Triviality Quotes

• We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

  Charles Bukowski

  Love, Death, Novelists

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.10, Harper Collins

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.

  W. H. Auden

  Funny Friendship, Funny Best Friend, Differences

  26 Copy quote

• The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

  Quentin Crisp

  Relationship, Marriage, Successful

  19 Copy quote

• You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves.

  D.T. Suzuki

  Life Lesson, People, Rise Above

  35 Copy quote

• I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Believe, Mind, Habit

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.418, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Law of Triviality... briefly stated, it means that the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

  C. Northcote Parkinson

  Mean, Law, Agendas

  Parkinson's Law ch. 3 (1957)

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Memories, Not Good Enough, Persons

  10 Copy quote

• We recognize that there are no trivial occurrences in life if we get the right focus on them.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Focus, Vision

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.186, Courier Corporation

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"-above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." shall we have it.

  Marianne Moore

  Real, Garden, Imagination

  'Poetry' (1935)

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.

  Ernest Rutherford

  Science, Engineering, Understanding

  148 Copy quote

• I do not doubt but the majest and beauty of the world are latent
  in any iota of the world;
  I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects,
  vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse than
  I have supposed.

  Walt Whitman

  Weed, Doubt, World

  Walt Whitman (1861). “Leaves of Grass”, p.217

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment and then nothing.

  Bertrand Russell

  Darkness Within, Vastness, Splendor

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.393, Psychology Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I thought about societies where exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to out sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.

  Alain de Botton

  Mean, Connections, Needs

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.73, Penguin UK

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.

  David Riesman

  May, Novelty, Preoccupation

  David Riesman (1955). “Selected essays from Individualism reconsidered”

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally with delight and rejoicing, and welcome with open arms what others dread and avoid.

  Jean-Pierre de Caussade

  Life, God, Soul

  Louis Lallemant, Jean Pierre de Caussade, Claude De La Colombiere, Jean-Pierre Lafouge (2006). “For God's Greater Glory: Gems of Jesuit Spirituality”, p.81, World Wisdom, Inc

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• We shouldn't teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.

  B. F. Skinner

  Education, Teacher, Book

  "The Man and His Ideas". Book by Richard Isadore Evans (p. 73), 1968.

  163 Copy quote

  Show source

• They wanted genuine intimacy, but they could not get even normally near to anyone, because they scorned to take the first steps, they scorned the triviality which forms common human intercourse.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Firsts, Steps, Common

  D. H. Lawrence (2016). “Sons and Lovers”, p.197, D. H. Lawrence

  1 Copy quote

  Show source

• Human lives are too short to waste in trivialities.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Waste, Too Short, Human Life

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2002). “Circus of the Damned: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Novel”, p.210, Penguin

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• A scrap of knowledge about sublime things is worth more than any amount about trivialities.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Sublime, Scrap, Amount

  Saint Thomas (Aquinas) (1955). “Theological texts”

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.

  Oscar Wilde

  Serious Things, Sincere, Should

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.23, Penguin

  0 Copy quote

  Show source

• Books are a triviality. Life alone is great.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Life, Book

  0 Copy quote

• Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them.

  Emily Post

  Doe, Manners, Made

  Emily Post (2007). “Etiquette: In Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home”, p.2, Cosimo, Inc.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The contented have time to worry about trivialities; often to the extent that they never achieve anything worthwhile.

  Jules Eckert Goodman

  Failure, Worry, Achieve

  0 Copy quote

• Many people have delusions of grandeur but you're deluded by triviality.

  Eugene Ionesco

  Illusions Of Grandeur, People, Delusions Of Grandeur

  Eugene Ionesco, Charles Marowitz (2015). “Exit the King, The Killer, Macbett”, p.15, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hope that we can bridge the worlds of appearances and of insights, and thus rescue art from triviality, from 'sensation' alone.

  Burton Silverman

  Hope, Art, Bridges

  3 Copy quote