"Platitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ambitious, whom neither the boon of life nor the beauty of the world suffices to content, it comes as a penance that life with them is squandered and that they possess neither the benefits nor the beauty of the world." That might be a platitude said by some one else; but we know that in it Leonardo expresses his faith. The boon of life, the beauty of the world, were enough for him without ambition, without even further affections. He left father ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... Prince Platitude has kissed, You threaten her with Night and Sorrow? Slay her by thousands, friend — but list: More Little ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... merchant, with whom Lavengro discussed Haik; the victim of the evil chance, who talked nonsense about the star Jupiter and told him that "touching" story of his fight against destiny; the Rev. Mr. Platitude, who would neither admit there were any Dissenters nor permit any to exist; Peter Williams, the man who committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost, and Winifred, his patient, constant wife; the student of Chinese, who learnt the language ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... nothing of the issues at stake, and when even the candidates are ignorant of affairs and try to win by making sentimental popular appeals to varying prejudices? England is low. It is a humiliating platitude. England stands far lower to-day than the level ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... rob in at discretion. There or elsewhere, Ethelred the Unready had no battle in him whatever; and, for a forty years after the beginning of his reign, England excelled in anarchic stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude, and sluggish contemptibility, all the countries one has read of. Apparently a very opulent country, too; a ready skill in such arts and fine arts as there were; Svein's very ships, they say, had their gold dragons, top-mast pennons, and other ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... been well said, "There is no copyright in platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the property and ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... journal of a thousand incidents as interesting and important to two people as they are stupid and ridiculous to every one else. Each day was one of progress; finally, we loved each other. Excuse the homely platitude in this avowal. ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... for a bout, and blushed not at the subterfuges and mean, paltry artifices, aye, a full battery of chicaneries that awaited her use, as she crossed the maid's chamber threshold. "'All is fair in love and war,'" she quoted—"'Tis an egregious platitude adopted ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... tired of soft platitude, silly truism and undisputed things said in such a solemn way. So when "The Philistine" stepped into the ring and voiced in no uncertain tones what its editor thought, thinking men and women stopped and listened. Editors of magazines refused my manuscript because they said it was too plain, too ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies—every day; every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning; if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude, will convey deception—and purposely. Even in sermons—but that is a platitude. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the stately Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not allow you to sign at the end, but ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find two antagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question of sexual purity, both flowing from ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... to his taste!" said Harriet, who always delivered a platitude as if it was an epigram. She was curiously virulent about Italy, which she had never visited, her only experience of the Continent being an occasional six weeks in the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... said the bootmaker to me one day, as he pointed to the toes of a pair I had just brought him for mending. It was a significant observation, I thought; and as I went on my way home, writing another such chronicle with every springing step, it filled me with much reflection—largely of the nature of platitude, I have little doubt: such reflection, Reader, as is even already, I doubt less, rippling the surface of your mind with ever-widening circles. Yes! you sigh with an air, it is in the unconscious autobiographies we are every moment writing—not those we publish in two volumes ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... are no one's fault," I said gently. But just as I was beginning to console her with what thumb-marked scraps of platitude I could collect—the only philosophy after all, such is the futility of systems, adequate to the deep issues of life—the door opened and the manager announced ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... income, which goes, as he asserts, to "labour," is avowedly the amount which, according to his estimate, is paid to-day in America, as weekly wages to the mass of manual labourers. To say that labour in its more extended sense is the producer of all wealth, is a mere meaningless platitude. It is to say that there would be no wealth without effort of some kind. Does Mr. Wilshire seriously wish us to believe that he is telling Mr. Edison that "if he will only cast his ballot intelligently" he will be able to treble his income at ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... yet almost a platitude, for did not every one occupy themselves exclusively with the Now, regardless of future consequences? Of course! Who but sages—or fools—would stop to question ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... ambitious young men he had, so far, taken as his motto a couplet, which, through over-usage, has become a platitude— ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... much he was—oh, horror!—a bourgeois himself. That was obvious. How blind they had been not to see it sooner! When Amedee had read his verses not long since at Sillery's, by what aberration had they confounded this platitude with simplicity, this whining with sincere emotion, these stage tricks with art? Ah! you may rest assured, they never ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... express itself. In this world the place of chorus, interpreter or commentator is not given to the wise man, but to the fool who has degraded the office to a profession. Jaques, the wise man, finds the place occupied by one whose comment is platitude. Wisdom has no place in the social scheme. The fool, he finds, has both office ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... set-off against the subsequent taxation involved by the war debt. It would have been a much simpler and more businesslike proceeding to have taken, instead of borrowing, a much larger proportion of the war's cost during the war; but it is too late now to rub in this platitude which is now pretty generally admitted. Mr Hoare showed in last month's Journal that the creation of the War Debt has caused a huge addition to what he has called Rente—the gross income of the propertied ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... go to sea in a platitude. It is as leaky as a sieve, and not half so likely to upset and leave one floating without any ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... however, thought that she looked very like an angel, and accepting the proffered seat, sat down beside her. He uttered some platitude as to this deep obligation for the trouble she had taken, and wondered more ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... through life unconscious of the existence of certain common things until the occasion arises for noticing them, or accident forces them upon the attention; then they marvel that the thing should have escaped observation. This is a truism, no doubt, but the force of every platitude does not always present itself to every one. The comparison of handwritings is so essentially a matter of cultivating the powers of observation, that even if turned to no more practical account than that of a hobby its value as a ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... manner and her philosophical platitude, Sarah was more moved in her heart than she had dared to confess. From the moment that she had heard of Reuben's death—when she had gone over with some of her mourning to offer Molly—she had ceased to think of him as an old man, and her mind had dwelt upon him as one who had been ruthlessly ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow |
