"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be plunged for boiling—all this joined to the utter absence of ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... many things which, in themselves, seeming to the vulgar and the heedless to be trivial and without consequence, may yet be causes pregnant of terrible effects, mainsprings of Destiny itself. Amid such portentous trifles I would number the names ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... mood, Murray's does not appeal to me; the pseudo-Grecian temple in the corner, with water cascading down its steps, the make-believe clouds which float across the ceiling, the tables of glass lighted from beneath—all this, ordinarily, seems trivial and banal; but occasionally, in an esoteric mood, I like Murray's, and can even find something picturesque and romantic in bright gowns, and gleaming shoulders, and handsome faces seen amid these bizarre surroundings. And then, of course, there is always the cooking, which leaves nothing ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... and to Praed, we can boast, in their various departments, of Calverly, of Locker-Lampson, of Mr. Andrew Lang, of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. The comic muse, indeed, has marvellously extended her blandishments during the last two generations, and has discovered methods of trivial elegance which were quite unknown to our forefathers. Here must certainly be said a word in favor of those French forms of verse, all essentially lyrical, such as the ballad, the rondel, the triolet, which have been ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... soon as he came out of the drawing room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to the thoughts of the morning. And all the theories of the significance of the Slav element in the history of the world seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the same frame of mind that he ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... from the bank; and often has the angler to regret the suspension of a successful fly-fishing by the accidental passage of a person along the opposite bank of the stream: yet, by noting the apparently trivial habits of one of nature's anglers, not only is our difficulty obviated, but our success insured. The heron, guided by a wonderful instinct, preys chiefly in the absence of the sun; fishing in the dusk of the morning and evening, on cloudy days and moonlight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... for that. A great deal depends on the safety of that boat. In fact, if you come to think about it, you will see that whatever grievance you may have, it is, after all, a very trivial one compared with the burden that weighs on me just now, and I should much prefer not to have anything to do with disputes between the passengers until we are ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... place, hung a series of family portraits. One was of a lovely girl with oval face, olive complexion, and large dark tender eyes: and this was the gem of the whole collection; but it conferred little pleasure on the spectator, owing to a trivial circumstance—it was turned with its face to the wall; and all that met the inquiring eye was an inscription on the canvas, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... portrait or to be traced the stale inspiration of the flower. And what is this bossiness around the grate but some blunt, black-leaded garland? The recital is wearisome, but the retribution of the flower is precisely weariness. It is the persecution of man, the haunting of his trivial visions, and the oppression of his ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... haste and silence. He was taciturn, moody, and excitable, and made no response to Gardiner's attempts to open conversation upon trivial subjects. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... President has the power to send in the troops," said Mrs. Cole. "Yes, but will he use that power? I don't believe McKinley is going to do anything to offend the Southern whites if they kill every Negro in the South. The interests of an alien race are too trivial to risk the sundering of the ties that are supposed by the North to bind the two sections. Each State according to the Southern view, is a sovereignty itself, and can kill and murder its inhabitants with impunity. There is no John Brown, Beecher, nor Sumner, nor Douglass, ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... saw the trouble was not with the college, the trouble was with the young man. He had mentally dwelt on some trivial slights until he had got so out of harmony with the institution that he had lost the power to derive any benefit from it. No college is a perfect institution—a 5 fact, I suppose, that most college presidents and college men are quite willing to admit; but a college does supply ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... our purpose, however, in recording such seeming trivial chat. It was not trivial on Mrs. Nightingale's part. She had made up her mind to flinch from nothing, always to grasp her nettle. Here was a nettle, and she seized it firmly. If she identified as clearly as she did that shaken lion-mane of Fenwick's with that of Gerry, the young man of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... untroubled seclusion of Simiti, in its mediaeval atmosphere of romance, and amid its ceaseless dreams of a stirring past, the child unfolded a nature that bore the stamp of divinity, a nature that communed incessantly with her God, and that read His name in every trivial incident, in every stone and flower, in the sunbeams, the stars, and the whispering breeze. In that ancient town, crumbling into the final stages of decrepitude, she dwelt in heaven. To her, the rude adobe huts were marble castles; the shabby rawhide chairs and hard wooden beds were ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... his going to prison Tesla had felt the need of writing and talking his revolution. This was because of an impatience and intolerance toward the enemy. Now that was gone. The enemy had become a blatant, trivial thing. The things it said and did were unimportant. He read with amusement the rabid denunciations of the radicals in the press of the day. The grotesque hate hymns against the new Russia, the garbled shriekings and pompous anathemas that fell hourly upon the heads of all ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... purchase an annuity, on which you might have lived at your ease, without any fear of the consequence? Can't you, from the whole budget of your philosophy, cull one apophthegm to console you for this trivial mischance?" ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... morning. Mrs. Falchion appeared to admire greatly the stalwart character of Mr. Devlin; in a few swift, complimentary words disposed of Ruth; and then made many inquiries concerning Roscoe's work, my own position, and the length of my stay in the mountains; and talked upon many trivial matters, never once referring—as it seemed to me, purposely—to our past experiences on the 'Fulvia', nor making any inquiry concerning any one ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... between them; her pride forbade such unwomanly vulgarity. The baseness that was in her took at least a more delicate exterior. She wrote to him simply and distantly, to state that there were some books and trifles of hers left at Laughton, which she prized beyond their trivial value, and to request, as she believed him to be absent from the Hall, permission to call at her old home, in her way to a visit in a neighbouring county, and point out to whomsoever he might appoint to meet her, the effects she deemed herself privileged to claim. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... subject in the following manner: "Great poverty among the lower orders in every country, has an immediate effect in multiplying the number of petty thieves; and where the bounds of the moral principle have been once over-stepped, however trivial the first offence, the step is easy from petty theft to the greater crimes of ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... who might promote each other's enjoyments, by living peaceably together, fall out in regard to some trivial misunderstanding, and engage in angry disputes, and a bitter warfare, disturbing the harmony of the neighborhood, and destroying their own happiness—the young who exercise practical observation, will be instructed, to avoid similar troubles in ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... prove to be a fool's paradise. George Eliot describes two of her characters as being "in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion—when each is sure of the other's love and all its mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the slightest gesture into thrills delicate and delicious ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... end, the full misery was there, the heart-sick, helpless consciousness of failure. What! I had had the presumption to try to translate into words, and make others feel a thrill of sacred living human feeling, that should not be touched save by worthy hands. And what had I produced? A trivial, paltry, complicated tale, with certain cheaply ingenious devices in it. I heard again the incommunicable note of profound emotion in the old man's voice, suffered again with his sufferings; and those little black marks on white paper lay dead, dead in my hands. What horrible people ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... greater contrast than "Taras Bulba" and "Dead Souls." One reveals an extraordinary power of condensation: the other an infinite expansion. One deals with heroes and mighty exploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and the most trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; the other a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the most brilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of the Romantic spirit—Aspiration; the other ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... their own judges of right and wrong, and circumstances that we do not appreciate, cannot understand, in point of fact, nor comprehend, if I may say so, intervene, and make what seems wrong in small transactions, trivial matters and pinch-penny business, seem right in the high ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... forbearance it is hardly possible to imagine the minister exceeded. And here, where chiefly he stood between a double fire of attacks, irreconcilable in themselves, and proceeding not less on friends than foes, it is now found by official exposures that Sir Robert's conduct is not open to a trivial demur. He made his preparations for vindicating the laws in such a spirit of energy, as though he had resolved upon allowing no escape for the enemy; he opened a locus penitentiae, noiseless and indulgent to the feelings of the offenders, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... worth while to chronicle such trivial incidents in this great war—the all-absorbing drama of Christendom—were it not that they were for the moment the whole war. It might be thought that hostilities were approaching their natural termination, and that the war was dying of extreme ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... glistening on her dark eyelashes. Hillyard fell into a sort of panic as he reflected upon his own vaunting talk. Compared with this woman's poignant distress, all the vicissitudes of his life seemed now quite trivial and small. Here were tears falling and Hillyard was unused to tears. Nor had he ever heard so poignant a longing in any human voice as that on which Stella's prayer to him was breathed. He was ashamed. He was also a ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... book he will hardly like anything else of its author's; if he does, he will find plenty of the same sort of stuff, less concentrated perhaps, elsewhere. But if he be a student, as well as a consumer, of the novel, he can hardly fail to see that, at its time and in its kind, it is not so trivial a thing as its subjects and their treatment might, in the abstract, be pronounced to be by the grave ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... down, her head askant like a shy bird's, "I am afraid I have a lover!" And then to think of it the child grew sad. It pained her to grieve him with the beautiful pink blossoms she had dropped, and which she knew he would return to find; but better trivial sting than lasting ache, she had heard. And perhaps in his tropical nature the passion would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... trembling with sympathy and the sudden shock from the unexpected revelation of Bauer's physical condition. He was so overwhelmed with this that the loss of the money seemed comparatively trivial. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... friends whom he had seen in London, of a hundred and one trivial matters, but of the business that had kept him in town he said nothing and she wondered what had been in his mind when he had departed from an established rule and deliberately sought her in a room that he never entered. Had he ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... great ambition was to visit England and America, of which he had heard a great deal. Strangely, on the very morning which succeeded the afternoon on which I had this conversation with him I received an intimation to the effect that he had, by order of the King, and for some trivial breach of etiquette, been sent by way of punishment to one of the most distant provinces in ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... from friendly or polite to strangers. One sea-captain was maimed for life in our quiet little bay during a misunderstanding with a hasty black possessed of a new bright tomahawk, a rare prize in those days. This was the most trivial of the many incidents by which the natives expressed their character. Inhospitable acts were common when the white folks first began to pay the island visits, for they found the blacks hostile and daring. Why invoke those long-silent spectres, white as well as black, when all active boorishness is ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... stimulated him to pine for distinction, and disqualified him from obtaining it, must have made his life miserable. If the magnificent conception of the poet's Prometheus could be lowered to any thing so trivial as a disappointed politician of the eighteenth century, its burlesque might be amply shown in a mind helplessly struggling against a sense of its own inferiority, gnawed by envy at the success of better men, and with only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... there is nothing so humiliating to a male pupil at a public school as to be called a "girl-boy." Hence, for trivial offences a boy is often punished by being sandwiched between two girls, and compelled to remain there until the offence committed has been sufficiently atoned for. Now young Willard was frequently guilty of talking during study hours, and his teacher determined to try ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... helplessly in the mud, an old-fashioned cabriolet was halted. Its driver was out and up to his knees thrashing vainly at his straining, staggering horse. The tortuous road-way was blocked, but Waring had been up and down the river-bank too many times both day and night to be daunted by a matter so trivial. He simply cautioned Jeffers to lean well over the inner wheel, guided his team obliquely up the slope of the levee, and drove quietly along its level top until abreast the scene of the wreck. One glance into the interior of the cab caused ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... customs and conventionalities which I at heart despised, even outside the levelling influence of love? But under that influence, less did I care to respect them. In the eyes of Love, rank loses its fictitious charm—titles seem trivial things. For ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... friendships and new interests sprang up out of the grave of the old one, and changed its resting-place from a cemetery into a garden. Elisabeth Farringdon could not be happy—could not exist, in fact—without some absorbing affection and interest in life. There are certain women to whom "the trivial round" and "the common task" are all-sufficing who ask nothing more of life than that they shall always have a dinner to order or a drawing-room to dust, and to whom the delinquencies of the cook supply a drama of never-failing attraction ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... remark, trivial yet enough to start Manning. He told me of them, and of their peculiarities and virtues. He descanted at length on their breeding, and whence came they and their fathers and their fathers' fathers even unto the sixth generation. He left me ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Marion's mother asked me what church I attended, and that I replied evasively. After tea there was music and we sang hymns. I doubted if I had a voice when this was proposed, but that was held to be a trivial objection, and I found sitting close beside the sweep of hair from Marion's brow had many compensations. I discovered her mother sitting in the horsehair armchair and regarding us sentimentally. I went for ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... forgotten them proves that they are important," said Clovis; "you must have noticed that it's always the important things that one forgets, while the trivial, unnecessary facts of life stick in one's memory. There's my cousin, Editha Clubberley, for instance; I can never forget that her birthday is on the 12th of October. It's a matter of utter indifference ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... to warn me of Volney's latest move, he was also the bearer of a budget of news which gravely affected the State at large and the cause on which we were embarked. The French fleet of transports, delayed again and again by trivial causes, had at length received orders to postpone indefinitely the invasion of England. Yet in spite of this fatal blow to the cause it was almost certain that Prince Charles Edward Stuart with only seven companions, of whom one was the ubiquitous O'Sullivan, had slipped ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the Council "thought fit to send for Rosseter." He came, bringing his royal license. This document was carefully "perused by the Lord Chief Justice of England," who succeeded in discovering in the wording of one of its clauses a trivial flaw that would enable the Privy Council, on a technicality, to prohibit the building: "The Lord Chief Justice did deliver to their Lordships that the license granted to the said Rosseter did extend to the building of a playhouse without the liberties of London, and not within the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... enmity toward him, and under the mask of friendship—watched! Eleven years before, when Anna was a baby, Mrs. Livingstone had playfully told the captain, who was one day deploring his want of a wife, that if he would wait he should have her daughter. To this he agreed, and the circumstance, trivial as it was, made a more than ordinary impression upon his mind; and though he as yet had no definite idea that the promise would ever be fulfilled, the little girl was to him an object of uncommon ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... sir, we are 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. Difficulties ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence, depressed By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... short time, often only a few minutes, elapses before the confusion caused by the presence of the shadows of these generally unimportant features ceases to interfere with the observation, and we can distinguish between those details which are really noteworthy and others which are trivial and evanescent. Every formation we are studying should be observed, and drawn if possible, under many different conditions of illumination. It ought, in fact, to be examined from the time when its loftiest heights are first illumined by the rising sun till they ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... trivial affair was happening at Deerhurst, the train had swiftly carried the household to the hill-city a few miles up the river; and almost before they were comfortably settled in the crowded car, the conductor was announcing: "Newburgh ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... subtleties, though—I disagree there. You can give him a simple or even a not-so-simple explanation of something he hears on the radio, dealing with it as a general theme in sociology, and he seems to grasp the broad outline with little difficulty, but in trivial matters of social behavior and human relations he's frequently uncertain, as likely as not to pull a howling bloomer. Seems unusually baffled and exasperated by some of the social mores he runs into, such as the many tabu subjects for conversation, or taking your clothes off whenever or wherever ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... Gilbert Burnet says, "several days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a discussion which could not be brought to an end." In themselves considered, many of the points at issue seem altogether too trivial for the zeal with which Baxter contested them,— the form of a surplice, the wording of a prayer, kneeling at sacrament, the sign of the cross, etc. With him, however, they were of momentous interest and importance, as things unlawful in the worship of God. He struggled desperately, but ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "Tell your lady I shall be most happy to wait upon her," so saying, he set off once more to the professor, and reported the progress of the affair. But this time the master looked a little more serious; for, from some trivial circumstances put together, he began to entertain suspicions that the lady was (as it really turned out) no other than his own wife. So he rather anxiously inquired of Bucciolo whether he intended to accept the invitation. "To be sure I ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Carker, with humility, 'you are much too sanguine, Major Bagstock. I can do very little. But Mr Dombey is so generous in his estimation of any trivial accomplishment a man like myself may find it almost necessary to acquire, and to which, in his very different sphere, he is far superior, that—' Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders, deprecating further ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... or anses, with colonnades of cocoa-palm—at the end of which you see smoking the chimney of a sugar-mill, and catch a glimpse of the hamlet of negro cabins (cases);—or merely picture to yourself one of the most ordinary, most trivial scenes: nets being hauled by two ranks of fishermen; a canot waiting for the embellie to make a dash for the beach; even a negro bending under the weight of a basket of fruits, and running along the ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the beauties, more in number, shine, I am not angry, when a casual line (That with some trivial faults unequal flows) A careless hand or human frailty ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... but who as a poet is but seldom at the highest height of the authors of "The Litany," "The Rapture," and "The Flaming Heart." Hazlitt, then, while on his way to tell us that Herrick's two best pieces are some trivial anacreontics about Cupid and the Bees—things hackneyed through a dozen literatures, and with no recommendation but a borrowed prettiness—while about, I say, to deny Herrick the spirit of love or wine, and in the same breath ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... every moment of his time thus necessarily bore, unlike most literary men, he was never ruffled in the slightest degree by the interruptions of his family, even on the most trivial occasions; the book or the pen was ever laid down with a smile, and he was ready to answer any question, or to enter with youthful readiness into any temporary topic ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... that good as this establishment might be in itself, it could only be so in a republic, or in a monarchy, like that of England, where the finances are absolutely governed by those who furnish them, and who simply furnish as much or as little as they please; but in a trivial, changing, and more than absolute state like France solidity necessarily is wanting, consequently confidence (at least of a discreet and proper kind): since a king, and under his name, a mistress, a minister, favourites; still more, extreme necessities, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow; the hands we grasped, have grown cold; the eyes we sought, have hid their lustre in the grave; and yet the old house, the room, the merry voices and smiling faces, the jest, the laugh, the most minute and trivial circumstance connected with those happy meetings, crowd upon our mind at each recurrence of the season, as if the last assemblage had been but yesterday. Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... all to substitute an appeal to reason for unquestioning obedience to authority. It was by this critical tendency, by the new clearness and precision which scholasticism gave to enquiry, that in spite of the trivial questions with which it often concerned itself it trained the human mind through the next two centuries to a temper which fitted it to profit by the great disclosure of knowledge that brought about the Renascence. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... took others many years in many places to learn. Unlike Marfinka she was cautious in her sympathies, granting her friendship only to the priest's wife and to Tushin, whom she openly called her friend. The simple things and the simple people who surrounded her did not serve only trivial purposes. She understood how to embroider on this ordinary canvas the bold pattern of a richer life with other needs, thoughts and feelings; she guessed at these by reading between the lines of everyday life other lines which expressed the desires of her mind and heart. If she was ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... we take shame to ourselves for admitting that there are points which, after all, we do not comprehend. They may be trivial; but in making up testimony, it is the little things which have weight. Trifles light as air are confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ, and confutation no less strong. When, as a proof of Nat's ardor in the pursuit of knowledge, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... long-forgotten tongue refreshed me; old scenes and memories of the camp at Oran, the never-to-be-forgotten cavalry with the scarlet cloaks, rushed on me thick and fast; incidents, trivial matters of the bazaars, faces of comrades dead, came to me in flashes. My eyes grew moist, my throat swelled, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... a trivial breach of the criminal law, and is punishable on summary conviction before a magistrate or justices only, while the more serious crimes (indictable offences) must be ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... in. The same ill-favoured, hard-looking man as ever. The ostensible business which had brought him up to Verner's Pride, proved to be of a very trivial nature, and was soon settled. It is well to say "ostensible," because a conviction arose in Lionel's mind afterwards that it was but an excuse: that Roy made it a pretext for the purpose of obtaining an interview. Though why, or wherefore, or what he gained by it, Lionel could ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is foreign ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that to most boys the first term is a trying ordeal. They are being tested and weighed. Their place in the general estimation is not yet fixed, and the slightest circumstances are seized upon to settle the category, under which the boy is to be classed. A few apparently trivial accidents of his first few weeks at school often decide his position in the general regard for the remainder of his boyhood. And yet these are not accidents; they are the slight indications which give an unerring proof of the general tendencies of his ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... poetise—that is a pleasure; everybody has something agreeable to say to you, and you are always your own master. No, friend, you should but try what it is to sit from one year's end to the other occupied with and judging the most trivial matters." ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... was an ordinary Christian name requires no proof; and if it was, the combination of Robert Hood must have been frequent also. We have taken no extraordinary pains to hunt up this combination, for really the matter is altogether too trivial to justify the expense of time; but since to some minds much may depend on the coincidence in question, we will cite several Robin Hoods in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... very restful to Lucindy to see some one who was too much interested in anything, however trivial, to be interested in her. "You know about the Italian that come round with the hand-organ last month? He was her father. Well, he died,—fell off a mow one night,—and the town sold the hand-organ ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... young fellow over by that curtain?" he could not refrain from asking his granddaughter. How, he was thinking to himself,—how could such a big, vigorous young man betray such a range of trivial interests? ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... army and both of them write home occasionally to their mother and sisters. To these two youths is devoted all the little stock of sentimentality which Maria Petrovna possesses. She can talk of them by the hour to any one who will listen to her, and has related to the Popadya a hundred times every trivial incident of their lives. Though they have never given her much cause for anxiety, and they are now men of middle age, she lives in constant fear that some evil may befall them. What she most fears is that they may ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... sufficiently suggestive of the vivid interest of the builders in the history and occupations of the world. Symbols or representations of political events, portraits of living persons, and sculptures of satirical, grotesque, or trivial subjects are of constant occurrence, mingled with the more strictly appointed representations of scriptural or ecclesiastical history; but at Torcello even these usual, and one should have thought almost necessary, successions of Bible events do not appear. The mind ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... and his fancies, inseparable perchance from the times and dispositions by which they were engendered. When men, awaking as from a dream, shaking off the deep slumber of bigotry, but not intolerance, through the medium of their yet unpractised sense saw "men as trees walking," regarding trivial and unimportant objects as paramount and essential, while others, whose nature was vital and supreme, were hardly discerned, or at best but slightly noticed or understood;—when minds long tinctured by superstition ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... in 1602 at Diseworth, an obscure town in the north of Leicestershire. His family appear to have been yeomen in this town for many generations. Passing over the measles of his infancy, and other trivial details of childhood, which he describes minutely, we find him as a boy at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, where he is the pupil of one Mr. John Brinsley. Here he learned Latin and Greek, and began to study Hebrew. In the sixteenth ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial." ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... week; kept at home and babied by his grandmother and Miss Cannon, the nurse, visited daily by his adored Aunt Rachael, and nearly as often by the uproarious young Gregorys, and duly spoiled by every maid in the house. Warren went in to see him often in the evenings, for trivial as his illness was, all the members of his immediate family agreed later that there had been in it, from the beginning, something vaguely ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... together so learned, so just, so brilliant an assembly of men to deal with delicate matters which have perhaps been too long left undealt with. Such differences of opinion as may perhaps be admitted to exist between madame the Princess de Gonzague and myself, however trivial in the beginning, have in a sense grown with the passing of time into an importance which calls imperatively for some manner ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... viewing the whole circumstances of this and previous disasters, we cannot avoid being deeply impressed with the fact that the Great Eastern had not up to that time had fair play. In her construction and general arrangements there have been some grave, and numerous more or less trivial errors. From first to last there has been a good deal of gross mismanagement; but the Great Eastern cannot, with justice, be pronounced a failure. Latterly she has done good service in laying ocean telegraph-cables, a species of work for which she is pre-eminently ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... last consented. A compact was made, and Schickaneder set to work on the libretto. As he was a popular buffoon, he invented the part of Papageno, the bird-catcher, for himself, and arranged that it should be dressed in a costume of feathers. It is a trivial part, but Schickaneder intended to tickle the fancy of the public, and succeeded. The first act was finished, when it was found that the same subject had been chosen by a rival theatre, the Leopold Stadt, which speedily announced the opera of "Kaspar der Fagottist, oder ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... down obscure alleys till they came to a chop-house. Here one could have the doubtful pleasure of seeing one's chop in its various stages of evolution. Mr Waller ordered lunch with the care of one to whom lunch is no slight matter. Few workers in the City do regard lunch as a trivial affair. It is the keynote of their day. It is an oasis in a desert of ink and ledgers. Conversation in city office deals, in the morning, with what one is going to have for lunch, and in the afternoon with what one has had ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... their discovery. Later the letters were given to Dr. McClain and to Mr. Hale, Margaret Hale's father, who was a prominent lawyer, for an equally painstaking perusal. They agreed that they were merely a trivial collection such as any one might receive from a dozen friends, preserved for the sake of the affection, not the value ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... he continued in a steady, clear voice, "we are fighting to-day the greatest of battles, and we cannot permit trivial incidents, or personal bitterness, or small persecutions, to turn us from the great work we have in hand. However our opponents may comport themselves, we must be calm, steady, sure, patient, for we know that our cause ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... wherefore, in addition to many works of the meanest kind, he painted a most beautiful "Noli me tangere" for the cloth-weaver Arcangelo, at the top of a tower that serves as a terrace, in Porta Rossa; with an endless number of other trivial works, executed by Francia because he was a person of sweet and kindly nature and very obliging, of which there is no ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... wanted, sir," said Winter. "There may be nothing in it, but I was curious to know why Hilton Fenley took the trouble to fib about such a trivial matter. His brother, too, is behaving in a way that invites criticism. I don't imagine that either of the sons shot his father—most certainly, Hilton Fenley could not have done it, and Robert, I think, was in London ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... for ever; I laughed at myself savagely, because I had thought to please; when I lay down at night sleep forsook me, and I lay, and rolled, and gloated on her charms, and cursed her insensibility, for half the night. How trivial I thought her! and how trivial her sex! A man might be an angel or an Apollo, and a mustard-coloured coat would wholly blind them to his merits. I was a prisoner, a slave, a contemned and despicable being, the butt of her sniggering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all?" There was no time for explanation. She passed on into the jeweller's with another smile on her mobile face. He had to do his stammering to himself, annoyed at the quip of triumph, at the blithe sneer, over his young vaporings. This trivial annoyance was accentuated by the effusive cordiality of the great Lindsay, whom he met in the elevator. Sommers did not like this camaraderie of manner. He had seen Lindsay snub many a poor interne. In his mail, this same morning, came a note from ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... black Marquess. "If his Illustriousness is so lacking in gallantry as to repudiate a lady on so trivial a pretext, it is he and not I who should be the object of her ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... law is that of Limitation. As the first is sometimes called that of Affirmation, so this is called that of Negation. It prescribes that a thing is not that which it is not. Its formula is, "A is not not-A." If this seems trivial, it is because ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... a trivial coincidence, though it may be noted in passing, that as it was the second astern of the commander-in-chief on whom fell the weight of the disgrace, so it was the second astern of the commander of the van who alone scored a distinct success, and achieved substantial gain of professional ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... Bureau tribunals upon frivolous complaints, were lectured, abused, ridiculed, and arbitrarily fined or otherwise punished. The jurisdiction of the Bureau courts weakened the civil courts and their frequent interference in trivial matters was not conducive to a return ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... to spoil by suggesting the most trivial addition, else I should say it would be an interesting feature to classify the exports of cotton goods, etc., etc., under ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... of location to one of her tenacious affections and deep love of home, had been a sharp wrench, and she required long familiarity to reconcile her to new conditions. Though the first and greatest change from England to America would seem to have rendered all others trivial and not to be regarded, she had shrank from each as it came, submitting by force of will, but unreconciled till years had past. In Andover she had allowed herself to take firm root, certain that from this point she would never be dislodged, and the house had gradually become filled not ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... already called the attention of Congress to the fact that in the ports of Spain and its colonies onerous fines have lately been imposed upon vessels of the United States for trivial technical offenses against local regulations. Efforts for the abatement of these exactions have thus ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... adventures and discoveries. They would be worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the writer ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pardon an affront offered by such a mean fellow, but insist upon his being dismissed; whilst he persuaded the King my husband that there was no reason for parting with a man so useful to him, for such a trivial cause. This was done by M. de Pibrac, thinking I might be induced, from such mortifications, to return to France, where he enjoyed the offices of ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... his strength. Further, we are told that his mother and sisters never tired of recommending him to wrap up carefully in cold and wet weather, and that, like a good son and brother, he followed their advice. Lastly, he objected to smoking. Some of the items of this evidence are very trivial, but taken collectively they have considerable force. Of greater significance are the following additional items. Chopin's sister Emilia was carried off at the age of fourteen by pulmonary disease, and his father, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... every inch of that granite wall. He lived on the road with the men. No detail of the job was too trivial for his attention. A more experienced man would have left more to his foremen. But Jim was new to responsibility and his nervousness drove him into an intimate contact with his workmen that was to stand him in good stead all his life. It was in building this ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... scenes, and anecdotes, to let you know in some measure what 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 of this kind which may crop out here and there, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... noticed the stain on the carpet and the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat, perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then she tried to ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... were landed, and we three lads had more than one spell on shore before we left that port, notably being in the city on the night of the Feast of Lanterns; but though we had several more brushes with pirates, they were all trivial affairs with small junks, the destruction of the last three being the crowning point of our achievements. Indeed, this and the sinking of another in search of which, upon excellent information, Captain Thwaites had suddenly gone after we had ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... great a lady, who on the very brink of her own joy could stoop to protect and comfort a creature so far beneath her, that to most ladies her sorrow and desertion would have been things which were too trivial to count; for 'twas guessed, and talked over with great freedom and much shrewdness, that this was a country victim of Sir John Oxon's, and he having deserted his creditors, was read enough to desert his rustic beauty, finding ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have noticed—I went on to say—the following circumstances connected with these sudden impressions. First, that the condition which seems to be the duplicate of a former one is often very trivial,—one that might have presented itself a hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... till she reached a long open shed, carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night, that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro till her whole ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... an hour or so, supremely significant from a biological standpoint, are related a very large number of my dreams. Again and again events of that day and of the preceding days form the basis of dreams; trivial circumstances are revived one by one and fragments of the experience itself are seized, distorted and each woven into what I can no longer term "the baseless fabric of a vision." For instance the day preceding I broke my umbrella and found a shop where it was mended. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... take anything?" he asked. And the trivial question cloaked so earnest an entreaty that her heart was filled with profound emotion. She knew well enough that each of his words was eloquent of another thing. The excitement springing from the gaiety which pulsed around her was slowly gaining on her. Some of the fever of all these little ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... moment live in Thee.—I have the witness within me, but daily feel my own weakness. All my good comes from heaven, and requires constant renewal. I have faith in God, but thirst for more. I want to be deluged with the love of God.—A trivial circumstance has been a source of mental exercise; but thank God, have had power to keep my tongue. Let the issues of my heart ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... crying bitterly, and said, "He lives only to see you." I went upstairs and sat down by the sofa, on which lay the Grand., looking haggard, but still a noble wreck. I took his hand, and he began to talk of very trivial matters—of Cambridge everyday life—his favourite theme of old. He seemed to be testing his strength, for at last he said: "I shall be able to talk to-morrow; I may last some weeks; but were it not for the pang that all of you would feel, I should prefer that it should ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... nature of the whole of life that these things should pass. "Look back on this bitterness a year hence and see how trivial it seems" was one of the little wisdoms that helped Peter's courage in after years. And to a boy of twelve years a beating is forgotten with amazing quickness, especially if it is a week of holiday and there have been other beatings not so very ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... ordinary business was done, to the disgust of expectant strangers, which was as trivial as possible in its nature,—so arranged, apparently, that the importance of what was to follow might be enhanced by the force of contrast. And, to make the dismay of the novice stranger more thorough, questions were asked and answers were given in so low a voice, and Mr. Speaker uttered ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... ways in all the great ones; but he thought that Homer, AEschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, Shakspere, and Goethe,—these seven,—were the greatest of the great, up to the year 1800. They are not all equal in rank, and even in the work of that heptarchy of genius, there were trivial ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,—there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,—are useful. It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed. In this year of 1817 four young ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... wishes it to appear, and rarely, if ever, cuts or slashes a proof-sheet. And this punctuality is, in a great measure, a feature of his life. He is always in time, and never waits for anybody. He employs no private secretary, and when he receives a letter, answers it on the instant. No matter how trivial the request, the next outward-bound mail will carry away one of his autographs, if he thinks ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Ascot, Epsom, and Goodwood, by which fortunes change owners in an hour and so many men are ruined, but rather to the general habit of betting upon any and every subject to settle a question, no matter how trivial, for which the Englishman is everywhere renowned on the Continent. Betting is with most other nations a form of speech, but with Englishmen it is a serious fact, and no one will be long in their company without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... 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
... Flanders, vol. 221) are instructive: "The conduct of the army under the Princes of France is universally reprobated. Their appearance in dress, in attendants, in preparations, is ridiculous. As an instance, however trivial, it may be mentioned that on one of the waggons was written Toilette de Monsieur. The spirit of vengeance, however, which they discover on every occasion is far more serious. Wherever they have passed, they have exercised acts of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the greatest political work that the world has ever seen, was falling in ruins around them. When we want information about the march of armies and the fall of States, the chroniclers to whom we turn for guidance, withholding that which we seek, deluge us with trivial talk about the squabbles of monks and bishops, about Timothy the Weasel and Peter the Fuller, and a host of other self-seeking ecclesiastics, to whose names, to whose characters, and to whose often violent deaths we are profoundly and absolutely indifferent. ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... days to refer some extraordinary event to some given supernatural cause, even though there might be no ostensible link between the two: now, such a suggestion would be treated by the vast majority with derision or contempt. On the other hand, the most trivial occurrences, such as sneezing, the appearance of birds of ill omen, the crowing of a cock, and events of like unimportance happening at a particular moment, might, by some unseen concatenation of causes and effects, exercise an incomprehensible influence upon ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... personal adventures. But in that part of my life which may be considered relatively of a public character, or in which events of a public interest occurred, I have ample record made at the time. In what is peculiar to myself, and so of relatively trivial moment, dates and the order of events are of little importance. It occurred to me in the connection, that to give a human document of Puritan family life, and the development of a mind from the archaic severity of New England Puritanism to a complete freedom of thought, by ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... thoroughly, and I find that your fear is amply justified. Wherever you go or whatever you do, use particular care. Don't have anything to do with any stranger. Just use what your judgment and common sense tell you is a reasonable degree of caution in every direction no matter how trivial. You understand?" ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... responded in the least to the appeal of her words. His face had grown like granite. He turned to the purser, who was strolling by. As though unconsciously, the finer qualities of his voice had gone as he engaged the latter in some trivial conversation. ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... day he would write. He was writing a little now, at night. In his room at the top of the Schoolhouse. Yet the things that he had written seemed trivial as he thought of them. What he wanted was to strike a ringing note. To have the fellows say when they read it, "If it is true for him it is true ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... else was noble and impressive,—where the direction was faultless, and the singing and instrumentation as perfectly controlled as if they were the result of one volition,—this anvil-beating was alone ignoble and discordant,—trivial and huge merely. Not even the artillery accompaniment, in which the cannon were made to pronounce words of two syllables, was ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... that of Pallas, the goddess of intelligence, who is the sole active divinity in this Book. She appears to Nausicaa at the beginning in the form of a dream, and bids the maiden look after some washing. Our first question is, why call in a goddess for such a purpose? The procedure seems trivial and unnecessary, and so it would be under ordinary circumstances. But through this humble and common-place duty Nausicaa is made a link in the grand chain of the Return of Ulysses, which is the divine plan underlying the whole poem, and is specially the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... able to determine, he would never return to Italy. But it was necessary he should go somewhere, and he had no alternative plan. For a short time in this last summer he entertained the idea of a visit to Scotland; it had indeed definitely shaped itself in his mind; but an incident, trivial in itself, though he did not think it so, destroyed the first scheme, and it was then practically too late to form another. During the second week in August the weather broke. There could no longer be any question ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of sensibility, which under her circumstances would have been a source of perpetual dissatisfaction, had it not been qualified with an extreme sweetness and easiness of temper. She was far from being entitled to the appellation of a beauty. Her person was petite and trivial; her complexion savoured of the brunette; and her face was marked with the small-pox, sufficiently to destroy its evenness and polish, though not enough to destroy its expression. But, though her appearance was ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... We did not purchase a Newfoundland or Norwegian sealer and fix it over for our purposes, as in the case of other expeditions. The Roosevelt was built of American timber in an American shipyard, engined by an American firm with American metal, and constructed on American designs. Even the most trivial items of supplies were of American manufacture. As regards personnel almost the same can be said. Though Captain Bartlett and the crew were Newfoundlanders, the Newfoundlanders are our next-door neighbors and essentially our first cousins. This expedition ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... with the excuse of some trivial attention to her comfort, Adams came again to Elizabeth's seat and they were soon talking as interestedly as on the previous evening. A piece of news in the morning paper gave him opportunity to turn the conversation upon the profession of teaching for women and he talked ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... lady? I began to weave a dozen romantic stories in my head about my fellow-passengers, quite forgetting all my recent fears about the 'knights of the road.' So sorry did I feel for the woman that I leant across and addressed some trivial, polite remark to her, but received no reply. I gently touched her cloak to draw her attention, but the lady's temper seemed as testy as that of her companion; she abruptly twisted away from my ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... it,' was the answer. 'My correspondence is so extensive that there would be no limit to the accumulation if I did not destroy the trivial letters.' ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quiet directness of manner. He had a way of abruptly finishing his speech without the usual lowering of the voice. And it is just that small drop of half a tone that invites further confidence. In such small matters as these lies the secret of conversational success, and by such trivial tricks of the tongue we are daily and hourly deceived. The man or the woman who lowers the tone at the end of speech defers to the listener's opinion, and usually receives it. The manner with which Fitz broke off led his listener to believe that he was not attending to the conversation. Agatha ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as unimportant and trivial to the King of {2} England as his title of King of France was unreal and theatrical. The remnant of the Jacobites could not with truth call the heir to the throne a foreigner, and they could not in reason hope to make such a demonstration ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... weight, disturbed functions, etc.,—and it may supply the explanation of the disturbance caused by an active anal fissure, which is a potent noci-associator, and the consequent disproportionate relief after the trivial operation for its cure. Noci-association would well explain also the great functional disturbances of the viscera ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia, and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."—In the Center, and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... life, but his daughter in marriage, with a dowry of half his kingdom; choosing rather to spare his comeliness than to punish his bravery. But the other, in the greatness of his soul, valued as nothing the life which he was given on sufferance, and spurned his safety as though it were some trivial benefit. Of his own will he embraced the sentence of doom, saying, that Ragnar would exact a milder vengeance for his son if he found that he had made his own choice in selecting the manner of his death. The enemy wondered at his rashness, and promised that he should die ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... cigarette, lay down on a couch, and went on thinking about him. She gave no thought to the matter of whether they had been watched. Lord Loudwater had become of less interest than ever to her; his furies seemed trivial. She had a feeling that he had become a ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... that can be heard miles away through the clear, still, frosty air. Their songs are the ancient ditties of the plantation, and are humorous or pathetic in sound rather than in sense. And yet even to an educated ear they have a certain interest, like everything, however trivial, connected with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... think that every one has almost a right to some happiness and a certain indulgence and the 'droit de temperament,' means something and need not always be selfish. If you do not think this, then there is only the other extreme of austere abnegation of self for any cause however trivial. Nature is the only guide and I don't believe Nature is bad. Of course the curse of freedom will allow one for a long time to distort and vilely modify natural instincts, but at least one can fly from the too palpable artificial. Dear ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... followed skirted the base of one range of hills. The house which served as the headquarters of the picket was on the other side. A meadow as level as a board stretched between. I remember seeing a boy come out and catch a horse, while we were advancing. Somehow it seemed to be a trivial thing to do just then. I knew better afterwards. Our skirmishers had done their work, had swept the woods on either side clean, and the pickets had fallen back on the main body; but not all of them. One man, if not more, had only had time to fall dead. The one I saw, ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... of the attack following so trivial an offense aroused Bill Carmody's anger. The man's back was toward him, and Bill grasped the back-drawn arm at the wrist and with an ungentle jerk whirled the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... could I believe that in London itself, in the heart of the civilised and religious world, she was going through trials which make mine, in the grim darkness of the Polar night, seem trivial and easy? ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... they'll forget us. It's our fate, it can't be helped. A time will come when everything that seems serious, significant, or very important to us will be forgotten, or considered trivial. [Pause] And the curious thing is that we can't possibly find out what will come to be regarded as great and important, and what will be feeble, or silly. Didn't the discoveries of Copernicus, or Columbus, say, seem unnecessary and ludicrous at first, while wasn't it thought that some rubbish ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... their appearance! This event, trivial in itself, is significant as showing that the Paris central markets are able to supply Parisians not only with necessities but with luxuries. The mute oyster that comes in with the months having the letter "R" in their names bears eloquent ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... at all costs, under whatever temptation, it was wiser to be frank. It would have been easier for the moment to paint the boy and girl friendship in neutral tints, but if its details came out later, trivial and innocent as they were, the economy of today would cost her dear tomorrow, Her own impression was that Clowes had never been jealous of her in his life. But the pretence of jealousy was one of his ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... game!" I cried, after a moment or two, feeling a little irritated by the trivial occupation that had been thrust ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc |
