Trifles Quotes - Page 4

• A trifle can be enough when luck is on your side.

  Margi Preus

  Your Side, Luck, Sides

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• Of all trifles, titles are the lightest.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Titles

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• Who gives a trifle meanly is meaner than the trifle.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Giving

  "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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• My father names me Autolycus, who being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

  William Shakespeare

  Father, Names, Mercury

  'The Winter's Tale' (1610-1) act 4, sc. 2, l. [24]

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• A trifle is often pregnant with high importance; the prudent man neglects no circumstance.

  Sophocles

  Life, Men, Prudent

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• I love idleness. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin a ten-years' task to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Rocks, Years, Giving

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• Dr. Johnson ... sometimes employed himself in chymistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, and sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile, should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only by trifles.

  James Boswell

  Science, Drs, Vines

  James Boswell (2008). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.125, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career; yet it depended on so small a circumstance as my uncle offering to drive me 30 miles to Shrewsbury, which few uncles would have done, and on such a trifle as the shape of my nose.

  Charles Darwin

  Uncles, Science, Offering

  Charles Darwin (2010). “The Works of Charles Darwin, Volume 29: “Erasmus Darwin” by Ernest Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin; “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin” Edited by Nora Barlow; and Consolidated Index”, p.113, NYU Press

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• Everything is a trifle to a man who is a Christian except the glorifying of Christ

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Men, Christianity

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• Children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Pain, Children, Liars

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• Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles; but the magnifying of the one is like looking through a telescope at heavenly objects; that of the other, like enlarging monsters with a microscope.

  Leigh Hunt

  Love, Monsters, Telescopes

  Leigh Hunt, Thornton Leigh Hunt (1862). “The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt”, p.31, London : Smith, Elder

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• Both wit and understanding are trifles without integrity.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Integrity, Understanding, Ethics

  Oliver Goldsmith (1803). “The Beauties of Goldsmith, Or, The Complete Treasury of Genius: To which is Prefixed the Life of the Author”, p.106

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• There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Men, Rejection

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”, p.297

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• I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.

  Alexander Pope

  Time, Sticks, Satisfied

  Alexander Pope, John Wilson Croker, Whitwell Elwin, William John Courthope (1871). “The Works of Alexander Pope: New Ed. Including Several Hundred Unpublished Letters, and Other New Materials, Collected in Part by John Wilson Croker. With Introd. and Notes by Whitwell Elwin”, p.67

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• Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is not slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Religious, Humility, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.258

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• Proofs of the Euclidean [parallel] postulate can be developed to such an extent that apparently a mere trifle remains. But a careful analysis shows that in this seeming trifle lies the crux of the matter; usually it contains either the proposition that is being proved or a postulate equivalent to it.

  Johann Heinrich Lambert

  Lying, Analysis, Matter

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• [Will]'d barely been asleep a few minutes when Halt's voice woke him. 'Will? Are you asleep?'... 'I was,' he said, a little indignantly. 'I'm not now.' 'Good,' Halt replied, a trifle smugly. 'Serves you right.

  John Flanagan

  Voice, Littles, Halt

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• Guilt agonizes over trifles, ignores habitual wrongdoing.

  Mason Cooley

  Guilt, Habitual, Wrongdoing

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• My brother could not write about trifles. Even in society he became animated only when some serious discussion was engaged in, and he complained of feeling 'a dull pain in the brain'--a physical pain, as he used to say--when he was with people who cared only for small talk.

  Peter Kropotkin

  Brother, Pain, Writing

  Peter Kropotkin, Georg Brandes (2009). “Memoirs of a Revolutionist”, p.94, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I would not be at all surprised to find that it was for gold that Cain committed the first murder. (It happened a very long time ago, and Holy Writ, though no doubt divinely inspired, is a trifle careless about details. God is not a historian).

  Barbara Mertz

  Long, Doubt, Gold

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• Revenge is a dish best served unexpectedly and from a distance - like a thrown trifle.

  Frances Hardinge

  Revenge, Distance, Dishes

  "Twilight Robbery". Book by Frances Hardinge, 2011.

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• The more big business talks about something, the less of it there is. For example, it 'values' jobs just at the moment when they disappear; it revels in 'autonomy' when in fact you have to fill out forms in triplicate for the slightest trifle and ask the advice of six people to make insignificant decisions; it harps on 'ethics' while believing in absolutely nothing.

  Corinne Maier

  Jobs, Business, Believe

  Corinne Maier (2007). “Bonjour Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay”, p.9, Vintage

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• Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs; Since life's best joys consist in peace and ease, And though but few can serve, yet all may please; On, let th' ungentle spirit learn from hence, A small unkindness is a great offence.

  Hannah More

  Spring, Joy, Ease

  Hannah More (1835). “The works of Hannah More”, p.380

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• Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to publick opinion. This is the weak point of our defenses, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem the true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong the right.

  James F. Cooper

  Government, Enemy, Society

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• In the end, science as we know it has two basic types of practitioners. One is the educated man who still has a controlled sense of wonder before the universal mystery, whether it hides in a snail's eye or within the light that impinges on that delicate organ. The second kind of observer is the extreme reductionist who is so busy stripping things apart that the tremendous mystery has been reduced to a trifle, to intangibles not worth troubling one's head about.

  Loren Eiseley

  Eye, Science, Men

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