"Trifle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sixtieth year, and wore a white camellia stuck in her rosewood-colored hair. Her face and arms were plastered with enough flour to make a plate of fritters; but for all that, she had a grand air and superb eyes, whose commanding glance was softened by so kindly a smile that Amedee was a trifle reassured. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... quality of the line is sure in a measure to disappear. A reduction of height or width by one-third is the usual amount; but many of our modern designers obtain their best effects by making their drawings but a trifle larger than the required reproduction. Some even make their drawings of the same size; others only from a twelfth to a sixth larger. As a rule, the less the reduction the less the departure from the effect of the original, and the more certainly satisfactory the result, although ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... dwelling on this trifle, which can have no charm for you, captain; but the simple words brought me an indescribable joy, which had its source in the glance directed towards me as she spoke. So some village lighted by sunrise, some ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... wrote me at great length upon every conceivable public question. His letters were always interesting, but as he did not avail himself of a stenographer, and as he wrote a very difficult hand to read, they became at times a trifle tiresome. I have retained a large number of his letters, and as they are so characteristic of the man I venture to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... a man can pay twenty shillings in the pound and a trifle over, what does it matter if all the judges in the land was to call ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... as I just now hinted, young women of large fortunes may have little trouble in finding themselves establishments, they ought not, therefore, to trifle when proper ones are in their power, nor to suppose themselves equal to any they ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... The Princess, for reply, took out of her work-bag a book of devotions and handed it to the Abbe. He received it with a cringing bow, but as he glanced at it a suggestion of repugnance flitted across his lips. "Or does she care first to hear the trifle of news which I brought ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... but a trifle—a sum not worth naming," he muttered to himself; and so, indeed, it seemed to one who had "turned over" thousands like mere heaps of dust. He never thought that it was an amount equal to Harold's yearly income for which the young man had thus ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... undoubtedly been given, by the properly constituted authorities, the command of all the land operations. Stockton, however, claimed to hold supreme land command by instructions from Commodore Sloat already quoted. Through the internal evidence of Stockton's letters and proclamations, it seems he was a trifle inclined to be bombastic and high-flown, to usurp authority, and perhaps to consider himself and his operations of more importance than they actually were. However, he was an officer disciplined and trained to obedience, and his absurd contention is not in character. ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... looking down at her, smiling good-naturedly, a trifle sarcastically perhaps, and the frown ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... well, and the mass of huts cluster close to the walls. The five guns here deposited by Sharmarkay when expelled from Berberah, stand on the ground outside the fort, which is scarcely calculated to bear heavy carronades: they are unprovided with balls, but that is a trifle where pebbles abound. Moreover, Abdy's slaves are well armed with matchlock and pistol, and the Bedouin Tul Jailah [27] find the spear ineffectual against stone walls. The garrison has frequently been blockaded by its troublesome neighbours, whose ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... fired one of his pistols at a mark: That the Indian who had till that time continued with them left them abruptly, and joined the body in the wood: That the master, even after this, by an infatuation that is altogether unaccountable, continued to trifle away his time on shore, and did not attempt to recover the boat till ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... May), and his deputy lieutenant's uniform was laid on the bed. Edmund might not have taken the trouble to go, but a kindly message from a very high place as to his troubles had made him feel it a more gracious response to do so. The valet was a trifle distant, if any shade of manner could have been detected in his deferential attitude towards his master. Dawkins was not pleased with Sir Edmund; he felt that his ten years of service had been based on a delusion; he had not intended to be valet to a ruined man. Happily he had ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... used the results of her teaching well on her behalf today. It is no trifle—a clear income of ten thousand a year; but she will make a good ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that she did not appear a day older. There was the same plump, erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair, the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye—only perhaps the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be. She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would never be twenty-three again. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... your excellency," begged Gneisenau; "do not trifle with your dear eyes, destined to see still many beautiful things, and gladden the world by their heroic glances! What can a triumph of a few hours' duration be to you to whom every day will be a triumph, and whom ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... glorious kingdom, we shall perhaps be persecuted and thrown into prison with him. I will draw back. It was a good thing that I was always prudent and cautious, and have now and then laid aside a trifle out of the bag in case of need. How useful I should find those 300 pence now which the foolish woman threw away on a useless mark of respect. If, as seems likely, the society is about to dissolve, they would have remained in my hands—then I should have been safe for ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... were likely to be of more value. But the veriest trifle, interpreted by the spirit in which I offer it, may express my sense of the liberality manifested throughout this transaction ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... for the death of her old parents, you'd know as much as these gentlemen, and I wouldn't have to sing an encore. Well, here's what it is: simply of the remaining treasure of the Berne bears, which General Lecourbe is sending to the citizen First Consul by order of General Massena. A trifle, only a hundred thousand francs, that they don't dare send over the Jura on account of M. Teysonnet's partisans, who, they pretend, are likely to seize it; so it will be sent by Geneva, Bourg, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... beside; oh, disappointed and therefore enraged reader; positively this is the sum-total of what I can recall from the wreck of years; and certainly it is not much. Even of Sappho, though time has made mere ducks and drakes of her lyrics, we have rather more spared to us than this. And yet this trifle, simple as you think it, this shred of a fragment, if the reader will believe me, still echoes with luxurious sweetness in my ears, from some unaccountable hide-and- seek of fugitive childish memories; just as a marine shell, if applied steadily to the ear, awakens (according to the fine image ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... conscience dared avow, till his eyes at length opened themselves too late to its culpable nature. His mind, of that high-wrought and desponding tone which often characterizes extraordinary genius, and too sincere to trifle with impunity, struggled then fruitlessly against a fatality formerly imagined, but become real; and the flower of his life was passed amid illusions and conflicts, in alternate self-deception and self-reproach, in wild and beautiful visions from which he awoke to sickness of heart and weariness ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... his coronation William was not far from forty years of age. He was in the full tide of a vigorous physical life, in height and size, about the average, possibly a trifle above the average, of the men of his time, and praised for his unusual strength of arm. In mental gifts he stood higher above the general run of men than in physical. As a soldier and a statesman he was clear-headed, quick to see the right ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... lodgings, I took it, and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an unheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes; this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss of divine ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Fairburn was already warming to the work, and he sat his steed firmly. Then a ball struck the gallant animal, and in an instant the rider was flung over its head. The young cornet narrowly escaped being trampled to pieces by his comrades as they swept by in full career. Up he sprang, however, a trifle stunned for the moment, but otherwise no worse. Quickly recovering his sword, which had flown from his grasp, he darted after his more fortunate companions, and arrived breathless on ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... of the closing of the door Mr. Markrute pressed the button of a wonderful trifle of Russian enamel and emeralds, which lay on his writing table, and a quiet servant ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... pronoun? Granted that whom is a weak sister, that the two cases have been leveled in you (in it, that, and what they were never distinct, so far as we can tell[141]), and that her as an objective is a trifle weak because of its formal identity with the possessive her, is there any reason to doubt the vitality of such alternations as I see the man and the man sees me? Surely the distinction between subjective I and objective ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... a trifle, and he hesitated before he said, "I am not questioning your judgment, Captain, but you and I have camped out enough to know that a good camp-mate is about the scarcest article to be found. If we take in ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... slight the influence of the breeze, yet such was the formation of the continent that a trifling cause was multiplied almost beyond the power of figures to express its momentous effect upon the destinies of these companion raindrops. Who can calculate the future of the smallest trifle when a mud crack swells to an Amazon and the stealing of a penny may end on the scaffold? The act of a moment may cause a life's regret. A trigger may be pulled in an instant, but the soul ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a trifle," answered Rogers and Murray in a breath. "We are over well supplied, and so you can't want, you know; and then the chances are that, before long, we pick up a good ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... daylight the following morning. When Hollister offered to see her ashore and to her destination, she accepted without any reservations. It comforted Hollister's sadly bruised ego to observe that she even seemed a trifle pleased. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a feeling of hatred had developed for Adelaide. She was certain that she had marred the happiness of her son. The heartlessness of a flirt who could trifle with the affection of one who had a right to assume in her an honor equal to his own deserved only to be hated with even righteous hatred. She saw the scrawled note which she knew Percy had not seen, but what did it signify? An eccentric old ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... girl walked quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats. "What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the weapons carrier. The crew chief had his hand on his microphone switch. He nodded curtly and adjusted a dial. The lens barrel of the projector swung toward the house, stopped, swung back a trifle, and held steady. ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole
