"Trifler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sword, but the passage is incorrect and poor in detail compared with similar things in Scott. The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments, language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages and was not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, a fribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want of seriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied to such a subject as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... be sincere and simple, to be unassuming and kindly. Ive lived a blameless life. Ive supported the Censorship in the face of ridicule and insult. And now I'm told that I'm a centre of Immoralism! of Modern Minxism! a trifler with the most sacred subjects! a Nietzschean!! perhaps ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome, especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying, however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius." Caesar went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the idle life of pleasure he had been ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... for Mr. Quirk; he would not resume argument with such a trifler; nor, indeed, was there any opportunity; for Lord Rockminster now suggested they should go into the drawing-room—and Ichabod had to leave that decanter ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... I decline to discuss the subject seriously with you. You've always been a trifler, Alvord—remember, I've known you from boyhood, and though you've a brilliant brain, you have not utilized ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... question of the Lady Frances in her usual straightforward and unpresuming manner: a manner that afforded considerable amusement to the merry trifler, by whom the little Puritan was commonly spoken of, while absent, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... going to the "conferences of Saint-Francis," complained of his larynx, swallowed from time to time a pellet of gummatum, and in the meantime kept talking about music, and played the part of the elegant trifler. Mademoiselle Cecile, M. Dambreuse's niece, who happened to be embroidering a pair of ruffles, gazed at him with her pale blue eyes; and Miss John, the governess, who had a flat nose, laid aside ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... God's gift, therefore it shows in his noble looking face. No matter whether he were poor or rich; all the rags in the world, all the finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell. He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been a trifler: a kindly man, too, and honest—one that may have played merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for many a widow and orphan. Look what a bright, clear, straightforward, gentle look he has, almost a smile; but he ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... punishment he moves nor can even guess what fitting one is decreed. But the time is surely appointed and the place. Poor trifler with Destiny, who ever had so much ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... accounts for nearly everything that is unsatisfactory in your life. If you had ever been sincerely devoted to a woman, be assured your powers would have developed in a way of which you have no conception. It's no answer to tell me that I am still a mere trifler, never likely to do anything of account; I haven't it in me to be anything better, and I might easily have become much worse. But you might have made yourself a great position—I mean, you might do so; you are ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... over his heart that he was as little wretched as a man can be who is a living monument of the too common folly of being captivated by a sudden glare of person and parts; and of the fatal error of those men who seek in marriage for an amusing trifler rather than a rational and amiable companion, and too late find that the vivacity which pleases in the mistress is often a fatal vice in a wife. He lives chiefly in the country, has generally a few friends in the house with him, and takes a great ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... I knew, was grieved and indignant. With all my fair promises and pretended loyalty I seemed to be an idle trifler. How could my relation to Lettie Conlow be explained away in the light of this visit from a handsome cultured young lady, who had had an assurance of welcome or she would not have come. He loved ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... a brave pretense at lightness, "if only you weren't such a trifler! The dangerous thing about you is that you mean this now—almost; enough, anyway, to give it a ring of sincerity. Were I less sophisticated, I might go home believing it, and thinking what a wonderful man you are starting out to be; but in the morning ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... have given him no chance to change his mind again," cried Madam Bowker. "What a trifler you are! No seriousness! Your intelligence all in the abstract; only folly and fritter for your own affairs. You should have given him no ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years ago, supposed him. Assuredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler, but lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. To him, being such a man by nature and by habit, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... had he that Iris Wayne would welcome him to her birthday feast? He had thrown her kindness back into her face, had first accepted and then carelessly repudiated her friendship; and it was only too probable she had written him down as a casual and discourteous trifler with whom, in future, she desired to hold ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... not take offense he slid the lines on Indian Summer into his breast pocket, to keep company with the lucky-stone. The situation had become riskily sentimental and intensely stimulating to Burr's disposition as a social trifler. He was reckless of consequences, vain of conquest over any woman, and scrupulous only to avoid failure in his amours. The more innocent and virtuous the victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... silent grave!— The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we—we learnt your ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... There is more of you than I thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide your inmost self from all ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... hesitated, and looked down on him, frowning and pulling at his moustache. Then, more quickly than one would have expected from so careless a trifler, his mind ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... privacy of his retreat, smiled beautifully to himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden, and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted trifler ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... has proclaimed him a mere mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... trifler. Love! I know thee not, I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips; We must have bloody noses ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "the chief or head of a people." Edward II would satisfy neither of these definitions. He lacked all disposition to do anything himself; he equally lacked power to incite others to do. By nature he was a jester, trifler, and waster ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... judgment," {and so saying}, he took himself off on light wing through the air, and duped the multitude, and eluded the threats of the Bull. {Now} if the Bull had kept in mind his strength of neck, and had contemned an ignoble foe, the vapouring of the trifler would ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... must feel oppress'd, My heart to earth's low cares a prey. Too old the trifler's part to play, Too young to live by no desire possess'd. What can the world to me afford? Renounce! renounce! is still the word; This is the everlasting song In every ear that ceaseless rings, And which, alas, our ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Now the trifler again resumes her pen. I am in some pain, Miss, for to-morrow, because of the rules we observe of late in our family on Sundays, and of going through a crowd to church; which will afford new scenes to our noble visitors, either for censure ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... moderately well done. It will be noted that whose (second line of stanza V) is obviously a misprint for whole, that the second line has dropped out of stanza XXXIV (Mr. Kirkwood ingeniously suggests that Morrison wrote: "for every trifler's breast/Is by the hope of future fame possest"), and that in two places the number of a stanza has been omitted. And yet the ode, which is physically thinner as well as historically and aesthetically inferior to Gray's famous odes, ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... generation of the statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of Grammont, and the tiring-room of Nell. In no other age could such a trifler as Buckingham have exercised any political influence. In no other age could the path to power and glory have been thrown open to the manifold ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I hinted at his marriage—I thought it among the list of possible things, no more—to see if that crystal pool, called Violetta d'Isorella, could be discoloured by stirring. Did you watch her face? I don't know what she wanted with Carlo, for she's cold as poison—a female trifler; one of those women whom I, and I have a chaste body, despise as worse than wantons; but she certainly did not want him to be married. It seems like a victory—though we're beaten. You have beaten us, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... resolution that they forthwith swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... in the porch and, maybe inspired by secret antagonism to the Fynes, I said to myself deliberately that Captain Anthony must be a fine fellow. Yet on the facts as I knew them he might have been a dangerous trifler or a downright scoundrel. He had made a miserable, hopeless girl follow him clandestinely to London. It is true that the girl had written since, only Mrs. Fyne had been remarkably vague as to the contents. They were unsatisfactory. They ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French language. It was through this fortunate shortcoming in his education that he became ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... the little society, I found them grievously harassed by disputations. Anabaptists were on one side, and Quakers on the other; and hereby five or six persons have been confused. But the rest cleave so much the closer together. Nor does it appear that there is now one trifler, much less a disorderly walker, among them." Wednesday, 17th (August, 1763).—"Hence we rode to Coleford. The wind being high, I consented to preach in their new room; but large as it was, it would not contain ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... asserts that, like the rest of the world, he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... then only a courtier in Versailles, came to Madame Geoffrin's parties. He was a man who combined in a most surprising manner true philosophy and a deep knowledge of political economy, with the outward appearance of a fop and a trifler. Among the other distinguished men who lived in Paris, Marmontel names with high praise the Abbe Galliani, Caraccioli, who was afterward Neapolitan ambassador, and the ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... civilization. Indeed the good sense which I have met with among the poor women who have had few advantages of education, and yet have acted heroically, strongly confirmed me in the opinion, that trifling employments have rendered women a trifler. Men, taking her ('I take her body,' says Ranger.) body, the mind is left to rust; so that while physical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enslave woman: and who can tell how many generations may be necessary ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... have found her. You may think me a trifler, Easelmann; but every nerve I have is quivering with agony at the thought of the pain I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... great Horace Walpole, "The Castle of Otranto," and rejected the magnificence of a nameless composition. This man's neglect drove the young poet to the "Autocrat of Strawberry Hill." In reply he at first received a polished letter. The literary trifler was not aware of the poverty and low station of his correspondent, and so was courteous; he is "grateful" and "singularly obliged;" bowing, and perfumed, and polite. Other communications followed. