Trifles Quotes - Page 11

• There was a table laid with jellies and trifles, with a party hat beside each place, and a birthday cake with seven candles on it in the center of the table. The cake had a book drawn on it, in icing. My mother, who had organized the party, told me that the lady at the bakery said that they had never put a book on a birthday cake before, and that mostly for boys it was footballs or spaceships. I was their first book.

  Neil Gaiman

  Football, Mother, Party

  Neil Gaiman (2013). “The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel”, p.12, Harper Collins

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• A man who has once looked with the archaeological eye will never see quite normally. He will be wounded by what other men call trifles. It is possible to refine the sense of time until an old shoe in the bunch grass or a pile of nineteenth century beer bottles in an abandoned mining town tolls in one's head like a hall clock.

  Loren Eiseley

  Eye, Beer, Science

  Loren Eiseley (2016). “The Night Country: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.68, Library of America

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• There is a natural firmness in some minds, which cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a cabinet of fortitude.

  Thomas Paine

  Mind, Cabinets, Fortitude

  Thomas Paine (1819). “The American Crisis”, p.14

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• Although there is nothing so bad for conscience as trifling, there is nothing so good for conscience as trifles. Its certain discipline and development are related to the smallest things. Conscience, like gravitation, takes hold of atoms. Nothing is morally indifferent. Conscience must reign in manners as well as morals, in amusements as well as work. He only who is "faithful in that which is least" is dependable in all the world.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Discipline, Faithful, Amusement

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• It is a note
  Of upstart greatness to observe and watch
  For these poor trifles, which the noble mind
  Neglects and scorns.

  Ben Jonson

  Greatness, Mind, Watches

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1816). “The Works of Ben Jonson ...: With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and Biographical Memoir”, p.137

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• There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Ordinary, Poison, Quiet

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1851). “The Scarlet Letter”, p.103

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• There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.

  Victor Hugo

  Tree, Stories, Trifling

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.

  Honore de Balzac

  Hate, Like Love, Hatred

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• Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles.

  Alexander Smith

  Winter, Doe, Scales

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.117

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• Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lucky, Genius, Sparrows

  Samuel Johnson (1803). “The Lives of the Most Prominent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.175

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• Locke, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favorer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigor must allow some of it to pass with trifles.

  Samuel Johnson

  Vigor, Reason, Efficacy

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• Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
  Trifle not at thirty-five;
  For, howe'er we boast and strive,
  Life declines from thirty-five;
  He that ever hopes to thrive
  Must begin by thirty-five.

  Samuel Johnson

  Women, Age, Strive

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.87

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• Small minds are captivated by trifles.

  Ovid

  Mind, Small Minds, Captivated

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• In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death.

  Alice Meynell

  Party, Rights, Blood

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• The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.

  Edward Bellamy

  Real, Men, Expression

  "Dr. Heidenhoff's Process". Book by Edward Bellamy. Chapter 4, 1880.

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• It is folly to waste labour about trifles.

  Martial

  Waste, Folly, Labour

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• nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs.

  Ouida

  Wit, Bores, Worldly Wisdom

  Ouida (1870). “Puck: His Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships, and Philosophies”, p.131

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• To play with baubles is our ambition, not to deal with grave questions in a spirit of serious energy. But while we are playing with baubles, with our Legislative Councils, our Simultaneous Examinations, our ingenious schemes for separating the judicial from the executive functions, - while we, I say, are finessing about trifles, the waters of the great deep are being stirred and that surging chaos of the primitive man over which our civilised societies are superimposed on a thin crust of convention, is being strangely and ominously agitated.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Ambition, Men, Primitive Man

  "New Lamps for Old". Nine articles by Sri Aurobindo in the "Indu Prakash" (a Bombay daily newspaper), December 4, 1893.

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• I expressed just now my mistrust of what is called Spiritualism — ... I owe it a trifle for a message said to come from Voltaire's Ghost. It was asked, Are you not now convinced of another world? and rapped out, There is no other world — Death is only an incident in Life.

  William De Morgan

  Other Worlds, Messages, Ghost

  "Joseph Vance". Book by William De Morgan, Chapter XI, 1906.

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• When the last days were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to madness like the small drops of water torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their victim's body, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly sought in life, and wandered through old gardens and enchanted woods.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Fall, Sleep

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “H. P. LOVECRAFT äóñ Ultimate Collection: 120+ Works ALL in One Volume: Complete Novellas & Short Stories, Juvenilia, Poetry, Essays & Collaborations: The Call of Cthulhu, The Shadow Out of Time, At the Mountains of Madness, The Dunwich Horror, Dagon, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Outsider, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Cats of Ultharäó_”, p.318, e-artnow

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• I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context had called "the significant trifle" - the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried observation which illuminated the realities of the situation.

  I. F. Stone

  Reality, Political, Facts

  I. F. Stone (2009). “The Best of I.F. Stone”, p.4, PublicAffairs

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• It takes little or nothing to undo reputations, the merest trifle makes and remakes them, it is simply a question of finding the best means of engaging the confidence or interest of those who are to become one's unsuspecting echoes or accomplices.

  Jose Saramago

  Mean, Echoes, Littles

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• A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

  E. B. White

  Poetry, Doe, Veils

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.164, Cornell University Press

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• I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Memories, Reader

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2005). “The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels (Slipcased Edition)”, p.92, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Running, Attention, Done

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.175, OUP Oxford

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