... money to Monsieur Maxence Gilet; who, for six years, has paid for your debauchery. Listen, both of you, to my guardianship accounts; after that, I shall have more to say. You will see, after these papers are read, whether you can still trifle with me,—still trifle with family laws by betraying the secrets of this house, and reporting to a Monsieur Maxence Gilet what is said and what is done here. For three thousand francs, you became spies; for ten thousand, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... credit her hearing. Still more astonished was she when Cornelius actually struck a few chords and began to sing. The song was one of those common drawing-room ones more like the remnants of a trifle the day after a party than any other dish for human use. But there was one mercy in it: the words and the music went together in a perfect concord of weak worthlessness; and Hester had not to listen, with the miserable feeling that rude hands were ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Mr. Bolton's excitement had cooled a trifle, and it came into his mind that possibly he might have acted a little hastily; but the order had been given to cut off the right of way, and he was not the man to ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... shouted the Provencal, "is that we are wasting a deal of breath in settling that scoundrel's hash. I've had my little troubles in my lifetime, and plenty of 'em, but I don't like to see people trifle with the affairs of the law; it's unlucky. Let ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... It was the merest trifle, but it amused me; and I have often thought since of what big things grow sometimes out of the merest trifles. School-days are often so monotonous that boys jump at little things for their entertainment, and as there was some good-humoured mischief in this which would do no one any ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... intended for the toilet, seems to have become accessary to the formation of the general character of the nation: They trifle in council, they trifle at the head of an army, ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... books, in large type, and while away many lonely and tedious hours, when riding on the camel's back. Only one of the slaves is sick, to whom I give a ride every morning. The rest go pretty well—in fact, our short days' journeys, during these last several days, are a trifle ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the result will be shown in the end. But it's early to form any such opinions, and out of place to draw any comparisons in disparagement of any of our colleagues. We are all yoked together and must pull together. The work is no trifle. It is Herculean in all its aspects—in its reactive effects upon our country and its future destiny, as well as in its difficulties. Yet never did men stand in a position to do more lasting good than we, if we act with a single eye to the object in ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... the extreme propriety of the students. Some of them were playing at pitch and toss in the thievish corners. At least half a dozen pairs of antagonists were settling their quarrels with their fists or with quarterstaves, in various secluded nooks. Songs, gay rather than grave, not to say a trifle licentious, resounded; while once or twice he was asked: "Are you North or South?"—a query to which he hardly knew how to reply, Kenilworth being north ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... beautiful Constance: she started at her own likeness, and turned involuntarily from the unflattering mirror. Beside it, on her table, lay a locket, given her by Godolphin just before they married, and containing his hair; it was a simple trifle, and the simplicity seemed yet more striking amidst the costly and modern jewels that were scattered round it. As she looked on it, her heart, all woman still, flew back to the day on which, whispering eternal love, he hung it round her ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... up, and then stood a trifle irresolutely, his hand feeling over the coins in his pocket. Presently he produced two of them, a sovereign ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... old man with bright, blinking eyes that questioned the truth of this statement. His pop had never lied to him, and although Pete suspected what was in the wind, he had no ground for argument. Annersley was a trifle surprised that the boy consented to stay without demur. Annersley might have known that Young Pete's very silence was significant; but the old man was troubled and only too glad to find his young partner so amenable to his suggestion. When Annersley left the store Young Pete's "So-long, pop," ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... take rooms in Albemarle Street or Jermyn Street, and just be content to be a man-about-town. I have saved some twenty thousand pounds—a mere trifle, but sufficient for my needs, and I shall now proceed to enjoy it. Pardon me for troubling you with my personal affairs. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... of the Potomac) pushed with unwonted vigor over the mountains, inspired, it is said, by the accidental foreknowledge of Lee's whole Maryland plan, and clashed with Lee across the bridges of this pretty highland stream. As an episode he lost Harper's Ferry; but that was a trifle. It was a murderous duel, that which raged around the Dunker church and over the road leading from Sharpsburg to Hagerstown. Lee's forty thousand men were shielded by an elbow of the Potomac; his batteries of horse-artillery under Stuart were murdering the forces of Hooker, when that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... The sanctum was a trifle larger than the outer room, but almost equally bare; half-a-dozen deed-boxes were piled up in one corner. Stalking in with his chin in the air, Mahony found himself in the presence of a man of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... round the big pond for the concealed valuables—but never finding aught but disappointment. The neighbours said that the silent, morose man, who spent his days walking about the estate with bent head and anxious, searching eyes, had become a trifle crazed; and indeed his fruitless search after his hidden wealth had grown into ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Mr. Pepys says of the rent in his camlet cloak, was but a trifle, yet it troubled me; and I was at a good deal of pains to efface any marks by which I thought my secret could be traced before the conclusion, when I relied on it with the same hope of producing effect, with which the Irish ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... caught. They were taken with the hand, were harpooned with common unshod sticks, were stabbed with knives, caught with the insect net, &c. Other kinds of salmon with deep red flesh are to be found in the large rivers of the island. We obtained here for a trifle a welcome change from the preserved provisions of which we had long ago become quite tired. The Expedition was also presented by the Alaska Company with a fine fat ox, milk, and various other provisions, and I cannot sufficiently value the goodwill shown to us ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... he said, "to trifle with the truth is always unpleasant. Besides, you are a Fentolin, and our love of truth is proverbial. But there are times, you know, when for the good of others we must sacrifice our scruples. So you told ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman, and her 'cuisine' is a good one; I have heard both spoken of with great praise, Monsieur le Chevalier," replied the captain with an almost paternal manner; "I should be grieved to take you from one or the other for a trifle like that which procures me the honor of crossing swords with you. Suppose, then, that you are only taking a lesson from your fencing-master, ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... he shall be your husband." She shrinks, painfully, at this bluntness and precipitancy. The father, not noticing, unpockets jewels to show her. "Look at this circlet, behold these clasps. The sum of his possessions makes these the merest trifle. How, my precious child, should you not care for them? And it will all be yours for the exchanging of rings with him. But... neither of you speaks...." He looks at them in turn. They have neither heeded nor heard, they are ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... write, too, Sam?" I asked, a trifle uneasily. "Now, you know, Sam, if somebody had kept Keats alive as a perfectly good lawyer or bank clerk—or farmer—he wouldn't have been half as much to the world as he is as a sadly dead poet. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have souls, and love the blessings of liberty; let not mothers nor fathers weep over democracy's wrongs; nor let man charge us with picturing the horrors of a black romance when we introduce the spectacle in the room of punishments: such, be it known, is not our business, nor would we trifle unjustly with the errors of society; but, if chivalry have blushes, we do not object to their being used here. The keeper, followed by Blowers, enters a small room at the further end of the passage. It is some sixteen feet long ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... you are stopping here, and you come to the office again the day after to-morrow at four o'clock in the afternoon. Very likely by that time there will be something definite to report to you." The commissioner hesitated, and looked a trifle embarrassed. "You said your husband had insured his life for $5,000. Do you know whether the premiums have been kept paid upon ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Janet's welcome was cordial enough, though a trifle flustered. Whatever thrifty, hard-working farmer folk might think of gay, Bohemian Blair Stanley in his absence, in his presence even they liked him, by the grace of some winsome, lovable quality in the soul of him. He had "a way with him"—revealed even in the manner with which he ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I would do otherwise. I would give a trifle out of beauty, as an example by which men could guess the rest and love it all; one strain from an angel's song; one flower from the distant land, that men might know that such things were. Then, too, I would put common life into loveliness, so that the lowest hind would ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might speak to them what he knew: print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!—Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in some circumstances, find it convenient to speak also,—witness our present meeting here! There is, one would ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Mistress or the Master—especially with the Mistress, Lad would forget he was middle-aged and dignified; and would play like a crazy puppy. But, for the most part he had begun to carry his years a trifle seriously. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... literary existence and to supply the market with a variety of choice, didactic essays along the line of high thinking; but the demand did not come up to the supply, and presently he abandoned his original lofty intention in favor of a sort of dubious romance. The financial returns, however, while a trifle more regular and encouraging, were not of sufficient importance to justify him in giving up his friendly claims on my house, my library, my time, my favorite lounge, and my best brand of cigars, in return for which he contributed philosophic opinions and much strenuous advice on topics in ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... he came to describe to his mother any childish play, I took care to be present, when I could, that I might listen to the way in which he expressed himself, often scarcely exceeded in his later years. Except this trifle, I remember him only as a good-tempered boy, always occupied, playing with his sisters without assumption of any kind." One effect of this early discipline showed itself in his freedom from vanity and susceptibility,—those ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Even in her present disheveled condition, she was beautiful—a trifle on the petite side, with black hair and black eyes that quirked up oddly at the outer corners. Her nails were black-lacquered and spotted with little gold stars, evidently a ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... of reflection left in her at all, as she walked slowly up the street, past the gay shops, where, a happy, chattering little girl, she had so often lingered with her father, to choose some pretty trifle. Almost without thinking, so familiar was the road, did she enter the Redoute, and ascend the wide staircase; and then at last she feels a thrill as she sees before her the big salons that she has so ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... invited to a silver wedding yesterday. Twenty-five years are no trifle—and for twenty-five years they'd been quarrelling. The whole love affair had been one long shindy, with many little ones in between! And yet they loved one another, and were grateful for all the good that had come to them; the evil was forgotten, wiped out—for a moment's ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... and glanced contemptuously at the questioner. All the company felt a trifle disappointed by Jane's manner. They had expected ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... slender hand, holding a little brass hurricane lantern, appeared at the opening, followed by a sweet, smiling face, while just behind it peered another, only a trifle older and more serious, yet every whit as pretty. Wing raised his old felt hat and mentally cursed the luck that had sent him down there in his ragged shirt-sleeves. Pike, the cynic, busied himself in getting the buckets from underneath ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as Rousseau did with his housekeeper. We, that is Knighton and Ellis and I, used to return on Sunday night in my father's carriage by the back way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that it speedily creates new restraints. Prosperity and civilization are far from being synonymous terms. The savage who is able to glut himself with the whale that has just been stranded on his coast, is more prosperous than he was the day before, but he is not more civilized, perhaps a trifle less so. The working community that is suddenly glutted by an afflux of work and wages is in exactly the same position as the savage who is suddenly enabled to fill himself with a rich mass of decaying blubber. It is prosperity; it is ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... devoting herself and her fortune to the education and Christianisation of the Chinese at Ningpo. She seems a nice person, but I could not get as much conversation with her as I wished, because the Bishop, &c., were present all the time. She has to pay the girls a trifle, as an equivalent for what their labour is worth, for coming to her school, or to board them and keep them, as it is not at all in the ideas of the Chinese that women should be educated. She does not seem ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... something on his tongue that wanted listening to,—such was his aspect; and if one joined company with him, the strangeness grew from moment to moment. His voice and its modulations were a perfect treat. As for what he had to say, it was everything from odd comment on a passing trifle, eloquent enunciation of some truth, or pregnant remark on some lofty subject, down to petty gossip, so delivered as to authorize a doubt whether it might not possibly be an awkward effort at observing something outside of himself, or at getting a grasp of something that he supposed actual. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... over, particularly in small boats. While we were in the village of Bergen, a person came to us who was willing to take us up through the Northwest Kil, where we were inclined to go, because Jaques[175] of Long Island and his associates had bought for a trifle, a piece of land there of twelve thousand morgen,[176] and he had related wonders to us about it; and that above his land, and above the falls which are more than an hour's distance from it, there was another tract still better, which was ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... on to a theater. The play was a society trifle—a thing of the moment. Wingrave listened gravely, without a smile or any particular sign of interest. At the end of the second act, he turned ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cut wood, to cut cheese, to cut pencils, to cut throats; for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects. The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... an honest face, Ignaz by name, agreed for a trifle to carry our bundles and ample provision of food to the Olm. He made a serious matter of it, however, when he pertinaciously insisted on four in the morning being the hour for starting. The dispute finally ended by the agreement to allow Ignaz ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the captain, solemnly; "at least I'll try to separate the ideas—they are a trifle incongruous—if you'll tell me how at that distance you could mingle your devotions with appraisal ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... the Governor). Let this suffice you, sir! It is inhuman To trifle with a father's anguish thus. Although this wretched man had forfeited Both life and limb for such a slight offence, Already has he suffer'd tenfold death. Send him away uninjured to his home; He'll know thee well in future; and this hour He and his ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... you imagine," replied Aladdin; "the sultan is mistaken, if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected that he would have set a higher price upon her incomparable charms. His demand is but a trifle to what I could have done for her. But while I think of satisfying his request, go and get something for our dinner, and leave ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... told just now. Lady Catherine kept the best and most fashionable company, and she was never at home an evening that the house was not full. There was money to be made, and plenty of all things; but I did not like it; and having saved a trifle, one of her ladyship's sons-in-law—he was the best of the two—got me the place at ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... remarked, helping himself to the entree, "we handle life amongst ourselves with perpetual kid gloves. We are always afraid of molesting the liberty of the subject. A trifle more brutality sometimes would make for strength. We are like a dentist whose work suffers because he is afraid of ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... afternoon, glancing occasionally through the narrow window, he was mortified to see that the promising rain-clouds, which might yet have saved his cabbages, were dispersing; and then, to crown all, just as he was finishing for the day he had caught hold of a pair of pincers a trifle too near the white-hot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... pulled the cap from his head and seated himself at his desk, motioning them to other chairs, John was astonished by the change in his appearance. His hair, usually so perfectly combed, was tousled and unkempt and his eyes were a trifle bloodshot. He noticed that Brennan was also studying ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... were either brown Orientals or black Africans. The old Frenchman was very civil, merely shrugged his shoulders when he saw our flag, and observed that it was the fortune of war, and that, as we were the most numerous, France had lost no honour, though she lost the dependency. He supplied us for a trifle with a bottle of goat's milk, and as many melons, pines, and mangoes as we could manage to eat. He politely assisted in taking them down to the boat. As he did so he looked round the horizon seaward, and up at the sky. "Messieurs will do well to remain at anchor for a few hours longer," he observed. ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... he had slept very well indeed. He was a trifle disappointed that she made no comment on his promptness in answering his grandfather's summons. He felt such promptness deserved commendation. At school they rang two bells at ten minute intervals, thus giving a fellow a second chance. It had been a ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... and change the subject. Yes, 'The Star Spangled Banner' if you like, or anything else." Rebecca sank into her seat and pulled the singing book from her desk. Miss Dearborn's public explanation had shifted some of the weight from her heart, and she felt a trifle raised in her self-esteem. ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Hayley's letter is a trifle too presumptuous in tone even for an old friend; but it affords one more proof of Pitt's neglect of literary men, though it is but fair to remember that in 1793-4 he was hard pressed by the outbreak ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... good man, not at all," returned Chivey, superciliously; "you are a very civil, well-spoken young man—here is a trifle for you." ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... Stewart as his property, and "hired him out" for $180 per annum. As a master, Woodhouse was considered to be of the "moderate" type, according to Stewart's judgment. But respecting money matters (when his slaves wanted a trifle), "he was very hard. He did not flog, but would not give a slave a cent of money ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... two leagues, on the south side of which are numerous islands, low, covered with trees and very pleasant, with large meadows, having plenty of game, some being, so far as I could judge, two leagues in length, others a trifle more or less. About these islands are many rocks, also very dangerous shallows, some two leagues distant from the main land on the South. All this shore, both north and South, from Tadoussac to the Island ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain
... murmur, as was entirely proper that she should, for upon the evidence which I had secured the fair plaintiff, in the suit for separation of Elsa vs. Lohengrin on the ground of desertion and non-support, obtained her decree, with back alimony of twenty-five per cent. of Lohengrin's income for a trifle over ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... you have mistaken me," he said, in a voice so strong and stern that it almost startled them. "The silly display of passion in one boy yesterday has led you to presume that you may trifle with me. You are wrong. For Williams's sake, as a boy who has, or at least once had, something noble in him, I left that matter in the Doctor's hands. I shall not do so to-night. Which of you ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... saw the cross of the Legion of Honor. He turned a trifle pale, then smiled, and said: "I should have preferred ten millions. That did not ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... the red rising up at her having been caught! But why should I trifle so! We will not trifle—life is ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... vice-president's office, he encountered Feder's visitor, who wore an air of furtive apprehension characteristic of a man making his initial visit to a pawn shop. Noblestone waited on the bench outside for perhaps ten minutes, when Mr. Feder's visitor emerged, a trifle red in the face. ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... a large body of Indians assembled in the forest about the fort, and, creeping stealthily within range of its walls, opened fire from every side. It was the garrison's first experience of attack; some of the soldiers proved a trifle overbold, and two of them were killed. The firing, however, lasted but a short time. Ecuyer selected a spot where the smoke of the muskets was thickest, and threw shells from his howitzers into the ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... thought of Ralph, the man's face softened a trifle and his keen eyes became a little less keen. The boy's picture was before him upon his chiffonier. Ralph was twenty-three now and would finish in a few weeks at a famous medical school—Doctor Dexter's own alma mater. He had not been at home since he entered the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... thee, may serve a whim, as we chew a betel-leaf and trifle with a flower; but my husband is my master, and can do with me as he will. My life is wrapped up in him—and when he dies, alas! I will certainly die too. Is it ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... man a trifle stiffly. The girl shuddered. "I had to change cars there once." Again she eyed him critically. "Yes, two years have made a really noticeable improvement. Do the Cincinnati newspapers always remember to use your whole name or ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... of a particularly dignified State even the trees of Belgrave Square seemed at that moment a trifle too conventionally perpendicular. If they would but dance and wave their boughs he would have greeted their greenness more gladly. A good-looking nursemaid wheeled a perambulator beneath their shade, and though she never looked ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... Ku broke in, pleasantly protesting. "Captain Carse is gallant, but the responsibility's not his. I have a little machine—a trifle, but most ingenious at extracting secrets which persons attempt to hold from me. The Captain couldn't help ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore |
