"Trite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now, of seeing De Quincey for some hours, and in the mood of conversation. As one belonging to the Wordsworth and Coleridge constellation (he, too, is now seventy years of age), the thoughts and knowledge of Mr. De Quincey lie in the past, and oftentimes he spoke of matters now become trite to one of a later culture. But to all that fell from his lips, his eloquence, subtle and forcible as the wind, full and gently falling as the evening dew, lent a peculiar charm. He is an admirable narrator; not rapid, but gliding along ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... tinge of mockery in his voice as he said these words. A tumultuous rush of feelings overcame me. My high dreams of ambition, my innate scorn of the trite and commonplace, my deep love of art, my desires of fame—all these things bore down upon my heart and overcame it, and a pride too deep for tears arose in me and ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... It is trite to remark that if you wish to know really any people, it is necessary to have a thorough knowledge of their history, including their mythology, legends and folk-lore: customs, habits and traits of character, which to a superficial observer of a different ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... course with the fashion of the day, for there is a local school of art supported by the municipality, which professes to improve the tastes of the tarsiatori, but most persons will certainly prefer the trite but characteristic patterns of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... small lad, one of the first lessons set down in my copy-book, after I had graduated in "pot-hooks and hangers," was the trite old saw, "Cleanliness is next to godliness." My Yankee governess, a tall, angular spinster, from Maine, made the meaning of this copy clear to my infant mind, pointing her remarks by calling attention to the Kentucky real estate which had found a resting-place ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... mankind. These were the doctrines which Fenelon taught. Considered as an epic poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above Glover's Leonidas or Wilkie's Epigoniad. Considered as a treatise on politics and morals, it abounds with errors of detail; and the truths which it inculcates seem trite to a modern reader. But, if we compare the spirit in which it is written with the spirit which pervades the rest of the French literature of that age, we shall perceive that, though in appearance trite, it was in truth one of the most original works that have ever appeared. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... us to take the experience of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the present and the future. From the nature of ratiocination, it is obvious that the axioms, on which it is based, cannot be demonstrated by ratiocination. It is also a trite observation that, in the business of life, we constantly take the most serious action upon evidence of an utterly insufficient character. But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as a starting-point; ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... opening. There was none. The bright patter between male and female characters in books he'd smuggled started off on too high a level on both sides. Books that were written adequately for his understanding of this problem signed off with the trite explanation that they lived happily ever afterwards but did not say a darned thing about how they went about it. The slightly lurid books that he'd bought, delivered in plain wrappers, gave some very illuminating descriptions of the art or act, but the ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... effect in these parts. The President of the Senate, the Hon. Lafe Giddings, went so far as to say that he hoped before long to see Mr. Watling in Washington. By no means the least among our callers was the Hon. Fitch Truesdale, editor of the St. Helen's Messenger, whose editorials were of the trite effectiveness that is taken widely for wisdom, and were assiduously copied every week by other state papers and labeled "Mr. Truesdale's Common Sense." At countless firesides in our state he was known as the spokesman ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... feels no spring, no pleasure in existence, & is so perceptibly altered for the worse that it is remarked everywhere. I try all I can to revivify him, but he [turns?] so tiresomely & tediously—for the same cursed trite commonplace topics, about death &c.—that we grow old, and when we are old, we are not young—that I despair of effecting a cure. Doctors Warren and Devaynes very kindly interest themselves about him, but you wd be of more service to him than anyone." Quoted from a MS ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... 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 old adage: ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... wise than that which tells us that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently? Then he wrote the six Paradoxes addressed to Brutus—or rather he then gave them to the world, for they were surely written at an earlier date. They are short treatises on trite subjects, put into beautiful language, so as to arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their reasoning. The most remarkable is the third, in which he endeavored to show that a man cannot ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... to the Night Court, where he found the Magistrate dispensing justice with the bored impatience of one grown tired of hearing the monotonous repetition of trite excuses. ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... ceiling rang for joy to think that he was soon to be with God: does that prove that mysticism and death are one? Mr. Chamberlain, in his exegesis of Tristan, will have it that Wagner composed the opera to demonstrate the truth of a very trite and ridiculous lie. The fact is, Wagner's was far more a feeling, emotional, imaginative brain than a thinking one, and in the hazy, steamy, overheated thinking part he often let idle phrases play about without himself firmly grasping their meaning or want of it. Anyhow, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... for him than Salisbury. If it were not so trite, we would say he had fallen from Scylla upon Charybdis; or, if it were not vulgar, we might assert him to have fallen from the frying-pan into the fire; we will simply say, that not finding his father's wife at all agreeable, and having a remote suspicion ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... It would be trite to observe the easy gradation from esteem to love: in the bosom of Harley there scarce needed a transition; for there were certain seasons when his ideas were flushed to a degree much above their common complexion. In times not credulous of inspiration, we should account ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... should have gold and gems so curiously wrought, that they will bear examination, often viewed, and always admired. The common utensils, which are either mean or sordid, should be carefully removed out of sight. In like manner, the true orator should avoid the trite and vulgar. Let him reject the antiquated phrase, and whatever is covered with the rust of time; let his sentiments be expressed with spirit, not in careless, ill-constructed, languid periods, like a dull writer of annals; let him banish low scurrility, and, ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... general. Printing has established, as indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property of everyone, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite and must occur to every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when we direct it to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... figure of diction or of thought? What is its effect? Does it give force or beauty to the sentence? How would the thought be expressed in plain language? Is it used consistently? In what way does it strengthen or weaken the sentence? Is the figure trite or original? Is it farfetched or natural? What percentage of sentences is figurative? Are figures more common in prose or poetry? Why? Do the minor or the major ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... impinging, with swift 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 prayed, Thrice, stirred below my conscious self, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... with 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
... 'That's trite!' said Leonard, patting her fondly. 'I like you to do—as you call it—Miss May does, and every one that is worth anything. I say, Ave, when I go out to the islands, you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon nations and societies are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to common-place.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... promontory into a bay that causes you to exclaim, "This is the best!" For thirty-five kilometers there is constantly a new adjustment of values, until you find yourself at the point where comparatives and superlatives are exhausted. The vehicle of language has broken down. Recurrent adjectives become trite. When the search for new ones is an effort, you realize that nature has imposed, through the prodigal display of herself, a limit of capacity to enjoy. Of copper rocks and azure sea; of mountain ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... by it to something else, which the first effort to realize dissipates in like manner, placing another phantom in its stead, until out of the fragments of these successive phantoms he has glued together a vague, mindless, involuntary whole, a mixture of all that was trite or common in each of the successive conceptions, for that is necessarily what is first caught a heap of things with the bloom off and the chill on, laborious, unnatural, inane, with its emptiness disguised by affectation, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the discussion of a principle now too trite, for humankind, at least in Europe, is satisfied that unlimited liberty is nowhere consistent with a properly-regulated state of society. I have touched lightly on the matter, only to give to my readers some idea of my conduct in my own country, where I began to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Yet, trite and self-evident as this truism is, it is constantly violated in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or eight years of study. These readers ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... There was nothing in it, of course, but somehow the sight impressed him very much. It seemed months since he awoke to find the lamp gone out. How much may happen between the lighting of a candle and its burning away! Smiling at this trite reflection, he blew that light out, and, taking another, went to his room. Here he found a stout hand-bag, with which he made haste to return to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... for the transportation of themselves, their boats, and supplies, but also by hunters and tourists. There was another steamer, named Amphitrite, laid up close by; but, apparently, her name was not more trite than her hull. There were also two or three large sail-boats in port. These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls. There were but few passengers, and not one female ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... who frequented the old theatres, abundant mention is made by the poets and satirists of the past. In this respect there can be no question that the censure which was so liberally awarded was also richly merited. Mr. Collier quotes from Edmund Gayton, an author who avowedly "wrote trite things merely to get bread to sustain him and his wife," and who published, in 