travelled over this precise ground appreciate the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impartiality with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony of 'the fathers' on the general question of slavery to present the single question which he discusses. From the first line to the last, from his premises ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... of the author of "Revised Versions" and the case of the mediocre clergyman who defied his bishop on a question of—what was the question?—something concerning the twirling of his thumbs from east to west, instead of from west to east; yes, or an equally trivial matter. He trusted that she was too discriminating a girl to bracket him with that wretched, shallow-minded person who endeavored to pose as a martyr, because he would not be permitted to do whatever he tried to insist on doing. Mr. Holland thought ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... imploringly, "don't 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 ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... be on our guard against small troubles, which, by encouraging, we are apt to magnify into great ones. Indeed, the chief source of worry in the world is not real but imaginary evil—small vexations and trivial afflictions. In the presence of a great sorrow, all petty troubles disappear; but we are too ready to take some cherished misery to our bosom, and to pet it there. Very often it is the child of our fancy; and, forgetful of the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... to-day, in Italy, almost anywhere, in the presence of the beautiful, of the desecrated or the neglected. We feel at such moments as if the eye of Mr. Ruskin were upon us; we grow nervous and lose our confidence. This makes me inevitably, in talking of Venice, seek a pusillanimous safety in the trivial and the obvious. I am on firm ground in rejoicing in the little garden directly opposite our windows—it is another proof that they really show us everything- -and in feeling that the gardens of Venice would deserve a page to themselves. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... thus led to the conclusion that the Sarde aborigines were a giant race, the question remains whether the Nuraghe had the same origin as the Sepolture; and, passing by some trivial objections to this hypothesis, we are disposed to adopt Mr. Tyndale's conclusion, that—“the coincidence of two such peculiar monuments in the same island, their non-existence elsewhere, and their being both indicative of some abstract principle of grandeur and power, practically carried out ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... curiously miscellaneous one, containing much trivial matter side by side with learned treatises, transcripts of important cartularies, monastic registers, public and private muniments of the most varied description. A list of them is to be found in the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... or sterlet is meant by this term, for Platina calls the eggs of the fish "caviare." "OVA STIRIONIS CONDITUM QUOD CAUARE UOCANT." Eloquently he describes his struggle with the changing language. The efforts of this conscientious man, Platina, to get at the bottom of things no matter how trivial they ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... the White Sea by the allied squadrons, but the assistance rendered by the French was trivial. The allies, particularly the French, arrived too late in the season to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... conditions, very insecure. An enormously wealthy merchant may be— often is—at every moment of his life at the mercy of things that are not under his control. If the wind blows an extra point or so, or the weather suddenly changes, or some trivial thing happens, his ship may go down, his speculations may go wrong, and he finds himself a poor man, with his social position quite gone. Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... dressed and ready from nine until five-thirty daily she was required, at 4:56 on the sixth day, to cross the set, open a door, stop, turn, appear to be listening, and recross the set to meet someone entering from the opposite side. This scene, trivial as it appeared, was rehearsed seven times before the director was satisfied ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... there was a note in his voice as if to end the discussion. His own eyes he kept down on his cigar and, as he lounged against a post he had an air of being slightly bored by an uninteresting shop topic. The Senator looked at him a few seconds keenly, started to make a trivial change in the conversation, then made a flank movement, bent toward Everett and began to speak in a suave and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... more frequently see coming events, or what is happening at a distance, than others; some see things dimly, others with great distinctness. The events seen are sometimes of great importance, sometimes highly nonsensical and trivial; sometimes they relate to the person who sees them, sometimes to other people. This is all that can be said with anything like certainty with respect to the nature of the second sight, a faculty for which there is no accounting, which, were it better developed, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... and thus to a certain extent confirms its genuineness. The sayings and doings of the young adventurers are recorded with the minuteness that to older heads seems tedious. This disposition to dwell upon, and to attach importance to things comparatively trivial, is peculiar to the youthful mind, and marks that period of freshness, joyousness, and inexperience, when every thing is new, and possesses the power to surprise and ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... One pokes about them as he would about ruins, and with something of the same feeling. They are ruins of the fore world. Here the foundations of the hills were laid; here the earth-giants wrought and builded. They constrain one to silence and meditation; the whispering and rustling trees seem trivial and impertinent. ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... body flows, With mortal crisis doth portend My days to appropinque an end. 590 I am for action now unfit, Either of fortitude or wit: Fortune, my foe, begins to frown, Resolv'd to pull my stomach down. I am not apt, upon a wound, 595 Or trivial basting, to despond: Yet I'd be loth my days to curtail: For if I thought my wounds not mortal, Or that we'd time enough as yet, To make an hon'rable retreat, 600 'Twere the best course: but if they find We fly, and leave our arms behind For them to seize on, the dishonour, And danger too, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... the affair, the silence, and the presence of so many strangers,—ignorant, too, what was doing or what was meant, he went unresisting. They marched him out heavily; the door closed behind them; we stood waiting. The glittering table, the lights, the arrested dicers, all the trivial preparations for a carouse that at another time must have given a cheerful aspect to the room, produced instead the most sombre impression. I waited, but, seeing that Bareilles did not move, I struck the table with my gauntlet. "The order!" ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... in the mood of idleness memory amuses me, in the mood of energy hope cheers me; which hope is sometimes big and serious, and sometimes trivial, but that without it there is no happy energy. Again, I find that while I can sometimes satisfy this mood by merely exercising it in work that has no result beyond the passing hour—in play, in short—yet that it presently wearies of that and gets languid, the hope therein ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... and away from their own time, for mighty subjects, which left to their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters frequently employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details of private life, which they have always before their eyes; and they are forever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too abundant ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... a small town in Germany there were three men so fat that they could barely walk. They spent nearly all their time sleeping. The only trouble was that every day or so someone would disturb them by singing or walking by, or some other trivial thing that is always happening in a small town, no matter how dead ...
— The Unthinking Destroyer • Roger Phillips
... cautious in her indulgence; she made the slightest mention of Dorriforth; saying only, "He was extremely concerned, and even dejected, at the little hope there was of his cousin, Lord Elmwood's, recovery." Short and trivial as this passage was, it was still more important to Miss Milner than any other in the letter—she read it again and again, considered, and reflected upon it. Dejected, thought she, what does that word exactly mean?—did I ever see Mr. Dorriforth ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... Fame is an accident. Sir Isaac Newton discovered an apple falling to the ground—a trivial discovery, truly, and one which a million men had made before him—but his parents were influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into something wonderful, and, lo! the simple world took up the shout and, in almost the twinkling of an eye, that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... two occasions, I had no opportunity of making any observations on the manners and customs of our neighbours. Occasionally Mrs. Tod mentioned them in her social chatter, while laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be kept quiet—Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr. March was such a very fidgety gentleman—so particular in his dress, too—Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... mixture of the interrogation and exclamation points for which we have no symbol. She tried to look surprised at the unimaginable suggestion of Cheever's being in her environs. She succeeded as well as Dyckman did in pretending that his errand was trivial. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... used and known as the Temple of Sculpture. The panels express not so much the historical Greek tradition - though they are, indeed, produced in the purest Greek manner - as they do the high spirit and ideals of Greek art, the devoted seeking for divine fire, the determined opposition to the trivial and the base. Each of the panels is once repeated. The panel of "The Triumph of Apollo" shows the fiery god of Inspiration, Music and the Sun in a procession of worshipers; his flaming wings are the rays of the sun. ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... refused to be bound by trivial concerns. A Mexican was accused of stealing a pair of leggings. He was convicted and fined three ounces for stealing, while the prosecuting witness was also fined one ounce for bothering the court with such a complaint. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... he adds that this density may well turn out to be fifty thousand million times that of platinum. "The densest matter known," he says, "is trivial and gossamer-like compared with the unmodified ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... questioning and replying gravely and at leisure, the man was revolving in his mind just what action would be best for the prisoners whose cause he had espoused. As for Judith, she had forgotten that such persons existed, that such trivial mischance as their arrest had just been; she was concerned wholly with the immediate necessity to charm, to subjugate ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... she answered, "Yes, my lord," Celia noted the dull, toneless melancholy of his voice, the voice of a man to whom all things save one, whatever that might be, are but trivial and ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... of congratulation and enthusiastic allegiance to the Government. This felicitous state of things was suddenly interrupted by one of those incidents which no foresight could have anticipated, and which, absolutely trivial in itself, was magnified at once, by the jealous spirit of patriotism, into a violation of the solemn compact that had just been ratified on both sides of the Channel. An Irish cause was brought into an English court of justice, ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... peoples. The suckauhock with its varying shades of purple was particularly beautiful. Its value was double that of the white and the darker its color, the more highly it was prized. But the laborious method of production imparted no trivial value to both varieties. ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... a mountain to see the world by moonlight, and when near the summit the hermit commenced his evening hymn a few rods from me. Listening to this strain on the lone mountain, with the full moon just rounded from the horizon, the pomp of your cities and the pride of your civilization seemed trivial and cheap. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... any, that could accept so long a series of insults. The air smelt blood to me. And I vowed there should be no neglect of mine if, through any chink of possibility, crime could be yet turned aside. That same day, therefore, I came to my lord in his business room, where he sat upon some trivial occupation. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was beyond human endurance to remain entirely dumb—but they conversed in monosyllables, about trivial things, and their voices were throaty, as if the effort choked them. Meanwhile they continued to glow inwardly at a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... I had not taken much, and that it was very hard that I should suffer so much inconvenience for so trivial a meal, when the weight on my chest moved, and I felt something cool touch ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Many States of the Union have enacted too late the most stringent game laws, and have spent vast sums in vain attempts to restore what British Columbia still possesses and which could be so easily retained at but a trivial expense and by the exercise of a little foresight ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... had come to deliver a letter to Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, but such a mission seemed so trivial that rumor as to the real intentions of the craft was rife throughout the entire country. There were suspicions that she had put in for fuel, or ammunition, or supplies. But nothing to justify these thoughts occurred. The U-53 hung around through the daylight hours, and at sunset, ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... and making some trivial excuse got out of the room and out of the house. In his youth and young manhood the long periods of walking straight ahead through the country, that had come upon him like visitations of some recurring disease, had helped. Walking solved nothing. It only tired his body, but ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... careful clock Mark the appointment, the officious train Hurry to keep it, if the minutes mock Loud in your ear: 'Late. Late. Late. Late again.' Week-end is very well on Saturday: On Monday it's a different affair— A little episode, a trivial stay In some oblivious spot somehow, somewhere. On Sunday night we hardly laugh or speak: Week-end begins to merge itself ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... and in amassing immense records of things that deserved only to be forgotten. He found himself reflecting that life was short, and that he tended to spend the greater part of his waking hours in matters that were essentially trivial. He began to question whether there was any duty for him in the matter at all, and by what law, human or divine, a man was bound to spend his days in work in the usefulness of which he ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would have afforded. Would it have been desirable to have composed the court for the trial of impeachments, of persons wholly distinct from the other departments of the government? There are weighty arguments, as well against, as in favor of, such a plan. To some minds it will not appear a trivial objection, that it could tend to increase the complexity of the political machine, and to add a new spring to the government, the utility of which would at best be questionable. But an objection which will ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Theosophist groping towards a recognition of Buddha, would ever think of cracking jokes on the matter. But to the Hebrew prophets their religion was so solid a thing, like a mountain or a mammoth, that the irony of its contact with trivial and fleeting matters struck them like a blow. So it was with Carlyle. His supreme contribution, both to philosophy and literature, was his sense of the sarcasm of eternity. Other writers had seen the hope or the terror of the heavens, ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... higher prices than goods would cost them outside. A warden has been appointed for them, with judicial authority to punish them; and, according to report, many wrongs and injuries are inflicted upon them. Indeed, for very trivial causes they are put in the stocks, and pecuniary fines exacted from them. Sometimes they have been fined for going outside at night to ease the body, or for not keeping ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I 'll wipe away all trivial fond records. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Littre says, 'Bah!' to the partisans of a force or fluid, he says, 'Pooh!' 'If your spirits are spirits, why do they let the world wag on in its old way, why do they confine themselves to trivial effects?' ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... what adventures she was destined to share with him, he might have been tempted to wire her father to call her back. Since he did not know, he ordered meat-pie, French fried potatoes, English tea biscuits, cocoa and apple pie, then settled himself down to talk of trivial matters until ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... seems to me, very much as separate notes are put into one great harmony. Each note is struck at the proper time, serves its purpose, and goes into nothingness. Each plays its part, however small. We can't all be included in the wonderful final chords. Our place may seem trivial to us, and yet in some sense we may be sure we are all contributors to the unity and perfection of the whole. That ought to be enough. No one note achieves individual immortality, but each does something to assure the ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... study. For a moment the drift of the question was an enigma to him: then realizing that an important theological discussion had been interrupted by a trivial baseball question, he gathered up his papers and stamped violently out of the office. Doctor Patton made no comment, but, with a smile, he asked Bok: "Johnnie Ward going to play to-day, do you know? Thought ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... time to joke," answered Hedin bitterly. "That's a thing I've never been able to fathom, why you always joke in the face of a serious situation, and then turn around and raise hell over some trivial matter that don't amount ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... at finding herself tete-a-tete with a young man, though she has met so many other young men frankly enough, and without being found fault with for it. She runs up to her mother, somewhat out of breath, and makes some trivial remark, as if to pretend she had been with her ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... mention of such a circumstance would be trivial in the extreme, were it not necessary to record it in consequence of an event which ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... He was obliged to own, no. "Was she clever?" Well, she had a very good average intellect: but he could not absolutely say she was clever. "Come, let us see some of her letters." So Pen confessed that he had but those three of which we have made mention—and that they were but trivial ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for all the other guest near us were Hollanders, whose language I could not speak, and who despised French too much to learn it. So, as we paced along, I endeavoured to say something trivial of the Prince's christening and the like, which might begin the conversation; and I was too sorry for her to speak with the frigidity with which my sister thought she ought to be treated. Then gradually she took courage to reply, and ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when we intended to leave this State. You have been more fortunate than your brethren and sisters who lived in Daviess County. You are allowed to live in your own house, but we are homeless wanderers. Now you drive us from the shelter of your roof for a trivial offense, if offense it was. But I assure you that you are only angry because my words were the truth. Woe unto you who are angry and offended at the truth. As you do unto others, so will your Heavenly Father do unto you. Inasmuch as you have done this unchristian act, you ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... vigour of purpose, directed along the line which was ready to form 'the chief pleasure of her life', could hardly have failed to conduct her to great success. She was a little younger than Bulwer Lytton, a little older than Mrs. Gaskell—but these are vain and trivial speculations! ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... which to communicate his views upon the situation to political circles at home. Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr. Creevey was malicious and might keep a diary. He therefore sent for him on some trivial pretext, and a ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... Erskine had ever enjoyed of speaking to Gertrude at leisure and alone. Yet their conversation had never been so commonplace. She, liking the game, played very well and chatted indifferently; he played badly, and broached trivial topics in spite of himself. After an hour-and-a-half's play, Gertrude had announced that this game must be their last. He thought desperately that if he were to miss many more strokes the game must presently end, and an opportunity which might never recur ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... needful, were it not that they seem to have deeply tinged his imagination. While describing the growth of his own genius in the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he makes the following reference to circumstances which might otherwise be trivial:— ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... her portrait. It was touching to see the superstitious reverence with which this prairie child kneeled before whatever she supposed to be learned or artistic. She took it for granted that Esther's painting was wonderful; her only difficulty was to understand how a man so trivial as George Strong, could be a serious professor, in a real university. She thought that Strong's taste for bric-a-brac was another of his jokes. He tried to educate her, and had almost succeeded when, in producing his last and most perfect bit of Japanese lacquer, he ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... say: "What a tempest in a teapot?" To many this may seem a very trivial affair, but how small a thing can influence our lives! A breath, the passing of a summer shower, may help or hinder plans which alter our entire lives. And Miss Preston was wise enough to understand it. Here was a beautiful soul given for a time into her keeping. Now, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... as love itself; moreover, as we shall see in the chapter on American Indians, suicide does not argue strong feelings, but a weak intellect. Savages are apt to kill themselves, as we shall see, on the slightest and most trivial provocation. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in these trivial opening exchanges, Sally had sensed a suggestion of unwonted gravity in her companion. She missed that careless whimsicality which had been the chief characteristic of Miss Gladys Winch and seemed to have been cast off by Mrs. Fillmore Nicholas. At their meeting, before she had spoken, ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... into circulation by many trivial eccentricities of manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry away ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... brought him the papers. In them were many pictures of himself as a master of foxhounds, as a polo-player, as a gentleman jockey. The landlord looked at him curiously. Five minutes later, on a trivial excuse, he returned and again studied Jimmie as closely as though he were about to paint his portrait. Then two of the other boarders, chums of the landlord, knocked at the door, to borrow a match, to beg the loan of the morning paper. Each was obviously excited, each stared ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... A trivial matter, as it may seem to the reader, intensified that regret. Three weeks ago Borrowdale, the bishop of Howeaster, had died, and Scrope would have been the next in rotation to succeed him on the bench of bishops. He had always ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... made of sterner stuff, and was inflexible. In fact, however, the difference of dogma, if any existed, was trivial. The clergy used the cry of heresy to excite odium, just as they called their opponents Antinomians, or dangerous fanatics. To support these accusations the synod gravely accepted every unsavory ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... soil within this realm produces or yields, gold and silver are the most excellent, and of all persons in the realm, the King is, in the eye of the law, most excellent. And the common law, which is founded upon reason, appropriates everything to the person whom it best suits, as common and trivial things to the common people, things of more worth to persons in a higher and superior class, and things most excellent to those persons who excel all others; and because gold and silver are the most excellent things which the soil contains, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... manuscript chronicle of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, already quoted in this work, made up from this history of the curate of Los Palacios, and from various other historians of the times, by some contemporary writer. In his account of the voyage of Columbus, he differs in some trivial particulars from the regular copy of the manuscript of the curate. These variations have been carefully examined by the author of this work, and wherever they appear to be for ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... expected to instruct his inferiors. The consequences are what might be anticipated. The performances of the patrols in covering distances are generally most commendable, but their reports most deficient. Seldom is a clear distinction drawn between the essential and the non-essential; the most trivial news is forwarded with the same expenditure of horses' power as matter of greatest moment; for most patrol Leaders find it very difficult, for want of an imagination trained by the study of military history, ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... frequent still, has effectually wrought. It has been strong enough so to traverse, repress, and check all those causes which tended to divergence, that the written language of educated men on both sides of the water remains precisely the same, their spoken manifesting a few trivial differences of idiom; while even among those classes which do not consciously acknowledge any ideal standard of language, there are scarcely greater differences, in some respects far smaller, than exist between inhabitants of different provinces in this one island ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... be taken to be fully provided, and to have each detail in good condition; for, after the boat has left the ship, it may be impossible to compensate for failure in some seemingly trivial article. ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... Indeed, as Mr. William H. Whitmore points out in his clever monograph upon Mother Goose (Albany, 1889), it is very doubtful whether in 1719 a Boston printer would have been allowed to publish such "trivial" rhymes. "Boston children at that date," says Mr. Whitmore, "were fed upon Gospel food, and it seems extremely improbable that an edition could have ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know . . . and I can pass a summer very quietly without caring much about Fat Louis, fat Regent or the Duke of Wellington." These are trivial words; but they serve to define in some measure ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes
... his time to his master, he was at liberty to enjoy the rest according to his fancy. The farmer afterwards became proprietor of the soil he cultivated, and master, not only of himself, but of his lands; certain trivial obligations or fines being all that was required of him, and these daily grew less, and at last disappeared altogether. Having thus obtained a footing in society, he soon began to take a place in provincial assemblies; and he made the last bound on the road of social progress, when the vote ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... made Colonel House all eyes—trivial in figure, undistinguished, slightly ludicrous, almost shambling, shrinking under observation so that he gained a reputation for mystery, with only one feature to catch your attention, a most amazingly ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Church to regulate what man may eat, drink, or smoke, where and how he shall spend his Sundays, the character and kind of amusements he may participate in, and various other activities, many of which seem more or less trivial; all of which leads the average worker to ponder rather seriously just why it is that the Church can vigorously advocate and promote legislation seeking to curtail his liberty to enjoy, in his own way, the limited number of leisure hours at his ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... over, the very nicest things are just about to begin. Put that in your essay, and make moral reflections. 'Oft-times in our ignorance we believe ... but looking back over a gap of time we can see—A trivial word, a passing glance, the choice of a road, on such trifles may depend ... Discipline is good for us all, but joy cometh in the morning.' You know the sort of thing. For once I really wish I could write your essay ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I venture to remark that Marino only at rare intervals attains to purity of poetic style; even his best passages are deformed, not merely by conceits to which the name of Marinism has been given, but also by gross vulgarities and lapses into trivial prose. Notwithstanding this want of distinction, however, he has a melody that never fails. The undulating, evenly on-flowing cantilena of his verbal music sustains the reader on a tide of song. That element ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... A very trivial circumstance will serve to exemplify this. Suppose you go into a fruiterer's shop, wanting an apple,—you take up one, and, on biting it, you find it is sour; you look at it, and see that it is hard and green. ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was blessed with that rare gift, the power to invest with interest almost any subject, no matter how trivial or commonplace, on which he chose to speak. Whether it was the charm of a musical voice, or the serious tone and manner of an earnest man, we cannot tell, but certain it is, that whenever or wherever he began to talk, men stopped to listen, and were ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... This incident, trivial as it seemed, made a vivid impression upon me, and it was with a mind really calmed from its past agitation that I re-entered the house and took up my watch in the sick-room. I found every thing as I had left it an hour or so before, with the exception of my companion; the younger Mr. Pollard ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... by the parents, and unsuspected by the children) through the first event that happened after Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone's return—an event which presented, on the surface of it, no interest of greater importance than the trivial social ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... passing. Brian responded slightly enough, but with less coldness; and in a few minutes—he did not know how it happened—he was talking to the stranger more freely than he had done to anyone since he left England. Their conversation was certainly confined to trivial topics; but there was a frankness and a delicacy of perception about the young foreigner which made him a very attractive companion. He gave Brian in a few words an outline of the chief events of his life, and seemed to expect no confidence from Brian in return. ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... too trivial to narrate concerning great men; for posterity shows itself eager to learn even the most insignificant details concerning their manner of life, their tastes, their slightest peculiarities. When I attended ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... beyond the fence of his own park. Was he philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, historian? inventor of steam-engine, of spinning jenny, of gunpowder, or of gun-cotton? No, I searched every cell of memory for some "trivial fond record" which might justify his title to a mansion and grounds fit for Sophocles, Schiller, or Shakspeare, the master of them all. I could not find, in all the rolls of the court of reminiscences, a single scrape of the pen to inform me; not so much as the commemorative ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... designed to convey a special lesson to his hearers. Perhaps Molire wished not only that the general public should be prepared to find instructions and warnings for married men, but also that they who were wont to regard the theatre as injurious, or at best trivial, should know that he professed to educate, as well as to entertain. We must count the adoption of similar titles by Sheridan and others amongst the tributes, by imitation, ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... I am obliged always to write the name of Goliah in full, to distinguish me from my brother, Gregory Gahagan, who was also a Major (in the King's service), and whom I killed in a duel, as the public most likely knows. Poor Greg! a very trivial dispute was the cause of our quarrel, which never would have originated but for the similarity of our names. The circumstance was this: I had been lucky enough to render the Nawaub of Lucknow some trifling ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Hesden Le Moyne undertook when he assumed the care and protection of Eliab Hill, was no trivial one, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... These trivial instances are only given as examples to show how infinitely varied are the applications which may be made of this principle of appealing to the imagination of children, and what a variety of effects may be produced ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... life. It was fortunate for her that she was quick-witted. These two flagrant blunders were sufficient for her. She grasped the principle that those who have a great love of power and little scope for it must necessarily exercise it in trivial matters. She extended the principle of the newspaper and the letter-bag over her entire intercourse with the Gresleys and never offended ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... staring into the gloom of her narrow bedroom, her mind ruthlessly shaping formless, vague intuitions into definite convictions. She could not put her finger upon the precise reason for her inquietude. Was it chargeable to so trivial a circumstance as a stranger's formal courtesy or had something more subtle moved her? If the depths of her isolation had been thrown into too high relief by the almost shameful sense of obligation she felt toward Stillman ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... what we have about the patrons of cheese factories, and the closer and more thorough co-operation among them, we have been actuated by no feelings of unkindness or ill will, nor have we arraigned them upon trivial or imaginary charges. The indictments we have found against them are all true bills, against which too many of them will be unable to sustain the plea of not guilty. We have been constrained to our present ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... cherish also aspirations for commercial extension, for colonies, and for influence in distant regions, which may bring, and, even under our present contracted policy, already have brought them into collision with ourselves. The incident of the Samoa Islands, trivial apparently, was nevertheless eminently suggestive of European ambitions. America then roused from sleep as to interests closely concerning her future. At this moment internal troubles are imminent in the Sandwich Islands, where it should be our fixed determination to ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... course, was very sorry, but it was not a thing to make him uneasy. A man must hold his tongue altogether in society if he is never to find himself in such a position; for not only remarks with meaning in them, but the most trivial expressions, may happen to clash in an inharmonious key with the interest ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... man, "I rather think there was something of the sort. The boy's uncle—Captain Stewart—middle-aged, rather prim old party—you'll have met him, I dare say—he intimated to me one day that there had been some trivial row. You see, the lad isn't of age yet, though he is to be in a few months, and so he has had to live on an allowance doled out by his grandfather, who's the head of the house. The boy's father is ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... so glad you have read my Endymion," he exclaimed delightedly. "Suppose we walk out together and preach the gospel of beauty to those who like yourself forget the eternal in the trivial. I have some powerful sermons here." He caressed his roses as a mother would stroke the head of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... authorities: "I was at a Sunday meeting, in the spring of 1857, in Provo, when the news of the San Pete incident was referred to by the presiding Bishop, Blackburn. Some men in Provo had rebelled against authority in some trivial matter, and Blackburn shouted in his Sunday meeting—a mixed congregation of all ages and both sexes: 'I want the people of Provo to understand that the boys in Provo can use the knife as well as the boys in San Pete. Boys, get your knives ready.'" "Rocky Mountain ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... no need to go into the matter again. All I need do here is to recall the fact that, in the United States, alone among the great nations of history, there is a right way to think and a wrong way to think in everything—not only in theology, or politics, or economics, but in the most trivial matters of everyday life. Thus, in the average American city the citizen who, in the face of an organized public clamour (usually managed by interested parties) for the erection of an equestrian statue of Susan B. Anthony, the apostle ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... his feelings, he threw himself among the lumber in despair, and wept like a child. It was at this period that he heard the crash occasioned by the bottle which I had thrown down. Fortunate, indeed, was it that the incident occurred—for, upon this incident, trivial as it appears, the thread of my destiny depended. Many years elapsed, however, before I was aware of this fact. A natural shame and regret for his weakness and indecision prevented Augustus from confiding to me at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the Faith? Of course, as an implication of false doctrine—as that the Priesthood is not an Order, or that the Presence of Our Lord is not in both species—it had its importance. But in itself how trivial a "kick." Why should anyone desire the cup save to mark dissension ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... sympathetic bond, You grow familiar, intimate, and fond; Your thoughts, your words, your stiles, your souls agree, No longer his interpreter, but he. Take then a subject, proper to expound * * * * * But moral, great, and worth a poet's voice, For men of sense, despise a trivial choice: And such applause, it must expect to meet As would some painter busy in the street; To copy bulls, and bears, and every sign That calls the staring sots to nasty wine. Take pains the genuine meaning to explore, There sweat, there strain, tug the laborious oar: Search every comment, that your ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... in the hands of God; and (short-sighted as we are) in running away from danger, as often run into it. What we call an accident, the fall of a brick or a stone, the upsetting of a vehicle, anything however trivial or seemingly improbable, may summon us away when we least expect it: 'In the midst of life we are in death,' and that death I may meet by staying in this country, which I might have avoided by going on this expedition. ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to-day. It is very strange that she tells me nothing which I expected her to tell—only trivial details. She seems dazzled by the brilliancy of Paris—which no doubt appears still more brilliant to her from the fact of her only being able to obtain occasional glimpses of it. She would see that Paris, too, has a seamy side if you live there. ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... that happens is trivial, yet the memory of which is ever to be marked in white; and this was such an one to me. I let myself forget the impossible during that brief two hours' halt; nor ever had I known Diane so gracious. We spoke much of Paris. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... these things may seem trivial. Here, with that grey stone pillar full in view, they ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... which is within my lifetime, more than three millions of persons have emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States. During the fifteen years from 1845 or 1846 to 1859 or 1860—a period so recent that we all remember the most trivial circumstances that have happened in that time—during those fifteen years more than two million three hundred and twenty thousand persons left the shores of the United Kingdom as emigrants for the States ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... if possible, think like a great mind, he should speak the same language as every other person. Men should use common words to say uncommon things, but they do the reverse. We find them trying to envelop trivial ideas in grand words and to dress their very ordinary thoughts in the most extraordinary expressions and the most outlandish, artificial, and rarest phrases. Their sentences perpetually stalk about on stilts. With regard to their ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Father's business, unless we remember Him in the doing of it. But if we carry the hallowing and quickening influence of that great 'must' into all the pettinesses, and paltrinesses, and wearinesses, and sorrows of our daily trivial lives, then we shall find, as Jesus Christ found, that the carpenter's shop is as sacred as the courts of the Temple, and that to obey Mary was to do the will of the Father ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at least a dozen pages. I have every right to call you a bad debtor; I could summon you before a court of justice; but all these acts of vengeance would not repair the loss which I have endured through my hope and my fruitless waiting . . . . It is your punishment to read this trivial page; but although my head is empty, my heart is not so, and it holds for you a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Chantrey as if an age had passed over him. As persons who are drowning see in one brief moment all the course of their past lives, with its most trivial circumstances, so he seemed to have looked into his own future, stretching before him in gloom and darkness, and foreseen a thousand miserable results springing from this fatal source. She was his wife, dearer to him than any other object in the world; but after ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... few weeks—events that culminated, as you know, by stirring the country profoundly. At that time, however, I was busy trying to keep my skirts dry, and paid little or no attention to what seemed then a most trivial remark. ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the vital question to be settled is, what is the latest instant at which it is certain that this person was alive? And the settlement of that question may turn on some circumstance of the most trivial and insignificant kind. There is a case in this morning's paper which illustrates this. A gentleman has disappeared rather mysteriously. He was last seen by the servant of a relative at whose house he had called. Now, if this gentleman should never reappear, dead or alive, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... matter what kind of story you are writing, go straight to the point from the opening—make the wheels of the plot actually commence to revolve in the first scene—plunge into your action, don't wade timidly in inch by inch. To use up two or three scenes in showing trivial incidents which may happen to the characters while they are, so to speak, standing in the wings ready to make their entrances, is as tiresome as it is useless. If the hero of the Western story makes his first appearance by dashing into the scene madly pursued ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... manner of man my father was. Anecdotes, if true and alive, are always valuable; the man in the concrete, the totus quis comes out in them; and I know you too well to think that you will consider as trivial or out of place anything in which his real nature displayed itself, and your own sense of humor as a master and central power of the human soul, playing about the very essence of the man, will do more than forgive anything ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... already formed an extensive acquaintance with many plants and animals which are entirely unknown to the children of the city. The simpler facts which are interesting and instructive to the pupils of the urban classes would prove commonplace and trivial to rural pupils. For example, while it is necessary to show the city child a squirrel that he may learn the size, colour, and general appearance of the animal, the efforts of the pupil of the rural school should be directed to ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... mustn't—it's awful—in this special case—" He broke off. He saw the trap he was in. He could not denounce that crook without exposing himself. And from that he still shrank. Ann's prejudice against Jimmy Crocker might have its root in a trivial and absurd grievance, but it had been growing through the years, and who could say how ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... funny example—without running the risk of losing that recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French word-play of anel for agnel (or -neau), which substitutes "donkey" for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name, "Estula," with its component syllables "es tu la?" But the important point ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... stirred to its very foundations. From dawn till night every centre of public traffic and intercourse was the scene of hostile meetings between Christians and heathen, with frequent frays and bloodshed, only stopped by the intervention of the soldiery. Still, as we see that the trivial round of daily tasks is necessarily fulfilled, even when the hand of Fate lies heaviest on a household, and that children cannot forego their play even when their father is stretched on his death-bed, so the minor interests of individual lives pursued their course, even in the midst ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were one of the Christian virtues, have not been fruitless. Nevertheless it may be seen that their work of education at the South has been conducted in no narrow spirit. The extending of their sect over new territory has been a most trivial and unimportant result of their widespread and efficient work. A far greater result has been the promotion among the colored people of a better education, a higher standard of morality, and an enlightened piety, through the influence of the graduates of ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon |
