"Trite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Emerson's remark that "Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and occasional symbol for an universal one," then, in speaking to the psycho-analyst, the psychologist should echo Emerson further, and say: "Let us have a little algebra instead of this trite rhetoric— universal signs instead of these village symbols—and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... was an earnest man, and he devoted much care to the composition of his sermons. He was used to expound twice a Sunday the more obvious parts of Holy Scripture, making in twenty minutes or half an hour, for the benefit of the vulgar, a number of trite reflections; and it must be confessed that he had great facility for explaining at decorous length texts which were plain to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... however, leaves us in little doubt as to what Dr. Draper means by a conflict between science and religion. When he enlarges on the trite story of Galileo, and alludes to the more modern quarrel between the Church and the geologists, and does this in the belief that he is thereby illustrating an antagonism between religion and science, it is obvious ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... everyday occurrences a study of physics is necessary. It is trite to mention the development in recent years of those mechanical and electrical arts that have made modern civilization. The submarine, vitalized by storage battery and Diesel engine, the torpedo with its gyroscopic pilot and pneumatic motors, the wireless transmission of speech over seas ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... fault is knocked out of him," continues merciless Mr. Black. "When he grows up, and has to make a speech, or write a letter for the papers, he will look out for flowers, full-blown flowers, figures, smart expressions, trite quotations, hackneyed beginnings and endings, pompous circumlocutions, and so on: but the meaning, the sense, the solid sense, the foundation, you may hunt the slipper long enough before you ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Madame Beck's large school turned out rampant, and externes and pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys' college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when the externes were gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... best way of judging the inner life of a nation is to listen to its music, and accordingly judge of the sentiments and emotions of Americans by their sheet-music, we should arrive at very discouraging results. The characteristics of our sheet-music, briefly summed up, are: (1) trite and vulgar melody, devoid of all originality, repeating what has been heard a thousand times already; (2) equally trite and monotonous accompaniments, the harmony limited to half a dozen elementary chords, the rhythm mechanical and commonplace, and the cadences ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... discreditable: and it was this very feeling, and the inability to defend that which he knew to be wrong and foolish, which made him so certain that he would not be able successfully to persist in his claim to Miss Wyndham's hand in opposition to the trite and well-weighed objections, which he knew her guardian would put forward. He consoled himself, however, with thinking that, at any rate, they could not prevent his seeing her; and he was quite sanguine as to her forgiveness, if ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... The trite maxim, *A place for everything, and everything in its place*, so commends itself to the sense of fitness, as hardly to need exposition or enforcement; yet while no maxim is more generally admitted, scarce any is so frequently violated in practice. In duty, the elements of time ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... The usual trite criticisms of the church Dan had heard, and had already learned to think somewhat lightly of the kind of people who commonly make them. But this young woman—so wholesome, so good to look at in her ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... place around it, a plain granite shaft erected by the first Gray in the centre, and grouped about the shaft the quaint tablets of the century before, with old-fashioned names spelled in an old-fashioned manner, and with homely rhymes and trite sayings underneath; farther off, the newer gravestones, more ornate and less appealing. The elms were just beginning to bud, and the cold April wind whistled through them, but the pines were as green and sheltering as always, and Sylvia spread her blanket under one of them, and worked away at ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... of how little the skill and touch, belonging to unceasing work, should be despised in comparison with what is called inspiration. Donizetti arrived at his freshest creations at a time when there seemed but little left for him except the trite and threadbare. There are no melodies so rich and well fancied as those to be found in his later works; and in sense of dramatic form and effective instrumentation (always a faulty point with Donizetti) he displayed great progress ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... ecstatic contemplation of which so much of her life had been spent. It had been that fine superiority to the material that had first attracted him to her, a quality of shining enthusiasm, of reflected inspiration from a vision, however trite, of eternal hymning; and it had been that same essence which finally held them apart through the greater number of their married years. Phebe's health, slowly ebbing, had drawn her farther and farther from the known world in general and the affairs and being of her ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... prose. The Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... story, "What Happened at Mendocino." What happened to the story does not appear. He went to church generally, and some of the sermons were good and others "vapid and trite." Once in a while he goes to a dance, but not to his great satisfaction. He didn't dance particularly well. He tells of a Christmas dinner that he helped his sister to prepare. Something made him dissatisfied ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... doubtless will distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are reformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce the slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past century become the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched upon this question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showing that we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also to posterity the outline of a work, which they may ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... Add this to the carpet bag, and people will agree in the trite observation that misfortunes never come single. This is not true; they do come single very often, and when they do, they are more annoying than if they come in heaps. You growl at a single mishap, but if you find that Fortune is down upon you and attempts to overload you, you ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... thing is the human complexion! We are sent into the world naked, that all the variations of the blood might be made visible. However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophical of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... be mine to fitly tell of the mighty influence of the flowers? Shall I say that, without their 'laughing light,' this world would be a dreary, lonesome place? It is a trite and tedious ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... means what we mean by it today, "examples," "illustrations." (Line 18 as a whole gives us a vivid sense of the justice's readiness to speak sapiently, after the manner of justices, and to trot out his trite illustrations on the slightest provocation.) The word pantaloon in line 20 is interesting. The patron saint of Venice was St. Pantaleon (the term is from Greek, means "all-lion," and possibly refers to the lion of St. Mark's Cathedral). Pantaloon came therefore to signify (1) a Venetian, (2) ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... drew a letter from her pocket, and handed it to me. It was addressed from France to M. Alfred Goyte, at Tible. I took out the letter and began to read it, as mere words. "Mon cher Alfred"—it might have been a bit of a torn newspaper. So I followed the script: the trite phrases of a letter from a French-speaking girl to an Englishman. "I think of you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?" And then I vaguely realised that I was reading a man's private correspondence. And yet, how could one consider these trivial, ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... half so original and daring as he is," Theodora said regretfully. "My iniquities were trite; his are fresh from the recesses of his own brain. He is a cunning child, Hu, and a pretty one; but his ways are past ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... think of nothing, though feeling at the time bound to do something. You can't sit still so put on your hat and go for a walk; but before you get to the corner of the street you wish you hadn't come out and you turn back. You open a book and try to read, but you find Shakespeare trite and commonplace, Dickens is dull and prosy, Thackeray a bore, and Carlyle too sentimental. You throw the book aside and call the author names. Then you "shoo" the cat out of the room and kick the door to after her. You think you will write your letters, ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... be different from that of the first; that the first was evidently needed; that the second may be as injurious as the first was useful. He exhibited various weak points in the inflation fallacies and presented forcibly the trite truth that no laws and no decrees can keep large issues of irredeemable paper at ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... sacrifice a million lives to prove that there is no such thing as death; that this human life of ours, by which we set such childish store, is but a fleeting phase of the permanent life of the spirit. One shrinks from setting down so trite a truism; it is the common ground of all religion, but I have reached it from the opposite pole. Religion is to me the unworthy triumph of instinct over knowledge, a lazy substitution of invention for discovery. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... debts; but by the great Accountant who keeps a record of all our deeds of this nature, whether it be to make money by means of cruising ships, or cruising scrip. It is true, these rovers encountered very differently-looking victims, in the first place; but it is a somewhat trite remark, that the aggregate of human beings is pretty much the same in all situations. There were widows and orphans as much connected with the condemnation of prizes, as with the prices of condemned stock; and ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... a truth almost too trite for reference, that in the experience of every one of us there are some days in in which everything seems to go wrong. Such a day was this 13th of November ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... not going to get any information under that roof, and after a further brief exchange of trite observations he rose to take his leave. Alderman Crood ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... What trite old folly unharmonious sages In dull books write or prattle day by day, Of sin original and growing crime! And commentating the advance of time, Say wrong has fostered wrong for countless ages, The strong ones marking ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... trite; and never obsolete. It is as good doctrine to-day as it was in poor Richard's time. Of that I can ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... of Poverty" is a striking example of the trite phrase that "truth is stranger than fiction." It is a series of pictures of the lives of women wage-workers in New York, based on the minutest personal inquiry and observation. No work of fiction has ever presented more startling pictures, and, indeed, if they occurred in a novel ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... amount of sleep is required. It has a sedative influence upon the disturbed nervous system of the mother. It favors, by the calmness of all the functions which attends it, the growth of the foetus. Neither the pursuit of pleasure in the evening, nor the observance of any trite maxims in regard to early rising in the morning, should be allowed to curtail the hours devoted to slumber. Pregnant women have an instinctive desire to lie abed late, which, like the other promptings of nature during ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... to be a mermaid, but the invention has become so common of late that it is found in the curio-shops of every town, and as an eye-catching device is often put into show-cases by some merchant who deals in anything rather than mermaids. Trite and ridiculous as this patchwork appears, it symbolizes a belief of full three thousand years. Men have always been prone to fill with imaginations what they have never sounded with their senses, and it is ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... elephantinon kai pithekon kai lithon]. [Greek: BASIA TRITE]. x. 22. It is to be observed, that Josephus appears to have been equally embarrassed by the unfamiliar term tukeyim for peacocks. He alludes to the voyages of Solomon's merchantmen to Tarshish, and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... for a girl? Whatever will fit her for life. The question and answer are trite. What will best fit a girl for life? First of all a well-balanced character. I knew a girl who was a good cook before she was ten years old; she had a genius for sewing; she was an excellent scholar in school, and had ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... discovered without any observable cause.... So free from loquacity or much talkativeness, that he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he was so, it was always singular and never trite ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... there we can tell?... She was perhaps of those who do not wish to speak, and every one of us bears in himself more than one reason for no longer living.... We cannot see in the soul as we see in that room. They are all like that.... They only say trite things; and no one suspects aught.... You live for months by some one who is no longer of this world and whose soul can bend no longer; you answer without thinking; and you see what happens.... They look like motionless dolls, and, oh, the events that take place in their souls!... They ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... seeming trite, prosy, and common-place, it is right to remind the young generation who consider the purchase of a railway ticket gives them a right to grumble at a thousand imaginary defects and deficiencies in railway management, how great are the advantages ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Of the superstitious Pilgrimages of some Persons to Jerusalem, and other holy Places, under Pretence of Devotion. 2. That Vows are not to be made rashly over a Pot of Ale: but that Time, Expence and Pains ought to be employ d otherwise, in such Matters as have a real Tendency to promote trite Piety. 3. Of the Insignificancy ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... softly. "'Hermione' is so much prettier. 'All shall be explained.' A little trite, perhaps! Oh, well—" So saying, he folded up the telegrams, switched off the lights and went ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... noting, perhaps, save in so far as it is typical of the trite utterances of people striving to recover from some tremendous ordeal. Epigrams delivered at the foot of the scaffold have ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... remembered that there used to be a humble restaurant and kitchen on wheels—to the vulgar, a dog-wagon—up toward York Street. This wagon, once upon a time, had appeased our appetites when we had been late for chapel and Commons. As an institution it was so trite that once we made of it a fraternity play. I faintly remember a pledge to secrecy—sworn by the moon and the seven wandering stars—but nevertheless I shall divulge the plot. It was a burlesque tragedy in rhyme. Some eighteen years ago, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... with its motives, policy or wisdom, or with its concurrence with natural justice, fundamental principles of government, or spirit of the Constitution.[280] In various forms this maxim has been repeated to such an extent that it has become trite and has increasingly come to be incorporated in constitutional cases as a reason for fortifying a finding of unconstitutionality. Through absorption of natural rights doctrines into the text of the Constitution, the Court was enabled ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... seem like a trite and commonplace thing to say, but upon my word and honour, Edith, I haven't meant to fail you, as I see I have in a thousand ways. I'm sorry, deeply sorry, but I know that the words will not mean ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... ethical code in which he was raised, based on religion or otherwise. There is the fact that man is fundamentally good, to use a trite term, ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... in my ear, and draws on my hand—"are not Great, for they are not (in the broad human and ethical sense) Good"? I write it, and ask forgiveness for the truism, with its implied uncharitableness of blame; for this trite thing is ill understood and little thought upon by any of us, and the implied blame is divided among us all; only let me at once partly ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... know it," said Ford, "though now I recall it, I used often to hear my father speak of Miss Hester Stanbrook." Then he was going on to say that trite thing about the smallness of the world when ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... of the great War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... did not know what trite meant. How could I ever judge Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority? I doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for cinders with her,—she ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as old as the middle of Elizabeth's reign, and that the reason why it has not survived in the writings of any of the great Elizabethan admirals is either that the tactics it enjoins were regarded as a secret of the seamen's 'mystery' or were too trite or commonplace to need enunciation. At any rate in the face of the Gorges precedent it cannot be said, without reservation, that this rudimentary form of line ahead or attack in succession was invented ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... were in the audience, and a dozen clergymen on the platform—this gave respectability to the assemblage. The meeting opened tamely enough with a trite talk by a Unitarian clergyman, and followed along until the resolutions were read. Then there were cries of, "Table them!"—the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... man's rampant fanaticism, there diluted by the prophecies from which he cannot even now refrain; and, throughout, the manner is that of the pulpit-thumping orator. The first half of his letter is a prelude in the form of a sermon upon Faith, all very trite and obvious; and the notion of this excommunicated friar holding forth to the Pope's Holiness in polemical platitudes delivered with all the authority of inspired discoveries of his own is one more proof that at the root of fanaticism in all ages and upon all questions, lies an utter ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... so," Starr assented, with an odd little slurring accent on the last word which gave the trite sentence an individual touch that appealed to Helen May. "It don't seem natural, somehow, to walk in a ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... philosophers there are poets, and the poets are philosophers. Goethe is to be found no more, or no less, in his 'Theory of Colors' or in his 'Metamorphosis of Plants,' than in his 'Divan' or his 'Faust'; and lyrism, if I may use this trite expression, "is overflowing" in Schleiermacher's theology and in Schelling's philosophy. Is this not perhaps at least one of the reasons of the inferiority of the German drama? It is surely the reason of the depth and scope of Germanic poetry. Even in the masterpieces of German literature it seems ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... a happy wedlock? What has fate Not given to thee in thy well-chosen mate? Good sense—good humor;—these are trivial things, Dear M——, that each trite encomiast sings. But she hath these, and more. A mind exempt From every low-bred passion, where contempt, Nor envy, nor detraction, ever found A harbor yet; an understanding sound; Just views of right and wrong; perception full Of the deform'd, and of the beautiful, In life ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... within; the breezes bring proof of this. Surely, it is Bishop Heber's trite stanzas repeated in unison by the forgiving populace—they are sung everywhere, and why not in Ceylon's great seaport? The ship churns forward to her moorings. It is singing; there is no mistaking it. But the air! ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... Discoboli—Diana with her swinging knee-high tunic—the winged Victory of Samothrace—to see them first at seventeen, without warning, without a glimmering knowledge of their existence! And the pictures! Portfolios of Angelo, of the voluptuous Titian, of the swaying forms of Botticelli's maidens—trite ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... library of this college, which is provided with a gallery round the top, and the whole is most admirably regulated and arranged. Among other things, I here saw a description of Oxford, with plates to illustrate it: and I cannot help observing what, though trite, is true, that all these places look much better, and are far more beautiful on paper, than they appeared to me to be as I looked at them where they ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite for him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my private ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude of Parrington, without being seriously suspicious in itself, was admirably calculated to put a previously suspected person in a grateful ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise.' And then George Eliot makes this trite and significant remark. 'The middle-aged,' she says, 'who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half-passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... a subject on which very few of us have specific information. It is as important as it is trite to point out that the amount and the type of insurance should be governed by the kind of hazards against which you should provide. Yet it is necessary to realize that the need of protection changes as life progresses. A father with young, dependent ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... attractive to a modern reader. Its great merit is the grace and polish of the language; but the arguments brought forward to prove what an excellent thing it is for a man to have good friends, and plenty of them, in this world, and the rules for his behaviour towards them, seem to us somewhat trite and commonplace, whatever might have been their effect upon a ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... a trite, but true maxim, that "a man is known by the company he keeps." He naturally assimilates by the force of imitation, to the habits and manners of those by whom he is surrounded. We know persons who walk much with the lame, who have learned to walk with a hitch or limp like ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... great matter. But as I sit in front of my large bay window, and see the shadows on the grass and the sunlight on the leaves, and the soft glimmer of the rosebuds left by the storms, I cannot but believe that all will be very well. 'Trust in the Lord; wait patiently for him'—they are trite words. But he made the grass, the leaves, the rosebuds, and the sunshine, and he is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now the trite words have swelled into ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... trite," said Susanna, "and it would be perfectly absurd, if it were n't rather tragic, or perfectly tragic, if it ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... much travel and culture who had studied commercial conditions at home and abroad rather profoundly—who expressed the conclusion that Japanese factory labor when reduced to terms of efficiency is not greatly cheaper than European, an opinion which has since grown rather trite in view of the number of times that I have heard it. "In the old handicrafts and family industries to which our people have been accustomed," my host declared, "we can beat the world, but the moment we turn to modern industrial machinery on a large scale the newness ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... heard a word of pity fall from any other lips than yours. I thought you were a man of honor. You were only a wretch. You deceived me; you represented yourself to me as free—and you were married. Weakly—oh, I could kill myself at the very thought!—I listened to you! I took for love the trite phrases you had used to dozens of other women; half by violence, half by ruse, you became my lover. I do not know when—I do not know how. I try to forget that horrible dream; and when, deluded by you, thinking that what I felt for you was love, for I did think so, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... from it—my ignorance, doubtless, did me little honour—that Bichat had died at thirty years of age, and this revelation was almost agitating. To have done so much in so short a life was to be truly great. This reflection, which looks deplorably trite as I write it here, had the effect of eloquence as I uttered it for my own benefit on the bare little mall ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... is entitled. For Mrs. Browning was a great poet, and not, as is idly and vulgarly supposed, only a great poetess. The word poetess is bad English, and it conveys a particularly bad compliment. Nothing is more remarkable about Mrs. Browning's work than the absence of that trite and namby-pamby elegance which the last two centuries demanded from lady writers. Wherever her verse is bad it is bad from some extravagance of imagery, some violence of comparison, some kind of debauch of cleverness. Her nonsense never arises from weakness, but from a confusion ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... trite after awhile, as do all the gods, and is invoked more to give than to please. 'Wake us,' cries a later poet, 'Wake us to wealth, O Dawn; give to us, give to us; wake up, lest the sun burn thee with his light'—a passage (V. 79) which has caused much learned nonsense to ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; and had the art to put herself on their level: often, when they were quite young, she would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt trite truth in couples with them, and detect, by joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be gathered like a cowslip; and that, dissect we the vocal dog—whose hair is so like a lamb's—never so skilfully, no fragment of palpable ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... as the weapon of ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: The manner of one that would expiate His share in grandmotherly Laws, Which do the dark thing to destroy, Under aspect of water so guilelessly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... triviala. Trigger tirilo. Trigonometry trigonometrio. Trill (mus.) trili. Trinity, the Triunuo. Trinket juvelo—eto. Trio trio. Trip faleti. Trip vojagxo—eto. Tripe tripo. Triple triobla. Tripod tripiedo. Trisyllable trisilabo. Trite komuna, eluzita. Triturate pisti. Triumph triumfi. Triumphal triumfa. Trivial triviala. Triviality trivialajxo. Trombone trombone. Troop (people) bando, amaso. Trooper rajdistarano. Trophy venksigno. Tropics tropiko. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... cold and trite director for us: no dictator of the banquet; no rex convivii. Have not the Romans sworn never to obey a king? Shall we be less free than your ancestors? Ho! musicians, let us have the song I composed the other night: it has ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Monthly Magazine, but was reprinted in 1817 with the name 'Sir Richard Phillips' as author on the title-page. Phillips was now no longer a publisher. Here we have some pleasant glimpses of a bygone era, many trite reflections, but not enough topography to make the book one of permanent interest. It would not, in ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... next and distinguishing characteristic of bad company and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions and trite sayings are the flowers of the rhetoric of ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... is as well to be prepared for the worst,' said Cargrim, in his blandest manner. 'The course of true love—but you are weary of such trite sayings. Good-day, Miss Whichello!' He raised his hat and turned away. 'One last proverb—Joy in the morning means grief ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... his leisure and greeted 'old Tamar,' with his sleepy, amused sort of smile, and a few trite words of kindness. So Tamar withdrew to prepare tea; and he said, all at once, with a sudden accession of energy, and an unpleasant ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... do me the honour to remember that I am not trying to get into your set. I am trying to induce you to come into mine. You won't be tempted, so that's the end of it. Beastly day, isn't it?" He uttered the trite commonplace as if no other thought than that of the weather had been in his mind. "By the way," he resumed, with a most genial smile, "for some queer, un-masculine reason, I took it into my head last night to worry about the bride's trousseau. How are you going to manage ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... Prince of Peace often sent him bleeding to bed, or shamelessly despoiled him of his merchandise, or bullied and blustered him out of his fair price, knowing he dared not resent. It meant being chaffed and gibed at in language of which he only understood that it was cruel, though certain trite facetiae grew intelligible to him by repetition. Thus once, when he had been interrogated as to the locality of Moses when the light went out, he replied in Yiddish that the light could not go out, for "it stands in the verse, that round the head of Moses, our teacher, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... command, the fleet was really controlled by a committee of the chiefs of its various squadrons. There were endless councils of war, and it is a trite saying that "councils of war do not fight." Prudent caution is oftener the outcome of such debates than daring enterprises. There was a time, in the first days of September, when, if the Suda fleet had gone boldly to the relief ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily involved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the following story, we have described in our first series of Traditions, where Sir Tarquin, a carnivorous giant, is slain by Sir Lancelot of the Lake. These circumstances, and more of the like purport on this subject, we therefore omit, as being too trite and familiar to bear repetition. We do not suppose the reader to be quite so familiar with the names and fortunes of Captain Harrington and Sir Ralph Molyneux, though they had the good fortune to be born eleven hundred years later, and to have seen the world, in consequence, eleven hundred years ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... their own associates, advisers, and even instructors; in a word, permitted to breathe the invigorating spirit of the Declaration of Independence before their constitutions are fitted for its reception. This may sound trite enough, but I see no other way of accounting for the intellectual—and, alas! moral—failure of so many of the brilliantly-gifted lads whom I have known and loved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... made by the form of poetry upon its substance are similar to those made by music upon the words in a song, only less stringent. The content must be emotional and significant; it cannot be trite and cold. The meaning of words would permit the poet to bring before the mind all possible objects, events, and ideas, but the music of words would be incongruous with most of them. Events narrated must be stirring, thoughts uttered must be emotionally ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... trite reflection was borne in on her by a loud wrangle between the bridge players. A woman had revoked, and was quite wroth with the man ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... non-application, of salt, &c., to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on,—shall I confess?—in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions—and mine had not been inconsiderable—are ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... still on Gilder's face as he puffed in leisurely ease on his cigar and uttered a trite condolence. ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... was as bright as day in the moonlight and Frank watched Willy walking, his shoulders thrown back. He sighed; an undefinable, but haunting melancholy hung about Willy; he often impressed Frank as an old book—a book whose text is trite—which no one will read, and which yet continues to make its mute appeal; a something that has always missed its way, that can hardly be said to be an adequate thing to offer for any man's money, that will soon disappear somehow out of all ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... disturb the tranquillity of nations than their being bound to mutual contributions for any common object that does not yield an equal and coincident benefit. For it is an observation, as true as it is trite, that there is nothing men differ so readily about as ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the Teutonic mind, although the Germans sneer at us for being a nation of shopkeepers. There are two words we hope never to hear again, "Kultur" and "Unser." "Unser Deutschland," "Unser Kaiser," "Unser Kultur." How weary and trite are these! What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. Many of their ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... a pleasing recreation, when no other is at hand, to read the letters of some of the New York correspondents who do the heavy Trite and the small Horrible for the outside barbaric folios. Standing on the shore of their Firth of Froth, so to speak, we watch with considerable interest the unique soarings and divings of "Our Own." One of these writers informs ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... it is a vein I am not familiar with in your writings. It is a little classic. This quaint child's story and the death of Mrs. Grey affect me as a fine work of art affects one, whenever I recall them. The trite saying is still true, "A thing of ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the general scope of this little treatise to encumber a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Timon's, to whose character of generosity and condescension they are very suitable. To suppose that by our betters are meant the Gods, is very harsh, because to imitate the Gods has been hitherto reckoned the highest pitch of human virtue. The whole is a trite and obvious thought, uttered by Timon with a kind of affected modesty. If I would make any alteration, it should be only to reform the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... been all this day, was indeed kind to him at last, he thought. He remembered certain trite observations concerning opportunity knocking at a man's door, and the obvious duty of a man to seize such opportunity, and bend it to his own use. If this were opportunity, he said to himself, he would make the most ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... of penal servitude had scattered our friends, and I could not interest myself in the new. Nor did Marshall himself interest me as he had once done. To my eager taste, he had grown just a little trite. My affection for him was as deep and sincere as ever; were I to meet him now I would grasp his hand and hail him with firm, loyal friendship; but I had made friends in the Nouvelle Athenes who interested me passionately, and my thoughts were absorbed by and set on new ideals, which Marshall ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... these words, he produced, from inside a purse which he had handy, a transcribed office-philactery, which he handed over to Yue-ts'un; who upon perusal, found it full of trite and unpolished expressions of public opinion, with regard to the leading clans and notable official families in that particular district. They ran ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... whiteness of her neck. Arthur's astonishment at this evidence of emotion was very great; but he said nothing, only watched her still more closely, as with a light laugh she regained her self-possession, and with the practical air of a philosopher uttered this trite remark: ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... thing was typical of Page's whole career as an editor. He held to the creed that an editor should divorce himself entirely from prejudices, animosities, and predilections; this seems an obvious, even a trite thing to say, yet there are so few men who can leave personal considerations aside in writing of men and events that it is worth while pointing out that Page was such a man. When his firm was planning to establish its magazine, his partner, Mr. Doubleday, was approached ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... we are apt to concentrate more on sexual morality than on the more obtuse moral duties. Religion has from time immemorial been held up to our minds as a great force in the production of this morality. That is another myth. In our own country it is a trite phrase that a man has a "Puritan code of ethics," or as "straight ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and a half, and yet I never felt bored or wearied by his long discourses, but really looked forward to them. This was because his sermons, instead of consisting of a string of pious platitudes, interspersed with trite ejaculations and irrelevant quotations, were one long chain of closely-reasoned argument. Granted his first premiss, his second point followed logically from it, and so he led his hearers on point by point, all closely argued, to an indisputable conclusion. I suppose that the ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... and by the Federal Government has been and must necessarily be, almost wholly secular. But the education given by this Association is distinctly, not technically, religious. It is rooted and grounded in the Bible. And if what I am saying appears to you trite, I am glad of it, because it shows that on the substantial facts we are at one and need ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... minstrel sagely said, "Where is the life which late we led?" That motley clown in Arden wood, Whom humorous Jaques with envy viewed, Not even that clown could amplify, On this trite text, so long as I. Eleven years we now may tell, Since we have known each other well; Since, riding side by side, our hand, First drew the voluntary brand; And sure, through many a varied scene, Unkindness never came between. Away ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... was happier than he had ever been in all his life; and so much in love that he found nothing to say for a moment save the few trite phrases in which a man in love says many commonplaces, all of which only mean, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... well say it is not always the easiest path! Mine is a very hard life, so far as work is concerned, you know. I toil early and late. But how can you be so awfully trite, Mr. Trent? I did not expect ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... recovered, he feels chastened, becomes urbane and ludicrously amiable, he conjures up fictitious delights from all things which, but yesterday, possessed for him such awful portentous aspects. His men he regards with love and friendship; whatever is trite he views with ecstasy. Nature appears charming; in the dead woods and monotonous forest his mind becomes overwhelmed with delight. I speak for myself, as a careful analysation of the attack, in all its severe, plaintive, and silly phases, appeared to me. I used to amuse myself ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... remedy for such evils as this country has suffered except general military education. In my opinion, no man is fit for a seat in Congress unless he has had such an education. The first thing he ought to learn is the old and trite military maxim that the only was to carry on war economically is to make it "short, sharp, and decisive." To dole out military appropriations in driblets is to invite disaster and ultimate bankruptcy. So it is in respect to the necessary preparations ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... Genevan divine. The specimens of humor and satire, preserved in the sermons and controversial tracts of those days, are occasionally the apt expressions of pungent thoughts; but oftener they are cruel torturings and twistings of trite ideas, disgusting by the wearisome ingenuity which constitutes their only merit. Among a people where so few possessed, or were allowed to exercise, the art of extracting the mirth which lies hidden like latent caloric in almost everything, ...
— Dr. Bullivant - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... after, and she had gone away wondering if life seemed to everyone like a dream when they were forty, and if his life would have seemed more real to him if he had given it to the world instead of to God? Her subsequent confessions seemed trite and commonplace. Not that Father Railston failed to listen with kind interest to her; not that he failed to divine that she was passing through a physical and spiritual crisis. His admonitions were comforting in her weariness of mind and body; but notwithstanding ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... P.M., on Wagon Hill West, a few Boers at last attempted what numbers should have tried hours before. It is trite to say that at such a crisis proverbial truths receive double emphasis. "Not to gain ground is to lose ground." "He who hesitates is lost." At the hour named, a number—eight, it is said—at their head De Villiers, a Free State commander, rose suddenly to their feet. The action, unexpected ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... trite observation, that no two people are more different than the same man at different periods of his life, and this was illustrated by an anecdote Lord Holland told us of Tom Grenville last night—Tom Grenville, so mild, so refined, adorned ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Charles, and inspired him with a sarcasm unlike his own serious and even dull tone of address. He accused Mr. Disraeli with delivering a two hours' speech on fiscal and economical subjects, from which a single proposition could not be extracted, and concluding by trite reflections upon the necessity of maintaining public credit, couched in highflown language about the empire of the Caesars, with its triple crown, the mines of Golconda, pillared palanquins, and other things ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... reigned in that house, and they were together an hour. Never before in his life had Ellis learned so much, nor caught so many glimpses of things beyond, in an equal length of time. His idea of woman had been trite, a little vague. He had no ideal; he had simply accepted, without question, the one ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... Finance. He pondered and pondered on the thing Watson had done, and, in the light of common business morality, could find no fault with it; but in his heart he knew it was wrong. The argument he found against it was a trite one, but true: "The wrongs of others are no palliation of ours." If the banks did wrong in using depositors' money to earn dividends for the rich, that was not the clerk's business—that was ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... symptoms; but he feels a just pride, on his arrival at the end of his difficult enterprise, from the consciousness that he is leaving to his successors a new field of research; and that in a matter apparently so trite, not only was there much to be said, but also very many points are found remaining which may yet be brought into the clear light of observation. He therefore presents here without order or connection the rough outlines which he has so far been able to execute, ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... and without one superfluous or one prosaic word, they never once betray the artifices of composition. The extreme transparency of the words and thoughts would induce a vulgar reader to consider them trite, while they are the expression of a genius so refined as to be all essence of spirit. In Gray, excellent as he is, we continually encounter the marks of labour and effort, and occasional crudeness, which ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... a little difficult sometimes, especially when he treats in detail of his friend's mystical experience, but he has a certain power of word-painting (unusual at his date) in matters both of nature and of grace, and it is only when he has been unduly trite or obscure that I have ventured, with a good deal of regret, to omit his observations. All such omissions, however, as well as peculiar difficulties of statement or allusion, have been dealt ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... considered as an exception to that law. Any trader ought, they said, to be permitted to send from any port a cargo to Surat or Canton as freely as he now sent a cargo to Hamburg or Lisbon. [174] In our time these doctrines may probably be considered, not only as sound, but as trite and obvious. In the seventeenth century, however, they were thought paradoxical. It was then generally held to be a certain, and indeed an almost selfevident truth, that our trade with the countries ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... It is a trite remark that slave labor is unproductive, when compared with labor performed by free white citizens; and that the agricultural interests of the country have suffered by the introduction ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... following extracts from a poem written on the death of his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... on the Floss will remember that whenever Mr. Tulliver found himself confronted by any little difficulty he was accustomed to make the trite remark, "It's a puzzling world." There can be no denying the fact that we are surrounded on every hand by posers, some of which the intellect of man has mastered, and many of which may be said to be impossible ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... gathered way whenever he approached. When at last he laid hold of her rail, after an hour of this fooling, barely strength remained to drag himself on board, where he fell helpless, and waited long before his powers were restored. It is trite to note in such exhibitions of recklessness many of the qualities of the ideal seaman, though not so certainly those of the foreordained commander-in-chief. Pellew was a ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... as well as many other persons who existed independently of the "Line," lived in the corrective fear of the "Cannery," that capacious receptacle which yawned for the trite word and the stereotyped phrase. Our language, to B. L. T., was an honest, living growth: deadwood, whether in thought or in the expression of thought, never got by, but was marked for the burning. ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... rain down?" she hastily exclaimed, hoping by this trite commonplace to distract attention from the blush, of ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... swains is at once so trite and obvious, that both the invention and vocabulary of the lover who abides by it so perpetually must have been poor and narrow beyond anything we can conceive of Spenser's fecundity of language and imagery, if we sit down content to imagine that no more is meant by its recurrence than meets the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... escape from the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind the trite ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... Edinburgh, and by many episodes related with Hogg's caustic humour. On the whole, the impression left upon the reader's mind is that Shelley and Harriet were very happy together at this period, and that Harriet was a charming and sweet-tempered girl, somewhat too much given to the study of trite ethics, and slightly deficient in sensibility, but otherwise a fit and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... Beside the mountain chapel, sleeps in earth Her new-born infant, fearless as a lamb 325 That, thither driven from some unsheltered place, Rests underneath the little rock-like pile When storms are raging. Happy are they both— Mother and child!—These feelings, in themselves Trite, do yet scarcely seem so when I think 330 On those ingenuous moments of our youth Ere we have learnt by use to slight the crimes And sorrows of the world. Those simple days Are now my theme; and, foremost of the scenes, Which yet survive in memory, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... earlier days. The first of these expressions has become classical, by Mrs. Hannah More's poem of 'Bas-Bleu' and the other by the use of it in one of Lord Byron's poems. Though now become familiar and rather trite, their day may ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... all right, but they're so confounded trite and impersonal. People prefer to read anecdotes about the people rather than a ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... gray serge piped in scarlet with Irish lace collar and cuffs. There were glints of gold in her fluffy hair and her eyes shone with unusual brightness. But Mrs. McLean's good food tasted as sawdust on her palate and the conversation of the eager Dodo sounded trite and stupid to her. Once she had said a word or two to Jimmy Lufton and he had turned and answered her politely and agreeably, but as soon as he decently could he was back with Molly ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... glimpse Of spacious circles luminous with mind, To which the ethereal substance of his own Seems but gross cloud to make that visible, Touched to a sudden glory round the edge, 450 Who that hath known these visitations fleet Would strive to make them trite and ritual? I, that still pray at morning and at eve, Loving those roots that feed us from the past, And prizing more than Plato things I learned At that best academe, a mother's knee, Thrice in my life perhaps have truly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... laurel was not all his own; The plant by Socrates was sown; To Aristotle's greater name The Macedonian[10] owed his fame. 100 The Athenian bird, with pride replete, Their talents equalled in conceit; And, copying the Socratic rule, Set up for master of a school. Dogmatic jargon learnt by heart, Trite sentences, hard terms of art, To vulgar ears seemed so profound, They fancied learning in the sound. The school had fame: the crowded place With pupils swarmed of every race. 110 With these the swan's maternal care Had sent her scarce-fledged ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... extraneous help offered to actors on the stage? First and foremost, as a means of suddenly pulling up the attention of the audience, is the judicious art of pausing. For those who have not actually had experience in the matter, this advice will seem trite and unnecessary, but those who have even a little experience will realize with me the extraordinary efficacy of this very simple means. It is really what Coquelin spoke of as a "high light," where the interest is focused, as ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... best, think you," said Rodriguez, "if you could have but one, a lofty place or comfort?" Even in those days such a question was trite, but Rodriguez uttered it only thinking to dip in the store of Morano's simple wisdom, as one may throw a mere worm to catch a worthy fish. But in this he was disappointed; for Morano made no neat comparison ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished—his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... however, the peculiar construction of this closet was unknown even to the brilliant Gentleman of the Bedchamber, or he would have been at once aware that they could not have chosen a more dangerous position in which to discuss any forbidden topic. The trite proverb that "walls have ears" was perhaps never more fully exemplified than when applied to those of the Louvre at that period; many of them, and those all connected with the more public apartments, being composed of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... This and a few trite sentiments about Russian weather and Russian seasons were the only words he ever exchanged with her in his life. Years later, when he stood, hardly daring to breathe, in the cupboard of a commissary's office, and heard her wild denunciation of the man who had sent her to death, he was to recall ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... the sea tend to have, in a greater or less degree, a distinctly specialized character, due to the unfamiliarity which the sea, as a scene of action, has for the mass of mankind. Nothing is more trite than the remark continually made to naval officers, that life at sea must give them a great deal of leisure for reading and other forms of personal culture. Without going so far as to say that there is no more leisure in a naval officer's life than in some other pursuits—social ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... calmness of legislation, we cannot but allow the main theory of the system to have been precisely that most favourable to the prodigal exuberance of energy, of intellect, and of genius. Summoned to consultation upon all matters, from the greatest to the least, the most venerable to the most trite—to-day deciding on the number of their war-ships, to-morrow on that of a tragic chorus; now examining with jealous forethought the new harriers to oligarchical ambition;—now appointing, with nice distinction, to various service the various combinations of music ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of the sky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features which would temper an encounter with ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... vengeance proportionate to the enormity of the offence would be to put Buondelmonti to death. And although some took into consideration the evils that might ensue upon it, Mosca Lamberti said, that those who talk of many things effect nothing, using that trite and common adage, Cosa fatta capo ha. Thereupon, they appointed to the execution of the murder Mosca himself, Stiatti Uberti, Lambertuccio Amidei, and Oderigo Fifanti, who, on the morning of Easter day, concealed themselves in a house of the Amidei, situate between ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of God. If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... world was prepared to confound and overturn, not religion alone, but all rule, nobility, pre-eminence and superiority—nay, all law and order. The reader, it may be feared, will tire of the frequency with which the same trite suggestions recur. It is, however, not a little important to emphasize the argument which the Roman Curia, and its emissaries at the courts of kings, were never weary of reiterating in the ears of the rich and powerful. And as they seized with avidity every slight incident of disorder ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... trite but not the less true remark that some of the most important events originate in apparently chance occurrences and circumstances, which lead up to results that materially influence and even determine the subsequent course ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... at college; he had been his inseparable companion, out of office hours, ever since; he knew him too well to proffer any trite condolence. But his sympathy was firm and warm in his fingers when he shook hands and ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... now through sermon trite And operatic singer's flight, I long for that old friendly sight, The hand with herbs of value light, To help to pass ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... this trite manner; when, interrupting him, I said, These general observations, Colonel, suit not perhaps this particular case. But you yourself are a man of gallantry; and, possibly, were you to be put to the question, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson |
