Trifling Quotes - Page 2

• I will not say with Lord Hale, that "The Law will admit of no rival" . . . but I will say that it is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.

  Joseph Story

  Jealous, Law, Long

  Joseph Story (1835). “The Miscellaneous Writings: Literary, Critical, Juridical, and Political of Joseph Story, Now First Collected”, p.456

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• There are many points in the history of an invention which the inventor himself is apt to overlook as trifling, but in which posterity never fail to take a deep interest. The progress of the human mind is never traced with such a lively interest as through the steps by which it perfects a great invention; and there is certainly no invention respecting which this minute information will be more eagerly sought after, than in the case of the steam-engine.

  David Brewster

  Creativity, Science, Mind

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• There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

  Allan Bloom

  Real, Doe, Needs

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

  Aristotle

  Ignorance, Men, Self

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• At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Eye, People, Secret

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography”, p.815, e-artnow

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• I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.

  Martial

  Dinner, Too Much, Causes

  Martial (1871). “The Epigrams of Martial”, p.359

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• My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.

  Dick Gregory

  Dog, Boys, Years

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance

  Jane Austen

  Beautiful, Girl, Sex

  Jane Austen (2009). “Northanger Abbey”, p.69, Wild Jot Press

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• When you devote yourself to achieving your goal, you will not be bothered by shallow criticism. Nothing important can be accomplished if you allow yourself to be swayed by some trifling matter, always looking over your shoulder and wondering what others are saying or thinking. The key to achievement is to move forward along your chosen path with firm determination.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Determination, Moving, Thinking

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• Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!

  Mark Twain

  Rivers, Water, Grace

  Mark Twain, Milton Meltzer (2002). “Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography”, p.35, University of Missouri Press

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• And I have again observed, my dear friend, in this trifling affair, that misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Two, Events, Wickedness

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.3, e-artnow

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• The family is the world's greatest welfare agency, and the most successful. What the federal government has done in welfare is small and trifling compared to what the families of America do daily, caring for their own, relieving family distresses, providing medical care and education for one another, and so on. No civil government could begin to finance what the families underwrite daily. The family's welfare program, for all its failures from time to time, is proportionately the world's most successful operation by an incomparable margin.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Family, Successful, Caring

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• I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.

  Mark Twain

  Too Much, Drag, Occasions

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• Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East -- to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them -- who were above such trifling.

  Henry David Thoreau

  West, East, Should

  Henry David Thoreau (1882). “Walden”, p.94

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• If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

  William Hazlitt

  Tired, People, Attention

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.486

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• Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.

  Umberto Eco

  Mean, What Matters, Listening

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.29, Random House

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• There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the light, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Nature, Fall, Errors

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• Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Dance, Silly, People

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• When we consider the incidents of former days, and perceive, while reviewing the long line of causes, how the most important events of our lives originated in the most trifling circumstances; how the beginning of our greatest happiness or greatest misery is to be attributed to a delay, to an accident, to a mistake; we learn a lesson of profound humility.

  Arthur Helps

  Mistake, Humility, Fate

  Sir Arthur Helps (1892). “Essays and Aphorisms”

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• Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Prayer, Real, Men

  Henry Ward BEECHER (1865). “Notes from Plymouth Pulpit: a collection of memorable passages from the discourses of H. W. Beecher. With a sketch of Mr. Beecher and the Lecture-Room, by Augusta Moore. New edition, revised, and greatly enlarged [of the second series of “Life Thoughts”].”, p.67

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• Phantoms in general are nothing more than trifling disorders of the spirit; images we cannot contain within the bounds of sleep.

  Luigi Pirandello

  Sleep, Phantoms, Spirit

  Luigi Pirandello (2016). “Henry IV”, p.53, Luigi Pirandello

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• A lack of patience in trifling matters might lead to the disruption of great project.

  Confucius

  Might, Matter, Projects

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• Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.

  Anthony Trollope

  Shy, Fickle, Jade

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels (Unabridged): The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds...”, p.4483, e-artnow (Open Publishing)

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• What struck me most in England was the perception that only those works which have a practical tendency awake attention and command respect, while the purely scientific, which possess far greater merit are almost unknown. And yet the latter are the proper source from which the others flow. Practice alone can never lead to the discovery of a truth or a principle. In Germany it is quite the contrary. Here in the eyes of scientific men no value, or at least but a trifling one, is placed upon the practical results. The enrichment of science is alone considered worthy attention.

  Justus von Liebig

  Eye, Science, Men

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• When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

  Mark Twain

  Lying, Race, Care

  Mark Twain (2000). “The Jumping Frog: And 18 Other Stories”, p.97, Book Tree

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