Trifling Quotes - Page 4

• Who values gold above all, considers all else as trifling.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Gold, Values

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.

  Gao Xingjian

  Art, Philosophical, Issues

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• Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.

  Plutarch

  Wisdom, Justice, Politics

  Plutarch (2015). “Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans: Top Biography”, p.748, 谷月社

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• Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Feelings, Action, Benevolence

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• Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Holiday, Play, Effort

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.206

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• Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Pride, Thinking

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1466, Delphi Classics

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• True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

  Honore de Balzac

  Love, Money, Difficult

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• None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.

  John Tillotson

  Scoffing, Profanity, Swear

  John Tillotson (1720). “The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury: Containing Fifty Four Sermons and Discourses on Several Occasions. Together with the Rule of Faith”, p.37

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• God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.

  Tom Wolfe

  Forever, Stories, Journalism

  "Mummy Wrap" by George Neumayr, "The American Spectator", spectator.org. January 10, 2005.

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• To every class we have a school assign'd,
  Rules for all ranks, and food for every mind:
  Yet one there is, that small regard to rule
  Or study pays, and still is deem'd a school;
  That, where a deaf, poor, patient widow sits,
  And awes some thirty infants as she knits;
  Infants of humble, busy wives, who pay
  Some trifling price for freedom through the day.
  At this good matron's hut the children meet,
  Who thus becomes the mother of the street.

  George Crabbe

  Mother, Children, Humble

  George Crabbe (1858). “The Poetical Works of George Crabbe: With a Life of the Author”, p.239

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• We are saved from nothing if we are not saved from sin. Little sins are pioneers of hell. The backslider begins with what he foolishly considers trifling with little sins. There are no little sins. There was a time when all the evil that has existed in the world was comprehended in one sinful thought of our first parent; and all the now evil is the numerous and horrid progeny of one little sin.

  James Howell

  Evil, Parent, Pioneers

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• Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

  Sir Fulke Greville

  Mean, Men, Doors

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• It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.

  Patricia Moyes

  Interesting, Retrospect, Causes

  Patricia Moyes (1961). “Down Among the Dead Men”

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• It is so often the odd, the unexpected, the apparently trifling, that stamps itself upon the memory for ever, while much more memorable things pass away like a breath of wind.

  Esther Meynell

  Memories, Memorable, Wind

  Esther Meynell (1940). “A Woman Talking”, London, Chapman & Hall [1940.]

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• Alas! the joys that fortune brings
  Are trifling, and decay,
  And those who prize the trifling things,
  More trifling still than they.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Joy, Decay, Fortune

  Oliver Goldsmith (1841). “Goldsmith's miscellaneous works”, p.5

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• Trifling favors are readily acknowledged, though cheaply esteemed; but important ones are most rarely remembered.

  Giovanni Ruffini

  Important, Favors, Obligation

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• An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.

  Charles Dickens

  Men, Keys, Hair

  Charles Dickens, Peter Preston (1998). “The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Other Stories”, p.358, Wordsworth Editions

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• Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Writing, Patient, Operations

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• ...trifling employments have rendered woman a trifler.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Employment

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1997). “The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman”, p.196, Broadview Press

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• Let us resolve to talk more to believers about the Bible when we meet them. Alas, the conversation of Christians, when they do meet, is often sadly unprofitable! How many frivolous, and trifling, and uncharitable things are said! Let us bring out the Bible more, and it will help to drive the devil away, and keep our hearts in tune. Oh, that we may all strive so to walk together in this evil world; that Jesus may often draw near, and go with us, as He went with the two disciples journeying to Emmaus!

  J. C. Ryle

  Christian, Jesus, Heart

  Jay Patrick Green, Sr., John Charles Ryle (2002). “Why Read the Bible Through & How Readest Thou?”, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

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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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• Who does not feel that Nansen's account of his search for the Pole rather loses than gains in ideal satisfaction by the pretense of a few trifling acquisitions for science?

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Satisfaction, Gains, Doe

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• God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.

  Martin Luther

  Father, Spring, Heart

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

  Victor Hugo

  Tree, Stories, Trifles

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

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• The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.

  Samuel Johnson

  War, Glowing, Looks

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