"Trivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knows! Talent, you say? Genius? Originality? Not a bit of it, sir!... People have lived and made a career side by side with me who were worthless, trivial, and even contemptible compared with me. They did not do one-tenth of the work I did, did not put themselves out, were not distinguished for their talents, and did not make an effort to be celebrated, but just look at them! Their names are continually in the newspapers and on men's lips! ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... conditions and then again brought into varying conditions. Think what has been done in few last years, look at pigeons, and cattle. With the amount of food man can produce he may have arrived at limit of fatness or size, or thickness of wool , but these are the most trivial points, but even in these I conclude it is impossible to say we know the limit of variation. And therefore with the [adapting] selecting power of nature, infinitely wise compared to those of man, that it is impossible to say we know the limit of races, which would be true kind; if of different ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... in some degree from his own, by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here, as in the biography of almost all other really great men, it is found, that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge, and turned it, as it were, into the allotted sphere, and contributed to form the matrix in which original thought was formed, and new truth communicated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... as soon as he had taken the necessary steps for the purpose. The licentiate lectured in the schools, precisely like the master, for whom indeed he acted. The fee for the licence was one commons, which may represent a shilling—in any case, it was trivial. The cost of Inception, on the other hand, was very great on account of the feasts, etc., which accompanied it; and as the licentiate already enjoyed some of the privileges of the master, there was an evident temptation to put off the evil day. Security was therefore ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... after their arrival in the town. But what, what had he done that she should break it between her hands, scattering the splinters as who should sow dragon's teeth? I could not believe he had done anything much amiss. I imagined her grievance a trivial one. But this did not make the case less engrossing. Again and again I would take the fan-stump from my pocket, examining it on the palm of my hand, or between finger and thumb, hoping to read the mystery it had been mixed up in, so that I might reveal that mystery to the world. To ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... a dozen instances, some trivial, or seemingly coincidental, but all forming our theory. There is one Ezekiel recounted, as we sat here talking that night. It was just a matter of old Horace MacNair's coming in on them once during a thunder-storm. The family were sitting in the big hall; the ladies with their feet up on chairs to ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Quebec overland by means of walking postmen till a bush road should be cut from Quebec to the sea. In Prince Edward Island the old lieutenant-governor, Walter Patterson, declined to make way for the new one, Edmund Fanning. In the end Patterson gave up the contest. But the incident, trivial as it now appears, shows what a governor-general had to face in the early days when each province had queer little ways of its own. Patterson had no precise official reason. But he said he could not go home to answer charges he did not understand and leave an island which ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... forrein: And amongst those of our own Countrey, the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eaton, Sir Henry Wootton: I know not thy palat how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is; perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that incouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Wallers late choice Peeces, hath once more made me adventure into the World, presenting it with these ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... costly, are in themselves mere petty accessories to dress; and the use of them, except to define its chief terminal outlines, or soften their infringement upon the flesh, is a confession of weakness in the main points of the costume, and an indication of a depraved and trivial taste. When used, they should have beauty in themselves, which is attainable only by a clearly marked design. Thus, the exquisite delicacy of fabric in some kinds of lace does not compensate for the blotchy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... If such men will make a firm and solemn pause, and meditate dispassionately on the importance of this interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries ...
— The Federalist Papers
... one to the lady to write her question on; she placed it in a cleft stick and burnt it in a lamp; but the stick was cleft at both ends, and Mike managed it so that she burnt the blank sheet, while he read what she had written. Very trivial; inferior of course to Casanova's immense cabalistic frauds, but it bears out my contention ... Have you ever read the Memoirs? What a prodigious book! Do you remember when the Duchesse de Chartres comes to consult the cabale in the little ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... studied through every available source of information. All the antiquarian collections in Oregon and California have been consulted, old trading-posts visited, and old pioneers and early missionaries conversed with. Nothing has been discarded as trivial or insignificant that could aid in the slightest degree in affording an insight into Indian character and customs ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... reply, that Sir Aymer was almost tempted to suppose that his uncle had some mode of corresponding with De Walton, unknown to the young knight himself, and to the rest of the garrison. And as the earl alluded to some particular displeasure which had been exhibited by De Valence on a late trivial occasion, his uncle's knowledge of this, and other minutiae, seemed to confirm his idea that his own conduct was watched in a manner which he did not feel honourable to himself, or dignified on the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Versailles road was the Chateau de Clagny, a royal maison de plaisance, of an attractive, but trivial, aspect, though its architecture was actually of a certain massiveness. Its gardens and the disposition of its apartments pleased the king's fancy when he chose to pass this way, which was often. He is said to have personally spent over two million francs ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... one should study it, but should join with it some other study, as Astrology or Astronomy. He says also that the greatest part of the art had perished by men's negligence; "For all that our musicians do now-a-days, is almost trivial if compared with what the old ones (antiqui) did, so that now hardly one or two (unus aut alter) can be found who know what harmony is, though the word is always on their tongue." (De Fructu, p. 54-5.) ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... as children to parents. A lock of hair from a loved one long since passed away, is a little thing,—a very little thing in the eye of a stranger,—but in the eye of a loving friend it is above price. So some things in this work, apparently trivial to the general reader, may be highly prized by others. I will give, for an ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... intimated to me, in a low tone of voice, that I should get into disgrace by my noncompliance. Napoleon looked over the whole of the house, entered into the most trivial details, and after addressing questions to several of the pupils: 'Well, madame,' said he, 'I am satisfied; show me your six best pupils.'" Madame Campan presented them to him; and as he stepped into his carriage, he desired that their ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... it means to a girl like Caroline Osborne! A girl who is trying to do something for humanity—to find the people she wants to uplift so trivial—so without souls!" ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... to make for indulging in levity in discussing this frivolous matter—it was beneath the dignity of the House to occupy itself with the further consideration of the charges against the honourable member for Middlesex. These charges were so trivial and ill-founded, and they originated in such a trumpery fear lest the Crown should suffer indignity where indignity was in no wise offered to it, that he begged the House to dismiss the matter forthwith and refuse Captain Matthews leave to absent himself from his Parliamentary ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... a narrow bit of dingy black cloth—just that and nothing more—a thing as trivial as the band which clips a closed umbrella. Was it such a band, and would he presently be asked to find the umbrella from which it had fallen or been twisted away? No. Umbrellas are not carried about museum buildings. Besides, this strip of cloth ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... change which Edwin's character had undergone. As to Edwin Drood himself, "purified by trial, strengthened though saddened by his love for Rosa," Edwin would have been one of those characters Dickens loved to draw—a character entirely changed from a once careless, almost trivial self, to depth and earnestness. "All were to join in changing the ways of dear old Grewgious from the sadness and loneliness of the earlier scenes" in the story, "to the warmth and light of that kindly domestic life for which, angular though ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... as though they were carried out of themselves into the divine. I have seen dancing more accomplished, more elaborate, more astonishing than this. But never any that seemed to me to fulfil so well the finest purposes of the art. The Russian ballet, in the retrospect, seems trivial by comparison. It was secular; but this was religious. For the first time I seemed to catch a glimpse of what the tragic dance of the Greeks might have been like. The rhythms were not unlike those of Greek choruses, the motions corresponded strictly to the rhythms, and all was attuned to a high ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... to communicate his views upon the situation to political circles at home. Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr. Creevey was malicious and might keep a diary. He therefore sent for him on some trivial pretext, and a ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... and for two hundred years later, the matter of attributing a book to this man or that was considered a trivial affair. Piracies were prevalent. All printers revised the work of classic authors if they saw fit, and often they were specially rewarded for it by the Church. It was about this time that some one slipped that paragraph into the ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps; and being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been regularly assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should have been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly nautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all these particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair stood ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... swiftly through the squad room upset a stool with a loud crash. Yet few of the soundly sleeping soldiers bothered their heads about such a series of trivial noises. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... tenacious affections and deep love of home, had been a sharp wrench, and she required long familiarity to reconcile her to new conditions. Though the first and greatest change from England to America would seem to have rendered all others trivial and not to be regarded, she had shrank from each as it came, submitting by force of will, but unreconciled till years had past. In Andover she had allowed herself to take firm root, certain that from this point she would never be dislodged, and the house had gradually become filled ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... which brought me into a mystery not yet solved, the ending of which I fear to guess. In a modern era, when it is commonly supposed that skeletons no longer hang in closets, that day after day brings commonplace occurrences or, at the best, trivial abnormalities to be explained to-morrow, that romance is dead, it is strange that Fate should have picked me, when, by custom and my own desire, I am aloof from all things turbulent, morbid, and uncanny, to play an unwilling part in so extraordinary ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... admiration, now excited only sorrow and regret. Having gazed on the chateau and its lovely scenery, till the banks again closed upon them, her mind became too much occupied by mournful reflections, to permit her to attend to the conversation, which Madame Cheron had begun on some trivial topic, so that they soon travelled ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... before use. They are very porous, and by absorbing moisture from the soil they may at once make it too dry, although in exactly the right condition before being placed in the pots. And old pots ought never to be used until they have been scrubbed quite clean. These may appear to be trivial matters, unworthy of attention. They have, however, an influence on the health of plants, and experienced growers know that a few apparent trifles make all the difference between success and failure. Pots which are dirty, or covered with green moss, prevent access of air, and tend to bring about ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... noun."—Fisk's Murray's Gram., p. 56. (7.) "An allegory is the representation of some one thing by an other that resembles it, and which is made to stand for it."—Murray's Gram., p. 341. (8.) "Had he exhibited such sentences as contained ideas inapplicable to young minds, or which were of a trivial or injurious nature."—Murray's Gram., Vol. ii, p. v. (9.) "Man would have others obey him, even his own kind; but he will not obey God, that is so much above him, and who made him."—Penn's Maxims. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... our guard against small troubles, which, by encouraging, we are apt to magnify into great ones. Indeed, the chief source of worry in the world is not real but imaginary evil—small vexations and trivial afflictions. In the presence of a great sorrow, all petty troubles disappear; but we are too ready to take some cherished misery to our bosom, and to pet it there. Very often it is the child of our fancy; and, forgetful ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... attaches to the consequences of neglect; the same remorse is felt by the individual offender. The exposure of the naked person is as much abhorred as telling a lie. The Turkish woman exposing her face, is no less conscience-smitten than if she murdered her child. There is no act, however trivial, that cannot be raised to the position of a moral act, by the imperative ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portulaca Oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... both a lighter-timbered and a looser-built vessel than Hero; rather credulous, unstable, inconstant, and very much the sport of slight and trivial occasions. A very small matter suffices to upset him, though, to be sure, he is apt enough to be set right again. All this, no doubt, is partly owing to his youth and inexperience; but in truth his character is mainly ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... all this elucidation, we take shame to ourselves for admitting that there are points which, after all, we do not comprehend. They may be trivial; but in making up testimony, it is the little things which have weight. Trifles light as air are confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ, and confutation no less strong. When, as a proof of Nat's ardor in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... intelligent eye of the careful observer which gives these apparently trivial phenomena their value. So trifling a matter as the sight of seaweed floating past his ship, enabled Columbus to quell the mutiny which arose amongst his sailors at not discovering land, and to assure them that the eagerly sought New World was not far off. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... it would seem, did not set out on distant missions until they were thoroughly convinced that they had ceased to make progress in the conversion of their countrymen in the land of their fathers. And it is no trivial evidence, at once of the strength of their convictions, and of the truth of the evangelical history, that they continued so long and so efficiently to proclaim the gospel in the chief city of Palestine. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... previous to his "Excursion," is there any allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, to Revealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. The hopes that lie beyond the grave—and the many holy and awful feelings in which on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... fictions? Or why should we not fairly confess that, for aught we can tell, the whole is a fiction? For certainly, as to the amount of historic fact which these men affect to leave, it is obviously a matter of the most trivial importance whether we regard the whole Bible as absolute fiction or not. Whether an obscure Galilean teacher, who taught a moral system which may have been as good (we can never know from such corrupt documents that it was as good) ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... if I am found guilty, affect it during my whole life—and I shall attempt, in as few words as possible, to show that I am as innocent as any person in this room. I was reported on the 18th of December, 1870, for a very trivial offence. For this offence I submitted an explanation to the Commandant of Cadets. In explanation I stated the real cause of committing the offence for which I was reported. But this cause, as stated, involved another cadet, who, finding himself charged with an ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... provincial independence, influence the individual man precisely because they appeal to his imitative tendencies. But thereby they act so as to render him more or less immune in presence of the more trivial of the influences that, coming from without his community, would otherwise be likely to reduce him to the dead level of the customs of the whole nation. A country district may seem to a stranger unduly crude in its ways; but it does not become wiser in case, under the ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... a more orderly and intelligible kind which I shall die with an imperfect knowledge of. If there were miserable spirits whom we could help—then I think we should pause and have patience with their trivial-mindedness; but otherwise I don't feel bound to study them more than I am bound to study the special follies of a peculiar phase of human society. Others, who feel differently, and are attracted towards this study, are making an experiment for us as ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... Inigo Jones, who had hitherto acted together with brotherly affection; "a circumstance," says Gifford, to whom I communicated it, "not a little important in the history of our calumniated poet." The trivial cause, but not so in its consequences, was the poet prefixing his own name before that of the architect on the title-page of a Masque, which hitherto had only been annexed;[7] so jealous was the great architect of his part of the Masque, and so predominant ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... use a path to the beach which took them over half a mile from the village. And they had been very humble and obedient and had made no complaint. Indeed, the agent had assured them that they had every reason to be grateful to the overlord, since in return for that trivial inconvenience they had been put to they would have the golfers there, and there would be employment for some of the village boys as caddies. Nevertheless, I had discovered that they were not grateful but considered that an injustice had ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... rite and husband and wife are equal.—Nothing like this teaching had been practiced in the pagan world. Woman was simply the servant, the creature, of man. She was to do his bidding, and might be divorced for trivial cause, or for none. Man was supreme and his will was law. The home in the Christian sense did not exist, because the husband ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... show what its individual and characteristic significance may have been in the midst of all the other human beings which surrounded it, he ought to know how to eliminate from among the numberless trivial incidents of daily life all which do not serve his end, and how to set in a special light all those which might have remained invisible to less clear-sighted observers, and which give his book caliber and ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... character, so that when inked and drawn mechanically across paper by a person called an "author," there results a very fair and accurate transcript of the fowl's thought and feeling. The difference in geese, as discovered by this ingenious method, is considerable: many are found to have only trivial and insignificant powers, but some are seen to be very ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... beyond that not much. In painting, after all, there is in the less important details something of the craft of a superior carpenter, and the part of a picture that is not mechanical is often trivial enough. I don't wonder, now," he added, with a suspicion of a twinkle in the eye, "if you imagine that one comes down here in a fine frenzy every ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the only passport to posterity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects only, or written without taste, genius and true nobility of mind; for range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better how to treat them. The matter is ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... his mind; and though he did not become a mere sonata-maker, like some of his contemporaries, his whole soul was not always in his work; of this the inequalities in his music give evidence. In some movements (especially the closing ones) of the sonatas, the subject-matter is often trivial, and the passage-writing commonplace. The silkworm produces its smooth, regular ball of silk without effort, and in like manner Mozart could turn out Allegros, Rondos, sets of variations a discretion. The Sonata in C minor, to our thinking, is the only one in which he was entirely absorbed ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... still bedimmed her eyes, coupled with agitation, caused her to perform her wonted duty clumsily, and to stick a variety of pins in various unnecessary places. She was then sent to the kitchen with some trivial message to the cook. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... inwardly, out of which he awoke only to attend to his immediate practical necessities. It was a happy inner world, peopled with his own friends, acquaintances, relatives, readings, ideas, and associations. Blessed is the man who has found the inner life more real than the trivial outer one. To him mere external annoyances are but as the little insects, which he may brush away at will. No man can be truly great who has not built up for himself a subjective world into which he may retire at will. The little child absorbed in a mythical land peopled by fairies and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... obliges him to be acquainted with matters quite at variance with his ministry. The cura possesses the language, resides in the village, has the means of the confessional, [104] and when he wishes there are but few matters, even the most trivial, that can be hidden from him. On the contrary the alcalde, not having any of these advantages, can have knowledge of but few things, if the parish priest does not communicate them. I shall quote here what father Fray Manuel del Rio says on this point. "Although the temporal government of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... abstinence was the only true preventive of drunkenness, and drunkenness must be stamped out if mankind was to be saved. The moderate drinker was censured not because he was wasting his money, or failing to "conserve his efficiency," but because for the sake of a trivial self-indulgence he was giving countenance to a practice which was consigning millions of his fellow men to wretchedness in this world and to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... speculation;—though surely it is very sad that he found himself so short of "butter and firewood" when the poor Ex-King, and his young Wife, then in a specially interesting state, came to take shelter with him! [Solltl (Geschichte des Dreissigjahrigen Krieges,—a trivial modern Book) gives a notable memorial from the Brandenburg RATHS, concerning these their difficulties of housekeeping. Their real object, we perceive, was to get rid of a Guest so dangerous as the Ex-King, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... I was called away from London, with Mr. Westaby Jones, to consult in a matter of business. Mr. Westaby Jones is a member of the Stock Exchange and, amongst other trivial failings, he possesses one which is not altogether unknown in his profession. He cannot resist a small wager. On several occasions he has gambled with me and shown himself to be a gentleman of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various
... common at twilight, or in walking down some grey mean street. It is the song of the beauty of refuse; and Browning was the first to sing it. Oddly enough it has been one of the poems about which most of those pedantic and trivial questions have been asked, which are asked invariably by those who treat Browning as a science instead of a poet, "What does the poem of 'Childe Roland' mean?" The only genuine answer to this is, "What does anything mean?" Does the earth mean nothing? Do grey skies and wastes covered with thistles ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... sitting at the bows in the brilliant twilight, they tried to talk of trivial matters, but they gave no heed to what they were saying. They were lost in their own happiness and weariness. They felt no need to talk, or to hold hands, or even to look at each other; they ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... disappeared, apparently into the building. As the two came up, Merriman once more ran his eye idly over the vehicle. And then he felt a sudden mild surprise, as one feels when some unexpected though quite trivial incident takes place. He had felt sure that this lorry standing at the mill door was that which had passed him on the bridge, and which he had followed down the lane. But now he saw it wasn't. He had noted, idly but ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... her projects without assistance. A former secretary with some degree of literary talent had, upon dismissal, written up that office and its genius for a Sunday newspaper, and several hundred thousand good people, upon reading it, had marvelled at the tremendous means employed to such trivial ends. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... gradually from the region of Ranny's breast pocket, and he had peace in his pen. His fellow-clerks suspected him of a casual encounter and no more. A matter too trivial for remark. ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... which might affect her life, and thereby gratify Gardiner's sanguinary disposition. He himself came to examine her, respecting her removal from her house at Ashbridge to Dunnington castle a long while before. The princess had quite forgotten this trivial circumstance, and lord Arundel, after the investigation, kneeling down, apologized for having troubled her in such a frivolous matter. "You sift me narrowly," replied the princess, "but of this I am assured, that God has appointed a limit to your proceedings; and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... thing seemed a most trivial incident, but it had an amazing sequel. On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Fisher, the caretaker, always came to sweep and tidy up the church in preparation for Sunday. She was a little, thin, sharp-nosed, impulsive woman, and just at present her nerves were rather in a shaky condition for ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... brought about as it had been by a laughably trivial occurrence; and, moreover, it was in the highest degree unfair, despite the fact that both duellists would face each other under similar conditions, with similar weapons, and with the same sun and the same ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... has in conquering the passions and in subduing the exigencies of the moment, with a view to the future, is conspicuous in the most trivial occurrences of the United States. The people, which is surrounded by flatterers, has great difficulty in surmounting its inclinations, and whenever it is solicited to undergo a privation or any kind of inconvenience, even to attain an end which is sanctioned ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... left most of the Irish chieftains or princes in possession of their ancient territories; bestowed some lands on the English adventurers; gave Earl Richard the commission of Seneschal of Ireland; and after a stay of a few months, returned in triumph to England. By these trivial exploits, scarcely worth relating, except for the importance of the consequences, was Ireland subdued, and annexed to the English crown. [FN [m] Ibid. p. 770. [n] ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... 'Having heard these joyful words of king Yudhishthira, Govinda of virtuous soul, that delighter of the Yadus, then addressed Partha. The latter, however, having at the instance of Krishna addressed those words unto Yudhishthira, became exceedingly cheerless for having committed a trivial sin. Then Vasudeva, smiling, said unto the son of Pandu, "What would have been thy condition, O Partha, if, observant of virtue thou hadst slain the son of Dharma with thy sharp sword? Having only addressed the king as thou, such cheerlessness hath possessed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... may fairly be called such, since it was drawn up in separate counts, is very interesting reading. Of the "exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer," as the Puritans named their list of liturgical grievances, some must strike almost any reader of the present day as trivial and unworthy. Others again there are that draw a sympathetic Amen from many quarters to-day. To an American Episcopalian the catalogue is chiefly interesting as showing how ready and even eager were our colonial ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... solemnity, awe, deep grief, slowness of motion, darkness, and extreme or oppressive greatness of size. The scale runs, then, from the little to the large, from the bright to the dark, from ecstatic delight to horror, and from the trivial to ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... "why couldn't Hugh have been polite enough to keep from that slighting remark or at least laugh good-naturedly with the rest, and paid no more attention to it, instead of making so much of such a trivial affair!" ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... proud man then, touched easily by trivial things. Agnes's pitying manner stung me, and the tone in which I wakened Effie was far harsher than it should have been. She sprang up; and with a gentle dignity most new to me received her guests, and played the part of hostess ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... remembered an interesting fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... country. I say nothing of your mother's despair, of the anguish of your bride, if harm befell you: that you must know better than I can do. But I am a subject. I know what your subjects feel; and were you to neglect any safeguard, however trivial, in these remaining hours of threatened danger, you would be doing England a wrong which might ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... food and the like, and improper speeches, etc., they are of two classes, viz., those committed consciously and those that are committed unconsciously. All sins that are committed consciously are grave, while those that are committed unconsciously are trivial or light. There is expiation for both. Indeed sin is capable of being washed away by (observance of) the ordinances spoken of. Those ordinances, however, have been laid down only for believers (in God) and those that have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... exclaimed. "If ever you saw a young woman who was glad and thankful to turn her face toward home, I am that person. I think that one of the heaviest crosses humanity has to bear is to have constantly to decide between two or more absolutely trivial conclusions in one's own affairs; but when one is called upon to multiply one's useless perplexities by, say, ten, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... old days. He remembered when his boyish eyes regarded it as the crowning work of opulence and distinction; he remembered a ball given there on some public occasion, which was to him the acme of social brilliancy and display. How tawdry and trivial it looked beside those later and more solid structures! How inconsistent were those long latticed verandas and balconies, pathetic record of that first illusion of the pioneers that their climate was a tropical one! A restaurant and billiard-saloon had ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... trivial, others were highly important. Among the latter was the question of commercial intercourse. The British Ministry had neglected to obtain any written assurance that trade relations should be resumed between the two countries; ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... were the brisk and impulsive movements; there was some change; but the moment of awkward hesitation was over and the light was bad; and, while strolling down the platform for my luggage, we chatted with constraint about trivial things. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... uneventful history. It is strange how forgotten events and persons start out of the blank oblivion in which they seem to have been engulfed, as I fix my memory steadily on the past. I find it very easy, even fascinating, to call up the incidents, trivial oftentimes, but having for me a significance of their own, which lie in my past track like the broken toys of childhood. It seems as if the past was for each of us a great collection of negatives laid away, from which we can take positive pictures when we will—from many of them, that is; ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the busy streets, seeing nothing around him. His memory was going over the most trivial incidents connected with Natalie, as if every look of hers, every word she had uttered, was now become something inexpressibly precious. Were there not many things he could carry away with him to the land beyond the seas? No distance or time could rob him of the remembrance ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... your pardon for these trivial observations: I assure you I could write a letter ten times as long, if I were to specify all I like in your work. I more than like most of it; and I am charmed with your glorious love of liberty, and your other humane and noble sentiments. Your book I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... years when the best beloved of Robin Tremayne had known no certainty whether he was living or dead, but had every reason rather to fear the latter. Compared with a deep, long-tried love like hers, this sentimental fancy over which Blanche was making herself cross and unhappy was almost trivial. But Mrs Tremayne knew that trouble is trouble, if it be based on folly; she thought that she recognised in Blanche, silly though she was in some points, a nobler nature than that of the vain, selfish, indolent mother from whom the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... life is so intimately interwoven with that of your neighbor. Existence is so safe, so sane, so sure. Fanny knew that when she turned the corner of Elm Street every third person she met would speak to her. Life was made up of minute details, too trivial for the notice of the hurrying city crowds. You knew when Milly Glaenzer changed the baby buggy for a go-cart. The youngest Hupp boy—Sammy—who was graduated from High School in June, is driving A. J. Dawes's automobile now. My goodness, how time flies! Doeppler's grocery ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl, the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... impatiently: "He knows history as no one else could know it. Nothing, however trivial, escapes his search, and his memory is so absolute, so precise in details, that were it known in New York that such a man existed, the people ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we to keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall carefully level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these, perhaps, trivial, or merely curious questions. So far from it, the fact that while the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep, and that the forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... his manner, his presence altogether, inspired a nameless sort of shrinking, inarticulate apprehensions, and mistrust which the girl found at once utterly unaccountable and dismally disappointing; so that, with every wish and will to do otherwise, she found herself involuntarily making excuse of trivial interests to keep out of Victor's way and, when there was no escaping, sitting silent and ill at ease in his society, or seizing on some slender pretext, it didn't matter what, to inveigle into their company a third somebody, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... account approximates to Luke's, while in the third he is nearer Matthew's. A comparison of the three accounts, noting the slight, but often significant, variations, should be made. Nothing in the Gospels is trivial. 'The dust of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... The vireo rings the changes sweet, During the trivial summer days, Striving to lift our thoughts ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... worn, and the straw hat, though beribboned, was not impressive. She was a bony little girl, with quick, greenish eyes and a meagre pigtail of hair of the hue that will often cause a girl to be called Carrots. Her thin, eager face was lavishly freckled; her nose was trivial to the last extreme. Besides her hat, she carried and now nonchalantly drew refreshment from a stick of spirally striped candy inserted for half its length through the end of a lemon. The candy was evidently of a porous texture, so that the juice of the fruit would reach the consumer's ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... stopped at the East Cliff Hotel at Cromer and made numerous and trivial inquiries about the Cromer golf links. They had come, they volunteered, from Ely for a day of sea-bathing and golf; they were returning after dinner. The head-waiter of the East Cliff Hotel gave them the information they desired. He was an intelligent ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... can give us a purge and clean out our stomachs; but we do not call an artist a gentleman, whom we expect to invent for us the face of Christ. When we have made that primary mistake, all other mistakes in education are trivial in comparison. The very notion of an art academy should be, a body of teachers of the youth who are to be the guides of the nation through its senses; and that is a very important means of guiding it. We have done a good deal through dinners, but we may ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is aware that there is nothing so humiliating to a male pupil at a public school as to be called a "girl-boy." Hence, for trivial offences a boy is often punished by being sandwiched between two girls, and compelled to remain there until the offence committed has been sufficiently atoned for. Now young Willard was frequently guilty of talking during ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... from the roof of the hall—still she seemed to be carried along apart from it all; to be enclosed by something which emanated from the man who held her, and which isolated them both. Once or twice he made some trivial remark, but nothing to need thinking about; and when the music stopped she felt for a second or two a sort of dizziness—like coming too suddenly out of a dim room ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... stream. The officers were powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen—and here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than three days! One of those days ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... once have we met, And we spoke of trivial things, Of the changes a twelvemonth brings, Of late Summer, lingering yet... (Ah, how should a heart that has loved forget?) Traitors ever to thwart his will His eyes confirm what I half divine. A bitter, bootless victory mine, He cannot choose but ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... for seeming, like The Rhine Gold, the merest Christmas tomfoolery to shallow spectators, is the product of a talent immeasurably inferior to Mozart's own. The libretto of Don Giovanni is coarse and trivial: its transfiguration by Mozart's music may be a marvel; but nobody will venture to contend that such transfigurations, however seductive, can be as satisfactory as tone poetry or drama in which the musician and the poet are at the same level. Here, ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... over which he himself seemed to have no control, had of a truth led him forward, so that he, too, stood not far from the old woman now. He had watched her—silent and rigid,—conscious only of one thing—a trivial matter certes—of Editha's inquiring eyes fixed steadily ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... commentary of the truth of what I am saying," snarled the old scientist. "How can a person know the worthwhile things when he stores his mind with such trivial—you know far too much of such ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... men were not the main intent of Machiavelli's thought. His care in detail, especially in fortifications, of which he made a special study, in encampments, in plans, in calculations, is immense. Nothing is so trivial as to ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... power of apprehending formless spiritual essences, of seeing the eternal in the transitory, and in the things which are seen the unseen things of which they are the shadow. I call Mr. Yeats' poetry spiritual when it declares, as in the lines I quoted, that there is no beauty so trivial that it is not the shadow of the Eternal Beauty. A country is religious where it is common belief that all things are instinct with divinity, and where the love between man and woman is seen as a symbol, the highest we have, of the union of spirit and nature, and their final blending in the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... and for many years he abstained from both tea and coffee. In those peaceful times, moreover, there was nothing either commanding or captivating about the Professor of Artillery. His little romance in Mexico had given him no taste for trivial pleasures; and his somewhat formal manner was not redeemed by any special charm of feature. The brow and jaw were undoubtedly powerful; but the eyes were gentle, and the voice so mild and soft as to belie altogether the set determination of the thin ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... our thoughts and feelings are very shallow and trivial, that even the wonderful faculty of language is inadequate to express all that the soul can experience. No true orator ever finds sentences majestic enough to interpret the sentiments that burn in his soul. Deep, pure love is never able to put into words its most sacred feelings and emotions. ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... franchise of an Englishman, and that on which all the rest vitally depend, is to be forfeited for some offence which no man knows, and which is to be proved by no known rule whatsoever of legal evidence. This is so anomalous to our whole constitution, that I will venture to say, the most trivial right, which the subject claims, never was, nor can be, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... appointed to the conquest of Cuba, Cortes found outlet for his adventurous spirit, and in the Indian warfare of the island gave promise of the valour and activity which underlay a jocular and seemingly trivial character. At the same time he became accustomed to the barbarous methods of conquest and cruelty displayed by the Spaniards in those regions, and to the abuse of power and arbitrary jealousies and exactions ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... considerable education, and though in neither force nor astuteness was he the equal of James Peake, it often pleased him to adopt towards his friend a philosophic pose—the pose of a seer, of one far removed from the trivial disputes in which ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... younger maids timidly kept out of her way, and Kuni surpassed them in pride and looked down upon them, because her free artist blood rebelled against placing herself on the plane of a servitor. She did not vouchsafe them a word, yet neither did she allow any of them to render her even the most trivial service. But she could not escape Seifried, the equerry of her mistress's eldest son. At first, according to her custom, she had roused the handsome fellow's hopes by fiery glances which she could not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Tree, "always seemed to me an epicure in life. He was always intent on extracting the last drop of honey from every flower that came in his way. He was absorbed in the business of the moment, however trivial. As a companion, he was delightfully witty; as a personality, as much a creature of romance ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... flickering shadows shadows, or—or had Kniaz, after all, spoken the truth when he said this valley was haunted? The moonlight rendered every object I looked upon so startlingly vivid, that not even the most trivial detail escaped my notice, and the more I scrutinized the more firmly the conviction grew on me that I was in a neighbourhood differing essentially from any spot I had hitherto visited. I saw nothing with which I had been formerly conversant. The few trees at hand resembled no growth of either ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... Trivial as Vane's discovery may seem, it was the result of long months and study of applied science, and certain dearly bought experiences, and though Mr Deering blamed himself for not having noticed the little addition which had thwarted ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... expense when they were introduced into France and South Germany and Italian vineyards, and were fought out only by what might be considered a magnificent effort on the part of the European governments, especially France. On our native wild grapes those diseases are almost trivial, and the wild seedlings in the woods are practically immune, but when we cultivate them and select the tenderer varieties, the black rot is pretty bad, especially on the Concord, and particularly when ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting - Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913 • Various
... never seen a gentler prince, nor yet one more splendidly lavish. The people had not only the necessities of life, but the luxuries, the superfluities, too. For days and days in the Forum there was an incessant shower of tickets that were exchangeable, not for bread or trivial sums, but for gems, pictures, slaves, fortunes, ships, villas and estates. The creator of that shower ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... roof and wall, Defend dark Night, though noon around her fall, From the fierce play of solar day-beams bright. But if she be assailed by fire or light, Her powers divine are nought; they tremble all Before things far more vile and trivial— Even a glow-worm can confound their might. The earth that lies bare to the sun, and breeds A thousand germs that burgeon and decay— This earth is wounded by the ploughman's share: But only darkness serves for human seeds; Night therefore ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... owns it! Hear, Earth and Heaven, he owns it! No excuse! No varnish, no disguise!—He will not stoop To use dissembling with a wretch he scorns, Nor thinks it worth his pains to fool me further! Proceed, brave sir, proceed! In trivial strain Tell me how light are lovers' oaths, how fond Youth's heart of change, how quick love comes and flies; And own that yours for me is flown for ever. Then with indifference ask a parting kiss, Hope we shall still be friends, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... composition of sacred music, of which he had already produced several fine specimens. He was wont to say, that this was an occupation 'better suited to the circumstances of a man advancing in years, than that of adapting music to such vain and trivial words as the musical drama generally consists of.' The truth was, he had discovered his forte. But the tide of fashionable feeling ran so strongly against him, that even the performance of the oratorios of Saul and Israel in Egypt ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... picturesque and significant of these events was the reconciliation with his old friend David Belasco. Twelve years before, through an apparently trivial thing, a breach had developed between these two men whose fortunes had been so intimately entwined. They had launched their careers in New York together; the old Madison Square Theater had housed their first theatrical ambition; they had kept pace on the road to fame; their joint productions ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... own. If she disliked a neighbour, she almost always disliked her for a reason which we saw, directly it was pointed out to us, to be just, but it was generally one which had not been given before. Her talk upon matters externally trivial was thus much more to me than many discourses upon the most important topics. On moral questions she expressed herself without any regard to prejudices. She did not controvert the authenticity of the ordinary standards, but nevertheless behaved as if she herself were ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... step was the most difficult but with a deliberate effort of will he accomplished it to his satisfaction. His secret thoughts he buried beneath a continuous mental preoccupation with the vain and the trivial. It was important to the success of his plan that his companions ...
— The Man from Time • Frank Belknap Long
... labor of condensing from the immense amount of collected materials, accounts for the delay of the publication. As neither Mr. Thome nor Mr. Kimball were here while the work was in the press, it is not improbable that trivial errors have occurred, especially ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... edition, (being transcribed closely from the originals,) if compared with the letters already published, will prove that the latter are open to many corrections, both in trivial and more important respects. I have forborne, however, attracting attention to the deviations from the original text, either in Nissen or Jahn. I have no wish to be punctilious about trifles, where, as in the case of Jahn, the principal points are ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... interlineations, cross lines, and all other offenses against epistolary propriety. The letter "bespeaks the man." Letters of friendship should be colloquial, chatty, and familiar. Whatever is interesting to you will be interesting to your friends, however trivial it may seem ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... design, he will burst all bounds, and establish again the old truth that each of us will prove himself a fool given perfect opportunity. Nor need the occasion of this revolution be a great one; the most trivial event may produce the great fire which burns up ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Rome by the Pontiff before he had quite finished the tombs at San Lorenzo. He was received gladly. Clement respected this man like one sacred, and talked with him familiarly, both on grave and trivial subjects, as he would have done with his equals. He sought to relieve him of the burden of the Tomb of Julius, so that he might settle in Florence permanently, not only to finish the works already begun, but that he might ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... then, Smith," says Captain Dyer, smiling, "and, no matter what it is—if it is the most trivial thing in any way ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... since he joined the regiment. "If we call the old man Squeers we should dub Billy Mark Tapley," said Gordon one day, when the lad had laughed off the effect of an unusually acrimonious rasping over a trivial error in the Guard Report book. "He's no end kind when a fellow's in a fix," said Gray, in explanation, "and all the time he was soaking me I was thinking how he stood by Jimmy Carson in his scrape"—a serious scrape it was, too, for young Carson, detailed ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... to my dying day, the effect produced upon me by the first half of this ascent. The day was as bright and beautiful as ever shone out of heaven. Hot it was, but not intensely so, for the sun's power was yet trivial; and as the winds were hushed, except when from time to time a light breeze rustled among the foliage of the pine-woods, the stillness that prevailed around struck me as something quite sublime. In proportion as we rose, likewise, above the level of the valley, every sight and sound appeared ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell. She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Lady Middleton with more warmth than she felt, though with far ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... little incident (hourly of course repeated, and trivial to all sea-going people) I own I was immensely moved, and never can think of it but with a heart full of thanks and awe. We trust our lives to these seamen, and how nobly they fulfil their trust! They are, under heaven, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Drew's opinion. He would never allow me the pleasure of indulging in any flights of fancy over these trivial adventures of ours. He would never let me set them off against "the heroic background" of Paris. As for Paris, we saw nothing of war there, he would say, except the lighter side, the homecoming, leave-enjoying side. We needed to know more of the horror and the tragedy of it. We needed ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... under the control of the governor of the province of Gran Chaco, in spite of the protests of the French consul. Here they were treated with the utmost cruelty. They were bastinadoed and otherwise punished for the most trivial offences. Many died under these inflictions. Of the few survivors some endeavored to escape through the forests of Gran Chaco to Bolivia and Peru. Three were caught, brought back and tortured, while the others, of whom no tidings were ever received afterward, probably perished ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... flowing eloquence would have seemed as far from affecting my life as the source and flow of the sacred Ganges, and yet it was some trivial irritation of it that kept us from hearing his philosophy that night, and, more important to me, that sent another to expound ideas far different than could ever have come from the famous thinker. All the college, all ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... despised him, was now becoming his servant, in the sense in which Christ was the "servant" of his brethren. Not with any conscious Christian intention—far from it; but still under a kind of mysterious compulsion. The humblest duties, the most trivial anxieties, where Radowitz was concerned, fell, week by week, increasingly to Falloden's portion. A bad or a good night—appetite or no appetite—a book that Otto liked—a visit that amused him—anything ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... observed the fact that many of life's grimmest battles and deepest tragedies scarce ripple the surface of trivial things? We are always rubbing elbows with the big issues and never knowing anything about it. Certainly no one at the Double Cross guessed what was always in the mind of the foreman. Jim thought he was "sore" because of Dick. Dick thought Ford was jealous of him, and trying to think of some scheme ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... was ready, and with a good supply of resinous boughs cut into lengths for torches, we lit up and embarked upon our return journey, to find that what had looked so terrible through the darkness of ignorance was a perfectly trivial affair. It was through resounding cavern and winding tunnel, shrouded in gloom, but utterly wanting in terrors and difficulties, being merely the gliding down a subterranean stream out into broad ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... want to be mewed up here, while others are out where thrones and empires are sweeping by! I do not want to parse verbs, add fractions, and mark ledgers, while others are the poets, the singers, the statesmen, the rulers, and the wealth-controllers of the world! We wish to step out of the trivial experience into that which is significant. Each day brings uneasiness of soul. "Man's unhappiness," says Carlyle, "as I construe it, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which with all his cunning he ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... forgive Albert his lackeys and his valet. He forgot the words of the illustrious duke, who said, "I pay my lackeys to be insolent, to save myself the trouble and ridicule of being so." Old Tabaret was surprised at his young friend's display of bitterness, in speaking of these trivial details. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... a Tuscan order of priests, who attempted to predict futurity by observing the beasts offered in sacrifice. They formed their opinions most commonly from inspecting the entrails, but there was no circumstance too trivial to escape their notice, and which they did not believe in some degree portentous. The arusp'ices were most commonly consulted by individuals; but their opinions, as well as those of the augurs, were taken on all important affairs of state. The arusp'ices ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... just why I'm a bit slow in this matter," he said, manfully. "It may seem a trivial reason to you, Governor Waymouth. I stopped to wonder how it would affect my friendship with the Presson family if I ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... to be able to exchange the trivial, yet important, little confidences in which fourth-graders indulge when teacher's back is turned, or to win her quick, flashing smile as a reward for sharpening her pencil or for judicious prompting ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... not serious.[319] In England, Power has investigated the relations of the sexual system to eye disease. He is inclined to think that the effects of masturbation have been exaggerated, but he believes that it may produce such for the most part trivial complaints as photopsisae, muscsae, muscular asthenopia, possibly blepharospasm, and perhaps conjunctivitis. He goes on, however, to point out that more serious complaints of the eye are caused by excess in normal coitus, by sexual ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... away, because—how trivial it looked to him now, and how childish seemed his conduct—because he thought his father too hard on him; would not allow him enough liberty; wanted to dictate to this man of sixteen; he intended to show him that he ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... bitter realisation. Her whole happiness had been ruined—utterly and remorselessly, because she and Tony had missed the train at the Dents de Loup. It seemed incredible! Such a trivial, unimportant small happening to have brought the whole fabric of a man's and woman's happiness toppling headlong to the ground! A little hysterical sound—half laugh, half sob—escaped her. And Brett— She could hardly endure to think of him. It was past belief that any man ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... ane and the other." Vautr. edit. has, "either the one or the other." Some other trivial differences in this ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... natural size, and make a noise that sounded as if she had tried to say something and the word caught on a hook in her throat, she was ready to sit. Having three feathered animals in this condition, and having coaxed Steve into buying some Plymouth Rock eggs at the trivial sum of three dollars a sitting, Nannie proceeded to capture the hens and put them upon nests of her own placing, wholly ignorant of the fact that if there is one thing above all others in which a hen ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... kind of literature they liked and the comments they made on it; he had expected that with the education they had received, and with their experience of the seriousness of life, they would prefer something less trivial. He supposed, however, that a romantic love-story, where a poor American girl marries an English lord, formed a refuge for them from the real world which promised them so little and held them so cheap. It was quite useless for one to try to make him realize his behavior in consorting with servants ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... not know it at the time. She had enough to bear—her own distress over the loss of the doll, and the reproaches of Serena and her mother. They agreed that the loss of the doll served her right for her disobedience, and that nothing should be said to Joe West. They also thought the affair too trivial to fuss over. Lily Rosalie even in her designer's eyes was not what she was ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... nose and a certain, startled expression of the eyes, worry me. But the little Soeur Victoire says comfortingly that he will soon be well, though he does not wish to eat and his jaws are a little stiff. O, chere Soeur, in your sweet faith, are stiffened jaws such a trivial circumstance? ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... than my personal adventures. But in that part of my life which may be considered relatively of a public character, or in which events of a public interest occurred, I have ample record made at the time. In what is peculiar to myself, and so of relatively trivial moment, dates and the order of events are of little importance. It occurred to me in the connection, that to give a human document of Puritan family life, and the development of a mind from the archaic severity ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... brought no light, and her going out had left nothing dark. She was old and ill-tempered and bitter of speech, and, though all doors opened hospitably at her approach, all closed quickly when she was gone. Her spoiled youth had left her sensitive to trivial stings, unforgivable to fancied wrongs. In a childish oversight she detected hidden malice and implacable hate in a thoughtless jest. Her bitterness and her years waxed greater together, and she lost alike her youth and her self-control. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... calculating brain may be used for statesmanship or science, or merely for gambling. You, we will say, have a true eye and a cunning hand; will you use them on the passing fashion of the hour—the morbid, the trivial, the insincere—or in illustrating the eternal truths and dignities, the heroisms and sanctities of life, and its ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... letters and stores. Meanwhile, as the traders are going to Casembe's, he accompanies them thither. Casembe he finds to be a fierce chief, who rules his people with great tyranny, cutting off their ears, and even their hands, for the most trivial offenses. Persons so mutilated, seen in his village, excite a feeling of horror. This chief was not one easily got at, but Livingstone believed that he gained an influence with him, only he could not quite overcome his prejudice against him. The year 1867 ended with ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... of the Sila was Gaetano Ricca. On account of some trivial misunderstanding with the authorities, this man was compelled in the early eighties to take to the woods, where he lived a wild life (alla campagna; alla macchia) for some three years. A price was set on his head, but his daring and knowledge ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... that many mothers make the sad mistake of showing the child that they are shocked by trivial sayings and trifling experiences of their little people. If we could only get it into our heads for once and for all that our children are born into this world veritable little thieves and falsifiers, as well as ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... cheese was brought, Mr. Jessup left them on a trivial pretext, and absented himself so long that at length she began to wonder what would happen if he had "done a bilk," and left them to discharge the score. The waiter hovered around, nicking at the side-tables with his napkin and brushing them ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
