Trifling Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• King René of Anjou [(1409-80)]was a strange compound of amiable, great and trifling qualities. He was so excellent a sovereign as to acquire the surnom of the Good. He was brave in war, delighted in tournaments and wrote on them, instituted festivals and processions, partly religious and partly burlesque, was a fond husband, a romantic lover, a good painter for that age, and a true philosopher.

  Horace Walpole

  Religious, Kings, Husband

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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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• I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me tobe doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Office, Monsters

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.6, Xist Publishing

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• All that the Y.M.C.A.'s horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor in all its forms, but also for every variety of calisthenics, so that I still begrudge the trifling exertion needed to climb in and out of a bathtub, and hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense. If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.

  H. L. Mencken

  Christian, Sports, Horse

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• The foolish undertake a trifling act, and soon desist, discouraged; wise men engage in mighty works, and persevere.

  Magha

  Wise, Men, Persevere

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• Cats are possessed of a shy, retiring nature, cajoling, haughty, and capricious, difficult to fathom. They reveal themselves only to certain favored individuals, and are repelled by the faintest suggestion of insult or even by the most trifling deception.

  Pierre Loti

  Appreciation, Cat, Deception

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• Nothing is more unworthy of a wise man, or ought to trouble him more, than to have allowed more time for trifling, and useless things, than they deserve.

  Plato

  Wise, Men, Useless Things

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• A battle sometimes decides everything; and sometimes the most trifling thing decides the fate of a battle.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Fate, History, Battle

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• I look upon prayer-meetings as the most profitable exercises (excepting the public preaching) in which Christians can engage. They have a direct tendency to kill a worldly, trifling spirit, and to draw down a Divine blessing upon all our concerns, compose differences, and enkindle (at least maintain) the flames of Divine love amongst brethren.

  John Newton

  Christian, Prayer, Exercise

  John Newton, Richard Cecil (1824). “The Works of the Rev. J. Newton ...: With the Memoirs of the Author and General Remarks on His Life, Connections, and Character”, p.77

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• To give importance to trifling matters.

  John Heywood

  Giving, Matter, Importance

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• The wife was pretty, trifling, childish, weak; She could not think, but would not cease to speak.

  George Crabbe

  Thinking, Wife, Speak

  George Crabbe, Allan Cunningham (1855). “George Crabbe's Poetical Works: Preface to the Tales”, p.143

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• The spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling, or artful play of little lights, or an attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the whole work, to which a breadth of uniform and simple color will very much contribute.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Simple, Light, Air

  Joshua Reynolds (1835). “The Literary works of sir Joshua Reynolds, first President of the Royal Academy”, p.349

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• Some of you may ask, ?Is there a single ordinance to be dispensed with? Is there one of the commandments that God has enjoined upon the people, that he will excuse them from obeying?' Not one, no matter how trifling or small in our own estimation. No matter if we esteem them non-essential, or least or last of all the commandments of the house of God, we are under obligation to observe them.

  Brigham Young

  People, House, May

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• It is strange how the memory of a man may float to posterity on what he would have himself regarded as the most trifling of his works.

  William Osler

  Memories, Men, May

  Sir William Osler (1959). “Men and books: collected and reprinted from the Canadian Medical Association Journal”

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• To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th'harmonious frame.

  John Armstrong

  Moving, Mind, Fancy

  John Armstrong (2011). “John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-century Sensibility in Practice”, p.63, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

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• Almost everyone takes pleasure in repaying trifling obligations, very many feel gratitude for those that are moderate; but there is scarcely anyone who is not ungrateful for those that are weighty.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Gratitude, Ungrateful, Pleasure

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• There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Events, Praise, Prudence

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• To the thinker, the most trifling external object often suggests ideas, which, like Homer's chain, extend, link after link, from earth to heaven.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Ideas, Heaven, Links

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• Contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory.

  Philip Sidney

  Victory, Trifles, Contention

  Sir Philip Sidney, William Gray (1829). “The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Philip Sidney, Knt: With a Life of the Author and Illustrative Notes”

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• The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Truth, Character, Hands

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• It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Long, Soul, Body

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.168, Hackett Publishing

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• Nothing is small or great in God's sight. Whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling; and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.

  Jean Grou

  Voice, Sight, Importance

  Jean Nicolas Grou (1876). “The hidden life of the soul [by J.N. Grou]. From the Fr. by the author of A Dominican artist”, p.206

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