1654, "Festivous Notes on the History of the renowned Don Quixote," a curious account of the behaviour of our early audiences at certain of the public ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... by sea and land I have returned to claim you. Since we parted I have stood face to face with death in its most terrible form. Each time I conquered because I felt I must see you again. It is a trite saying that death is immortal. Death itself would not part me from you—nay, if I were buried, and you came to my grave and whispered my name, it seems to me I must ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... very trite proverb, and a sadly worn truth, exemplified over and over again at all times and seasons, and in all places of the earth, that the course of true love never ran smooth; and alas! notwithstanding all the pleasant preparations being made for them, these two poor lovers ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... scene so remarkably impressive. The story of "Eric" is extremely quaint and charming; 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 beauty ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... unusually lovely in her pretty 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 again ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... physician wrestles with death to lengthen life, whereas I would 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. Religion invites us to take her postulates on trust; ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... On the trite saying, meant at first to represent, roughly and invidiously, the effect of the Reformation, and lately urged as technically and literally true—"The assertion that in the time of Henry VIII. the See of Rome was both 'the source and centre of ecclesiastical jurisdiction,' and therefore ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... 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 unchanging as the laws ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... exactly the same as mine, even to the choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not as mine, but as the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... nominal 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 ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... been teaching for twenty years, but she had never grown old. And her influence was—to use a trite description—like a stone flung into a still pool of water; the ever widening circles set moving by it lapped the very ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... pastorals of Rops recall the French painter's style. In his Belgian out-of-doors scenes and interiors the Belgian heredity of Rops projects itself unmistakably. Such a picture as Scandal, for example, might have been signed by Israels. Le Bout de Sillon is Millet, and beautifully drawn. The scheme is trite. Two peasants, a young woman and a young man holding a rope, exchange love vows. It is very simple, very expressive. His portraits of women, Walloons, and of Antwerp are solidly built, replete with character and quaint charm. Charming, too, is the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the books were never sent, for my mother, who was to have forwarded them, learnt that Mademoiselle Guyon had died. Some of the consolatory remarks which the letter contains may seem very trite, but are there any better ones to offer a person afflicted with cancer? They are, at all events, as good as laudanum. As a matter of fact the Revolution had left no impress upon the people among whom I lived. The religious ideas of the people were not touched; the congregations ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... his story: and we find him utterly careless, almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style, and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scots, he was delicate, strong, and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied three generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety—with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that a boy's life is made happier by his mother's existence sounds too trite and obvious to bear any weight; but it is through the obvious facts of life that the world's machinery is kept in motion. The inexpressible, unwearying tenderness of this mother for her son, the love of this boy for his mother, grew with the passage of time—grew into something ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... relate not to a great battle, but to a slight incident, not to a victory, but to a hasty retreat. I am alluding to the well-known stanzas on the Burial of Sir John Moore, who was killed at Corunna in 1809; and my apology for quoting anything so hackneyed must be that it is trite by reason of its excellence; for a short poem, like a single happy phrase, wins incessant repetition and lasting popularity, because the words precisely fit some universal feeling. Why have these verses made such an effect that ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... is obvious from what follows, which shows he did not agree with Lord George, in censuring the Government for not opening depots, and he undertakes to prove that they should not have done so. He uses, amongst others, the old trite argument, when he says: there is reason to believe that the establishment of Government depots at the end of '46, however cautiously introduced, tended in the localities to arrest the development of that retail trade, which was then rapidly extending ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... a 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 with himself and he bewails his melancholy and gloomy forebodings that unfit ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... These reflections, trite enough as I know, are nevertheless inevitable if one is to begin one's unheroic story in the modern manner, at the latest possible point. That is clearly the point at which a waiter brought me the fatal letter from Catherine Evers. Apart even from ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... here overspread by the 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 ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... British navy, changed his name to Carr, and soon rose to the rank of Post-Captain. He eventually drifted back to America and died unmarried at my grandfather's home on Long Island many years after the war. The trite saying that history repeats itself is here forcibly illustrated by brother fighting against brother. It brings to mind our own fraternal troubles during the Civil War, which can ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 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 ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and vale, Never to you be trite or stale As unto souls whose wellsprings fail Or flow defiled, Till Nature's happiest ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Sunset Book after vainly trying to get interested in it. How flat and unprofitable it seemed! Why could she never write anything but the trite and useless things that almost anyone who was able to hold a pen could say as well or better? The verses about the four o'clocks, which the other day had seemed a pretty conceit, to-day sounded silly, fit only for the little waste-basket ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... water over the cataract. And thus does it vary its velocity, its appearance, and its course, until it swells into a broad expanse, gradually checking its career as it approaches, and at last mingles with the ocean of Eternity. I have been led into this somewhat trite metaphor, to account to the reader for the contents of this chapter. As in the river, after many miles of chequered and boisterous career, you will find that its waters will for some time flow in a smooth and tranquil course as almost ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... exercised, as in British Columbia, exclusive rights to trade only, were, as the reader knows, transferred to Canada by Imperial sanction at the same time. It is not the author's intention, therefore, to cumber his pages with trite or irrelevant matter; yet certain transactions which preceded this primordial and greatest treaty of all not unfittingly may be set forth, though in the briefest way, as a pardonable introduction ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... bookish, scholastic, solid, profound, deep-read, book- learned; accomplished &c (skillful) 698; omniscient; self-taught. known &c. v.; ascertained, well-known, recognized, received, notorious, noted; proverbial; familiar, familiar as household words, familiar to every schoolboy; hackneyed, trite, trivial, commonplace. cognoscible[obs3], cognizable. Adv. to one's knowledge, to the best of one's knowledge. Phr. one's eyes being opened &c. (disclosure) 529; ompredre tout c'est tout pardonner[French: to know all is ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... women have been well treated by their men-folk, they have nobly discharged their debt. It is trite to refer to the numerous schemes of philanthropy in which American women have played so prominent a part, to allude to the fact that they have as a body used their leisure to cultivate those arts and graces ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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
... language is the 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 ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... often 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
... 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 ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Coleridge's inaptitude for such studies as political economy is found in his fancy, by no means 'rich and rare,' but meagre and trite, that taxes can never injure public prosperity by mere excess of quantity; if they injure, we are to conclude that it must be by their quality and mode of operation, or by their false appropriation, (as, for instance, if they are sent out of the country and spent ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... he inherits, and the hollowness visible amid the very raptures of enjoyment to every eye which looks for a moment underneath the draperies of the shadowy present, the hollowness, the blank treachery of hollowness, upon which all the pomps and vanities of life ultimately repose. This trite but unwearying theme, this impassioned common-place of humanity, is the subject in every age of variation without end, from the poet, the rhetorician, the fabulist, the moralist, the divine, and the philosopher. All, amidst the sad vanity of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... These trite remarks were nevertheless rendered necessary because of the enormous amount of misunderstanding which exists in connection with these phenomena, and of the general methods and objects of psychic research. The papers that have already been published ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... in 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, might not be ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... stand in my way to acquire money,' he said, musingly; 'with it one can rule the world; without it—but how trite and bald these well-worn maxims seem! Why do I repeat them, parrot- like, when I see what I have to do so clearly before me? That woman, for instance—I must begin by making her my friend. Bah! she is that already; I saw it in her eyes, which ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... undertakings meditated by the desultory ambition of a young and inexperienced student. And at that time I sought his advice upon a work of imagination, intended to depict the effects of enthusiasm upon different modifications of character. He listened to my conception, which was sufficiently trite and prosaic, with his usual patience; and then, thoughtfully turning to his bookshelves, took down an old volume, and read to me, first, in Greek, and secondly, in English, some extracts ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Menander's phrase is so well turned and contempered with itself, and so everywhere conspiring, that, while it traverses many passions and humors and is accommodated to all sorts of persons, it still shows the same, and retains its semblance even in trite, familiar, and everyday expressions. And if his master do now and then require something of rant and noise, he doth but (like a skilful flutist) set open all the holes of his pipe, and their presently stop ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of what they were to say next, Father O'Grady ventured to doubt if Horace would approve of Landor's Latin and of the works written in comparatively modern times. Buchanan, for instance. At last the conversation became so trite and wearisome that Father O'Grady began to feel unable to ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... of Sir 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 having as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Pembroke with great familiarity, as well as C. Fox; and Fitzpatrick, although painted in colours bad enough at present, is represented as one whom in time the Devil will lose for his disciple. I am only attacked upon that trite and very foolish opinion concerning le pene e le Delitte (ed i delitted), acknowledging (it) to proceed from an odd and insatiable curiosity, and not from a mauvais coeur. In some places I think there is versification, and a few good ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... paint for the frail one's cheek—a cuirass, that a life guardsman might envy—weights—whose elegance of shape charm the eye. Not an article of modern convenience or of domestic comfort, that has not its representative. They teach us the trite ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... written with that marvellous eloquence which characterises all the best productions of Jean Jacques, first brought me acquainted with those advanced ideas of education which have penetrated the whole modern world. Yet the Emile would probably appear to most of my readers trite and common-place, as it would now to me, for the reason that we have long passed the period of development when its ideas ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... said 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 ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... sheriff, Rutherford, dining with a number of members of the legal profession, had to reply to the toast, "The Bench of Scotland." In illustration of a trite remark that all litigants could not be expected to have the highest regard for the judges who have tried their cases, he told the following story: A worthy but unfortunate south-country farmer had fought his case in the teeth of adverse decisions in the ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... bow—I felt a change take place. It was almost physical, organic. The dawn grew whiter, and the rose-pink banners of the coming sun reached out across the grey wastes of the St. George's Channel. I am loth to use the trite metaphor of "a spiritual dawn." By a strange twist of things, my barest hint of a soul within me, that is to say, the faintest glimmer of the ever-increasing purpose of my being—the moment it showed through, the outer world, including my own self, had always greeted it with inextinguishable ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... trite—coming after that," Deane said. "But anyway, I'll have to say that I feel the same way ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... fruit. The message it contains is one to sink deep, penetrating and enriching whatever receptive soul it touches. This man's words are incandescent. Many of us feel that he is breathing into a language, grown trite from hackneyed usage, the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... ease his vivid lines assume The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.— Let college verse-men trite conceits express, Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress; From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays: Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... England expects—I forbear to proceed: 'Tis a maxim tremendous, but trite: And you'd best be unpacking the things that you need To rig yourselves out for ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... recognition of Morton's character, and the confidence he placed in him as the man of the hour, deserve the highest commendation. Doctor Warren had invited Doctor Jackson to attend this critical experiment with sulphuric ether at the Massachusetts Hospital; but he declined with the trite excuse that he was obliged to go out of town. This has been generally interpreted by the medical profession as a lack of courage on Jackson's part to face the music, but it may also have been owing ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... epigrammatic, rich in figures, subtle, sometimes tortuous and even obscure. He abhors the trite and obvious, and, in escaping them to indulge in witty riddles, fanciful expressions, and difficult allusions, he imperils his clearness. In the presence of genuine emotion, he is always as simple in style as he is serious in attitude; but ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... to the extent of making him forget his mistrust of de Batz and his desire to get away. Mechanically almost he sat down again, and leaning both elbows on the edge of the box, he rested his chin in his hand, and listened. The words which the late M. de Moliere puts into the mouth of Celimene are trite and flippant enough, yet every time that Mlle. Lange's lips moved Armand watched ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... would not deal alone In words and phrases trite and too well known, Nor, stooping from the tragic height, drop down To the low level of buffoon and clown, As though pert Davus, or the saucy jade Who sacks the gold and jeers the gull she made, Were like Silenus, who, though quaint and odd, Is yet the guide and tutor of a god. A hackneyed subject ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... preached for over an hour, sometimes for an hour 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 Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... have been amazed, enraged through wounded vanity, if it had been possible for him to see himself from Dora's point of view: a subject for reformation; a test for many trite theories; an erring human to be reclaimed by a woman's benign influence. Naturally, these thoughts had not suggested themselves ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... statements made than on the attitude of Englishmen in India towards the natives of the country. That social relations between Englishmen and Indians seldom grow intimate is true enough, but not that the fault lies mainly with Englishmen. At the risk of being trite, I must recall a few ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... 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. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... 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 it were, to ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... 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
... more." If he struggles to take a different view of the same class of subjects, he speedily discovers that what is obvious, graceful, and natural, has been exhausted; and, in order to obtain the indispensable charm of novelty, he is forced upon caricature, and, to avoid being trite, must become extravagant. ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... she heated him, Talboys cooled him. We are all great at something or other, small or great. Talboys was a first-rate freezer. He was one of those men who cannot shine, but can eclipse. They darken all but a vain man by casting a dark shadow of trite sentences on each luminary. The vain man insults them directly, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to marry. And so, the note said, finally, she gave him up to his family, she released him altogether, and she begged him not to come back to her, or to urge her to change her mind. Also she made the trite but very sensible observation that he would be glad of his freedom before the year ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... syntax of the modern standard author—yea, even his ludicrous neologisms—are not only tolerated, but placed to his credit as the spicy element in his works. But woe to the stylist with character, who seeks as earnestly and perseveringly to avoid the trite phrases of everyday parlance, as the "yester-night monster blooms of modern ink-flingers," as Schopenhauer says! When platitudes, hackneyed, feeble, and vulgar phrases are the rule, and the bad and the corrupt become refreshing exceptions, then all that is strong, distinguished, and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... to many, and now trite; and drawn from the midst of Fortune's heap."—Juvenal, Sat., ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... which they were not familiar, and of which they did not distinctly apprehend the meaning, is very remarkable. Junius thought De Lolme's Essay deep," (13) and talks of property which "savours of the reality:" (14) he misapplies that trite expression of the courts, bona fide: (15) misunderstands mortmain, (16) and supposes that an inquisitio post mortem was an inquiry how the deceased came by his death. (17) Walpole talks of "the purparty ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of habit' is a trite phrase in everybody's mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... be, I take an interest in this trite marvel of a bundle of weeds perpetuating hygienic principles in a stagnant pool; I look with a delighted eye upon the inexhaustible spray of spreading bubbles; I see in imagination the prehistoric times when seaweed, the first-born ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... of any criterion beyond my own judgment, I have selected the items which had to me most importance, or had a marked influence on my life or an interest beyond myself. I have told things that will seem trite to Americans, and others that will be commonplace to Englishmen, but I have two publics to think of, differing in slight matters in their knowledge ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... little sculduddery after dinner, which it is perfectly licit for him to do, and which (although I am not very fond of it myself) appears to be entirely an affair of taste. Your father, I scarcely like to remind you, since it is so trite a commonplace, is older than yourself. At least, he is MAJOR and SUI JURIS, and may please himself in the matter of his conversation. And, do you know, I wonder if he might not have as good an answer against you and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, it seems, Brabantio, the noble Venetian ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... raised.—That education is a preparation for complete living has been quoted by every teacher who lays any sort of claim to the standard definitions. Indeed, so often and so glibly has the quotation been made that it is well-nigh axiomatic and altogether trite. But we still await any clear explanation of what is meant by complete living. On this point we are still groping, with no prophetic voice to tell us the way. By implication we have had hints, and much has been said on the negative side, but the positive side still lies fallow. When asked ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... first, I established a special group to work on one problem. They were dubbed the Gravity Gang, and immediately after, the GG. I hired them for the gravity of the situation, a standard gag that, once uttered, became as trite as the phrase. The Tour's realism would be affected by ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... secessions in Roman history were handed on to him in the trite words IN TANTO DISCRIMINE and he had tried to peer into the social life of the city of cities through the words IMPLERE OLLAM DENARIORUM which the rector had rendered sonorously as the filling of a pot with denaries. The pages ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... from within. Into his creations, Shakespeare pours wide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or shut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great sense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and dried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life itself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents this sense of varied life as manifested or objectified ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... 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 ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... though trite observation, that victorious Rome was herself subdued by the arts of Greece. Those immortal writers who still command the admiration of modern Europe, soon became the favorite object of study and imitation in Italy and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... rings and in its knots, branches, and curvatures, the deposits which its sap has made and the imprint of the innumerable seasons through which it has passed. Using the philosophic definition, so vague and trite, to such an organism, is only a puerile label teaching us nothing.—And all the more because extreme diversities and inequalities show themselves on this exceedingly elaborate and complicated background,—those of age, education, faith, class and fortune; and these must be taken into account, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a trite saying that misfortunes rarely come singly, and it would not be so trite if there were not truth in it. Misfortunes are sometimes like blackbirds: they ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... with such passionate tenacity, that men stained with every conceivable crime held that their passage to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the faith which they professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed up in one trite formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold it somewhat in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the Magnificent; and there was an added zest to robbery and murder in the fact that the pirates, as good Mohammedans, were ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... in seeking to compensate himself for his infecundity, he has fallen into the deep sea of preciosity. In seeking by main force to be expressive, to remedy his cardinal defect, to eschew whatever is trite and outworn in the line of the melody, the sequence of the harmonies, to rid himself of whatever is derivative and impersonal and undistinguished in his style, he has become over-anxious, over-meticulous of his diction. Because his phraseology was colorless, he has become ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... all the world, so many of the most noble deeds that earth can show have become the best known, and enjoyed their full meed of fame. Therefore it may be feared that many of the events here detailed, or alluded to, may seem trite to those in search of novelty; but it is not for such that the collection has been made. It is rather intended as a treasury for young people, where they may find minuter particulars than their abridged histories usually ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are gloomy, as 'The Sorrow of an Old Convict,' Loti; or old style, 'Christian Gellert's Last Christmas,' Auerbach; or trite, 'The Convict's Return,' Harben; or newspapery, 'Rescued by a Child;' or highly fantastic, 'The Egyptian Fire Eater,' Baumbach; or anecdotal, 'A Fishing Trip;' or sentimental, 'Hope,' Bremer; or repellent, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... 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 at the last. It is, however, a noteworthy fact, that ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... the box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our knowledge—that the fire would have to burn its way through four inside passengers before it could reach ourselves. With a quotation rather too trite, I remarked ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... sorrow; subduing even the stronger sentiments of nature, that she may not by an useless and inconsiderate grief supersede the kind care, and watchful attention, that it is her first ambition to yield. It is a trite observation, that beauty never appears so attractive as when unconscious of itself; and I am sure, that no self-forgetfulness can be so amiable, as that which is founded in the emotions of a tender and gentle heart. The disorder of the duke however was neither violent ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... 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
... was his bond is to repeat one of the trite tributes to him. But it was nevertheless very true. Often in discussing a business arrangement with his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... is a precept? It is at best an illustration; it is case law at the best which can be learned by precept. The letter is not only dead, but killing; the spirit which underlies, and cannot be uttered, alone is true and helpful. This is trite to sickness; but familiarity has a cunning disenchantment; in a day or two she can steal all beauty from the mountain tops; and the most startling words begin to fall dead upon the ear after several repetitions. If you see a thing too often, you no longer see it; if you hear a thing too often, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tunnel with one end lighted by the twinkling pictures. Tired mothers came here to escape from their children, and children came here to escape from their tired mothers. The plots of the pictures were as trite and as rancid as spoiled meat, but they suited the market. This plot concerned a beautiful girl who came to the city from a small town. She was a good girl, because she came from a small town ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... time should come for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... all around us," such was the course of natural though trite reflection, which flowed upon Tyrrel's mind; "wherefore should loves and friendships have a longer date than our dwellings and our monuments?" As he indulged these sombre recollections, his officious landlady disturbed ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and state pageants—are spirited and interesting. On the other hand the faults of the work are numerous and glaring. The general style is prolix, involved and vicious; mistakes of fact and false deductions are to be found in almost every page; and the constant repetition of trite moral reflections and egotistical references seriously detracts from its dignity. A more grave defect resulted from the author's strong political partisanship, which entirely unfitted him for dealing with the problems ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... married. Irene would be, of course; but marriages were an old story for her. She had loved to shine at watering-places, but the gayety no longer lured her. She had dazzled in diamonds, silks, and velvets, been admired on the right hand and on the left, until it was an old, trite story. Servants managed her house admirably. Mr. Lawrence never wearied her with any business details. Her clothes were ordered, and made, and hung in the closets. The carriage was always at hand. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... said is trite, but my whole heart is in it. Your father approves, I am quite sure, and so it ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... which begins "To Fanny fair could I impart," &c., it is most exact measure, and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice, but a thorough judge of nature,—how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and lamely methodical, compared with the wild warbling cadence, the heart-moving melody of the first!—This is particularly the case with all those airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of wild irregularity ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 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
... 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 ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... forced apart, or there shall be found and set you such tormenting penance, that you shall sue with speed to make confession. What! still silent? Bathe no longer that face with tears. Out on thee, crocodile! Oh, that those trite tears were scales, falling, to leave you bare and vulnerable to arrows of adjurement; then, with patience I could see them fall as fast as flakes of snow in winter, till thou wert as white as Judge's ermine with them! Creature, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... favorite one. One pamphleteer, at least, drew the parallel between his trial at Worms and that of Christ before Pilate. The whole bent of men's minds was theological. Doctrines which now seem a little quaint and trite were argued with new fervor by each writer. The destruction of images, the question of the real presence in the sacrament, justification by faith, and free will were disputed. Above all the Bible was lauded in the new translation, and the priests ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... practical education 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 musical talent, and yet because of her capriciousness she never filled any place ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... lives, of course, varies, and with it the opportunity of the biographer. I do not mean in degree, which is trite to remark, but in kind, which is less recognized. There are men the value of whose memory to their race lies in their thought and words, whose career is uneventful. Yet even with them the impression of personality is not as vividly produced by masses of correspondence ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... and I usually find their conversation much more entertaining and profitable than that of most men I know. "Good morning!" I say to an acquaintance. "Fine day," he replies; "how's business?" And so on for an hour, over themes of every nature, the current of conversation rippled with trite truisms, and whirling in the surface-eddies of Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy." But the tree takes the whole of the Tupperian philosophy for granted at the start, and the truisms which most men utter, and takes you for granted likewise,—supposing neither ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... 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. ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... base-ball is to play it, and it is a trite saying that the best practice for a ball player is base-ball itself. Still, there are points outside of the game, such as the preliminary training, diet, and exercise, an observance of which will be of great ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... Guardian, the Mirror or the Lounger, as my poor abilities may be able to accomplish. Not that I have any purpose of imitating Johnson, whose general learning and power of expression I do not deny, but many of whose Ramblers are little better than a sort of pageant, where trite and obvious maxims are made to swagger in lofty and mystic language, and get some credit only because they are not easily understood. There are some of the great moralist's papers which I cannot peruse without thinking on a second-rate masquerade, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott |