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... hedge. I got spies out and they say he's been in every cafe in town looking for me. Wants to make up. Watch little birdie here. If he comes monkeying around me again I'll pick up one of these and knock him clean out from under his hat. Trifler. How I ever fell for him certainly gets me. How anybody could love a press agent or an actor gets me for that matter. I have been crossed in love and am running no ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... to be my interest to please. To follow the plans suggested by these thoughts, I saw that I must avoid what is called bad company, that I must give up my old habits and pretensions, which would be sure to make me enemies, who would have no scruple in representing me as a trifler, and not fit to be trusted with affairs of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fit? Canst thou syllables refine, Melt a sense that shall retain Still some spirit of the brain, Till with sounds like these it join? 'Twill not be! then change thy note; Let division shake thy throat. Hark! division now she tries; Yet as far the muse outflies. Cease then, prithee, cease thy tune; Trifler, wilt thou sing till June? Till thy business all lies waste, And the time of building's past! Thus we poets that have speech, Unlike what thy forests teach, If a fluent vein be shown That's transcendent to our ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... at least be honest, and then you may think what you please of my weakness and vacillation. You cannot think worse things than I think myself, but you must not imagine that I am a cold-blooded, deliberate trifler, for that has never been true. I know you don't care for me, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... paraquito, answer me Directly unto this question that I ask. In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry, An if thou wilt not tell me true. Hot. Away, Away, you trifler!—Love?—I love thee not, I care not for thee, Kate; this is no world To play with mammets and to tilt ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... each individual raises or lowers the level of democracy according to what he is and does. The idler fails to make any contributions to the well-being of society and thus lowers the average of citizenship. The trifler and dawdler lower the level of democracy by reason of their inefficiency. They may exercise their right to vote but fail to exercise their right to act the part of efficient citizens. If all citizens ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... Doctor Johnson's Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal? If the young men told the truth, where had been the truth in his own young days, and in what ignorance had our forefathers been brought up?—Mr. Addison was only an elegant essayist, and shallow trifler! All these opinions were openly uttered over the Colonel's claret, as he and Mr. Binnie sate wondering at the speakers, who were knocking the gods of their youth about their ears. To Binnie the shock was not so great; the hard-headed Scotchman ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Maynard arose chiefly from the feeling that his gallantry at such a time, with the dead and dying all about them, was "more shocking than a game of cards on Sunday." She regarded his attentions, glances, tones, as mere well-bred persiflage, indulged in for his own amusement, and she put him down as a trifler for his pains. That he, as she would phrase it, "was just smitten without any rhyme or reason" seemed preposterous. She had done nothing for him as she had for Scoville. The friendly or the frankly admiring looks of strangers, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... that is uttered; to sport a red ribbon or a Waterloo medal in their first novelty; to carry a point with a great man, or to borrow money from a rich one, may pass off an evening very well, with those who happen to be interested in such speculations; but, these things apart, the arrantest trifler in the circle must get weary at last, and be heartily rejoiced when the conclusion of the season spares him all further reiteration of the mill-horse operation. It is this insipidity of society that forces so many of its members ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... You call me trifler, faineant, And bid me give my life an aim!— You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out, And own your hastiness to blame. I live with but a single thought; My inmost heart and soul are set On one sole task—a mighty one— To ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented, what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... arrival of Caroline's father in the Colony was a circumstance ominous of trouble. The Baron was no trifler, and would as soon choke a prince as a beggar, to revenge an insult to his personal honor or the honor ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... darkness. At first she spoke, to encourage me, and then began to sing, perhaps to make me understand better; and felt with her hands for the doors, and with her feet for the steps of the staircase. Meanwhile I continually reflected: "this terrible malicious trifler is plotting to lead me into some flour-bin, shut the door upon me, and leave me there till the morning: or to let me step in the darkness into some flue, where I shall fall up to my neck into the rising dough;—for of that everything ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... only herself to blame," he said, as he struggled with his feelings. "I forewarned her; I gave her to understand clearly what she had to expect. My word is passed. I have said it; and that ends the matter. I am no childish trifler. What I say, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... feel a deep respect. But for your ambidextrous apologist or theologian, the fellow who can make words bear double meanings, and even infallible oracles tell contradictory stories, we have nothing but contempt, because he is a trifler with truth. ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... and find out what he means, what influences have been at work, what is underneath it all. Warn him of the danger of even appearing doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm. The one person whom the public will not have in politics is the trifler. Think how many there have been, brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false step, a single year, a month of dilettantism. Remind him of them. The man who moves in a great cause may move ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the lights of former times is always sending forth fresh rays of truth, produce anything to the advancement of science or the declaration of the faith, this was instantly poured still fresh into our ears, ungarbled by any babbler, unmutilated by any trifler, but passing straight from the purest of wine-presses into the vats of ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... genius and the hard-working man of talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... is a trifler unworthy of his race; the mere gentleman is a character which may in time become somewhat tiresome; there is a just mean between the two, where a better conduct than either is to be found. It is ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... uncle's residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him. Nor was that the worst of it. He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was the graceful, elegant young trifler from St. James's, Lord Julian Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted. And what chance had he, a desperate adventurer with a record of outlawry, against such a rival as that, a man of parts, moreover, as ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Trifler, idler, Cheat, drunkard, whoremaster, and prodigal. —Think this, and think that ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... of the motive power has no such consideration as the military functions in the navies of the Latin nations. The studious and systematic side of the French character also inclined the French officer, when not a trifler, to consider and develop tactical questions in a logical manner; to prepare himself to handle fleets, not merely as a seaman but as a military man. The result showed, in the American Revolutionary War, that despite a mournful history of governmental ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... see. My own impression is that Mackenzie is a humorous writer, and that the wiseacres who want the novel to be 'serious' are barking up the wrong tree. At any rate, there the book is, and it is admitted to be a good book by all who have been condemning Mackenzie as a trifler; and Mackenzie is going on with his sequel to it in the pleasant land of Italy. I did not see him in Italy, but in Herm, one of the minor Channel Islands. It took me a night to reach the place—a night of fog ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... 'Volatile trifler!' said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. 'She is well, she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our currant wine, like ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the king. There was somewhat of gloomy and ferocious dignity about Philip II. which might easily bring a courtier to his knees; but how can we account for the equal reverence that was paid to the ninny Philip III., the debauched trifler Philip IV., and ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... stronger if we suppose her guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit carried away by passion—that something beyond reason, beyond all human power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain, and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other side to an impatience almost maddening, by the injuries, follies, treacheries, and universal ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... well known that Holmes was the author. The companion writers in the Collegian were Simmons, who wrote over the signature of "Lockfast"; John O. Sargent, poet and essayist, whose nom de plume was "Charles Sherry"; Robert Habersham, the "Mr. Airy" of the group; and that clever young trifler, Theodore Snow, who delighted the readers of the periodical with the works of "Geoffrey La Touche." Of these, of course, Holmes was the life and soul, and though sixty years have passed away since he enriched the columns of the Collegian with the fruits ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... Sedley remembered his mother a court-beauty, the favourite of the Queen, and the glass which reflected the smiles and frowns of royalty. He afterwards saw her the idol of the party which opposed government, sung by Waller, flattered by Holland, presiding with all the frivolity and pride of a pretty trifler at the dark divan, while Pym and St. John disclosed their hopes of extending their aggressions to seizing the remaining prerogatives of the alarmed and conceding King. Weak, vain, passionate, and unprincipled, ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the foolish Pope shall fret, It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave, Loudly to damn, and loudly save, And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven! One hour, one little hour, is given, If thou could'st but repent. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... not entirely revolting to Helen, though she had a small opinion of the elegant young trifler who pursued her so persistently, for she, too, had social aspirations, though being more clear-sighted than her mother, she dreamed of wider circles than those of Chicago. Her husband, whoever he was to be, should take her to Paris, or at ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... when, "Saving what you have said," quoth Trimalchio, "if there be faith in man, my hair stands on end, because I know Niceros is no trifler; he's sure of what he says, and not given to talking: Nay, I'll tell ye as horrible a thing my self; but see there, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... An admirer, forsooth! Of what?—Your ideas are too mean and frothy to let you admire anything but my dress, or some other trifle as empty and superficial as the trifler I am speaking to. My demeanour towards you was nothing but the effect of cheerfulness and politeness; qualities which, I believe, are inherent in me, and of which, therefore, all with whom I am acquainted are the objects; but your present unmanly and insupportably impudent ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... of my education going on at this time outside the pale of the school, in which, though I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest in sauntering ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... deliberately, unmistakably upon the lips, is a final seal and ultimate surrender, and that if you do not marry a man you have so kissed you would be no better than a worthless deceiver, an outrageous flirt, an abandoned trifler——" ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... blazed out, and then were gone. Half a century ago or more an Englishman by the name of M. F. Tupper published a book called "Proverbial Philosophy" which had a brief season of popularity, and then went out like a rush-light, or a blaze of tissue paper. Novels like Miss Sprague's "Earnest Trifler," Du Maurier's "Trilby," and Wallace's "Ben Hur" have had their little day, and been forgotten. In the art world the Cubists' crazy work drew the attention of the public long enough for it to be seen how spurious and absurd it was. Brownell's war ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... had unexpectedly betrayed, after implying such esteem in the earlier phase of their intercourse, made Olive's cheeks occasionally flush. She prayed heaven that she might never become so personal, so narrow. She was frivolous, worldly, an amateur, a trifler, a frequenter of Beacon Street; her taking up Verena Tarrant was only a kind of elderly, ridiculous doll-dressing: this was the light in which Miss Chancellor had reason to believe that it now suited Mrs. Farrinder to regard ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... modern poetry, by people who know," wrote Mr. Carl Sandburg in Poetry, "ends with dragging in Ezra Pound somewhere. He may be named only to be cursed as wanton and mocker, poseur, trifler and vagrant. Or he may be classed as filling a niche today like that of Keats in a preceding epoch. The point is, he ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... specimens in herbaria, which then constituted in most cases all the material that the botanist of this country considered necessary for the study of plants, naturally looked on the botanist somewhat in the light of a laborious trifler.... Darwin altered all this. He made the dry bones live; he invested plants and animals with a history, a biography, a genealogy, which at once conferred an interest and a dignity on them. Before, they were as the stuffed skin of ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... is paramount. She is the stronghold of Hinduism at the beginning of this twentieth century. Man, under the growing influence of western thought, civilization, and faith, has largely lost his moorings and is growing increasingly insincere and a trifler with religious beliefs and institutions. The woman, on the other hand, is a conservative of the conservatives. In her superstition she is deeply sincere; her faith has no questionings, and her piety shapes her every activity. Were it not for the women of India, Hinduism, ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... at first laughed heartily; but then Froda advanced gravely towards the secretary, and said, "Thou trifler, doubtless the old duke would drive thee from his service did he know of thy folly, and teach thee to talk of the Emperor. Good-night, worthy sir, and trust me that when Edwald and I meet each other, it will be with all ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... consequence of all these things, imagined himself in love. This delusion might last a week or two; and then, when he came to himself again, the rude awakening would follow. He would see her then merely as a trifler. Worse than that, he might see himself as merely a trifler. That ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... youthful strength to want, Than, young, that of a bull, or elephant; Then with that force content, which Nature gave, Nor am I now displeased with what I have. When the young wrestlers at their sport grew warm, Old Milo wept, to see his naked arm; And cried, 'twas dead. Trifler! thine heart and head, And all that's in them (not thy arm) are dead; This folly every looker on derides, To glory only in thy arms and sides. Our gallant ancestors let fall no tears, Their strength decreasing by increasing ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... not lacking indeed hireling organs, notoriously in the pay of a tyrannous bureaucracy, who more than hinted that His Excellency was a fool, a dreamer of dreams, a doctrinaire, and, worst of all, a trifler with the lives of men. 'The Viceroy's Excellence Gazette,' published in Calcutta, was at pains to thank 'Our beloved Viceroy for once more and again thus gloriously vindicating the potentialities of the Bengali nations for extended executive and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... talk of her, or of any other trifler of the court, when there hangs over us so great a sorrow, Endymion, as our separation? Endymion, my best beloved," and she threw her arms round his neck, "my heart! my life! Is it possible that you can leave me, and so ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... sad trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill. "Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober Henry blood ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... with the answer," replied the latter, "the case can rest where it is. If not, I am ready to meet him on any appeal. I He will find me no trifler." ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... peculiar to women, to put the same ridiculous notion into the young lady's head. In fact, he suddenly finds to his astonishment that he must either propose—which is out of the question—or be considered a cold-blooded trifler with female hearts. And so he has nothing to do but pack up his portmanteau and beat an ignominious retreat, with an uncomfortable consciousness that his amiable hostess and pretty partner have a very poor ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... priggishness of demeanour. For instance, how could I have been so prescient to have coupled Emerson and Schopenhauer together so persistently? Here, smudged and corrected to distraction, is a passionate defence of the former, occasioned by some academical trifler dubbing him a mere echo of Carlyle and Coleridge. I almost lived on Emerson in those days, to such good purpose, indeed, that I know him by heart. And, if I mistake not, he will come to his own again in the near future, when there will be no talk ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... of life in harmony therewith; and totally averse to the purer, manlier and nobler duties and pleasures of a better state of society. To dress and exhibit themselves; to crowd the saloon of every foreign trifler, who, under the abused name of art, and for the sake of gold, seeks to minister to us those meretricious excitements which associate themselves with declining states and artificial forms of life; to waste the most precious hours of night, set apart by the God of nature for repose, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... then, the incense they tender; Go, the one that adored thee forget! Go, thy charms to the feigner surrender, In my scorn is my comforter yet! Go, for thee with what trust and belief There beat not ignobly a heart That has strength yet to strive with the grief To have worshipped the trifler ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a Dead Card if she had not gone on a Visit to a neighboring City where she bumped into the Town Trifler. He had a Way of proposing to every Girl the first time he met her. It always seemed to him such a cordial Send-Off for a budding Friendship. Usually the Girl asked for Time and then the two of them would Fiddle around and Fuss and Make Up and finally ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... the peace of Utrecht. We are indeed no admirers of the statesmen who concluded that peace. Harley, we believe, was a solemn trifler, St. John a brilliant knave. The great body of their followers consisted of the country clergy and the country gentry; two classes of men who were then inferior in intelligence to decent shopkeepers or ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... genius extracted the most important results. The invention of pendulum clocks took place about the middle of the seventeenth century; and the honour of the discovery is disputed between Galileo and Huygens. Becher contends for Galileo, and states that one Trifler made the first pendulum clock at Florence, under the direction of Galileo Galilei, and that a model of it was sent to Holland. The Accademia del Cimento also expressly declared, that the application of the pendulum ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... others, and particularly the Asiatics, who are such slaves to number, as to insert words which have no use nor meaning to fill up the vacuities in a sentence. There are likewise some who, in imitation of Hegesias (a notorious trifler as well in this as in every other respect) curtail and mince their numbers, and are thus betrayed into the low and paltry style of the Sicilians. Another fault in composition is that which occurs in the speeches of Hierocles ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... I fear her heart is but too true, and has not forgotten the trifler who destroyed her happiness. Ah! when I think of this man, my heart trembles with anger and grief. In the hour of death I could forgive all my enemies, but the hatred toward this man, who has so wantonly trifled with the faith and love of my child, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... only discordant note in the chorus of praise came long afterwards in the voice of the pedantic dandy Horace Walpole, who called Goldsmith "an inspired idiot". This is not surprising, for the earnestness and heroic simplicity of Sidney were as incomprehensible to the affected trifler of Strawberry Hill as the fresh enthusiasm of his nephew Arthur to Major Pendennis. The Earl of Leicester, who seemed to love his nephew more than anything except his own ambition, presented his brilliant young relative to the queen, who made him her ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... controversy with America. The course he took in the early stage of that conflict, and his disappearance from the theatre of politics at the time when it was ripening into the magnitude of its nature, have marked Junius in my mind as a man of small things—a splendid trifler, a pompous and ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... people we have never met, and a profound and manly dislike of the authors we have never read. It does not harm a man to be certain before opening the books that Whitman is an obscene ranter or that Stevenson is a mere trifler with style. It is the man who can think these things after he has read the books who must be in a fair way to mental perdition. Prejudice, in fact, is not so much the great intellectual sin as a thing which we ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... well worthy of analysis and classification as are the flora and fauna of Patagonia or New Zealand. But while the Patagonian naturalist secures recognition and is decorated, every jaunty man of letters feels at liberty to scoff at the liturgiologist as a laborious trifler. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler! I still behold the smiling earth—A large train of disasters were coming on to my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet-door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... of the three, Laughing idler, full of glee, Arm in arm does fondly chain her, Thinking, poor trifler, to detain her— ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... trifler? where the child of pride? These are the moments when the heart is try'd! Nor lives the man with conscience e'er so clear, But feels a solemn, reverential fear; Feels too a joy relieve his aching breast, When the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... saddle-girth. He looked furtively over the mare's shoulder at Andy Byers. He could not guess how much of the facts had been developed. In sheer perversity he was tempted to deny that he had the grant. But Byers was a heavy man of scant patience, and he wore a surly air that boded ill to a trifler. ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... one stab at just one man—not the whole party—on grounds that the rest of the crowd, who was plainly all good two-handed punchers, would see was perfectly fair. And I intended to land that stab so's they'd see I was no trifler. It was my bad luck that not a soul in the crowd knew me—even by reputation, or my hair would have made it easy for me. So I put a little ginger in the tone of ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips |
