Trifling Quotes - Page 3

• Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nursing, Vanity, Selfishness

  "The Life of Florence Nightingale" by Edward Tyas Cook, (p. 369), 1913.

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• The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.

  Washington Irving

  Heart, Mind, Criticism

  Washington Irving (1999). “Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories”, p.64, Penguin

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• A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in.

  John Locke

  Growing Up, Father, Son

  "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" by John Locke, (Sec. 95), 1693.

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• If travel has taught me nothing more, and it certainly has, it's this: you never know when some trifling incident, utterly without significance, may pitchfork you into adventure or, by the same token, may not.

  S. J. Perelman

  Travel, Adventure, May

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• Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

  Pablo Picasso

  Song, Art, Flower

  Pablo Picasso (1972). “Picasso on art: a selection of views”, Viking Adult

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• I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

  Edmund Burke

  Childhood, Romance, Despair

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• Nothing makes us better understand what trifling things Providence thinks He bestows on men in granting them wealth, money, dignities, and other advantages, than the manner in which they are distributed and the kind of men who have the largest share.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Men, Thinking, Dignity

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• For centuries great, brave, lonely men have been telling you what to do. Time and again you have corrupted, diminished and demolished their teachings; time and again you have been captivated by their weakest points, taken not the great truth, but some trifling error as your guiding principal.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Lonely, Teaching, Taken

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• Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Christian, Spiritual, Real

  "Life Togehter".

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• To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Philosophy, Philosopher, Minutes

  Oliver Goldsmith (1819). “The Citizen of the World; Or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to His Friends in the East”, p.124

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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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• It is unpleasant to miss even the most trifling thing to which we have been accustomed.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Missing, Habit, Accustomed

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.726, Delphi Classics

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• We never pay anyone Dane-geld,
  No matter how trifling the cost;
  For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
  And the nation that plays it is lost!

  Rudyard Kipling

  Games, Play, Cost

  Rudyard Kipling (1994). “The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling”, p.742, Wordsworth Editions

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• I saw in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reference of law, Divine or human.

  Hugo Grotius

  Christian, War, Fighting

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• However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

  Herbert Spencer

  Rights, Liberty, Minorities

  Herbert Spencer (2014). “The Right to Ignore the State”, p.9, The Floating Press

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• Every phenomenon, however trifling it be, has a cause, and a mind infinitely powerful, and infinitely well-informed concerning the laws of nature could have foreseen it from the beginning of the ages. If a being with such a mind existed, we could play no game of chance with him; we should always lose.

  Henri Poincare

  Powerful, Science, Law

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• Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with great pleasureEither I am a fool and a self-conceited person, or I am a being capable of becoming a good writer; I am displeased and bored with everything now being written, while everything in my head interests, moves, and excites me-whence I draw the conclusion that no one is doing what is needed, and I alone know the secret of how it should be done. In all likelihood everyone who writes thinks that. In fact, the devil himself will be brought to his knees by these questions.

  Anton Chekhov

  Moving, Writing, Conceited

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• The question of historicity and actuality with regard to gods and unicorns is a relatively trifling matter which may be left to antiquarians and biologists, for both the god and the unicorn had a business to perform greater than any mere existence in the flesh could explain or provide a basis for.

  Odell Shepard

  May, Flesh, Matter

  Odell Shepard (1930). “The lore of the unicorn”, Outlet

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• He is not dead, this friend; not dead, Gone some few, trifling steps ahead, And nearer to the end; So that you, too, once past the bend, Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend You fancy dead.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Death, Past, Gone

  Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, Sidney Colvin, William Ernest Henley (1918). “The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson”

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