Trifling Quotes - page 3

At an expense trifling indeed, compared to what she frequently spends upon unprofitable contests, she might place the moral world on a new foundation, and to rise the pinnacle of moral glory. (John Strachan)
Employ oneself upon trifling professional matters which others could do. View quote
James Wyatt
The instructor must spare no pains in preventing the soldier from using force, especially with the left or guiding arm, as too much exertion generally causes the thrust to miss. A trifling body-stab with the bayonet (I may add with the sword) is sufficient to disable a man; and many a promising young soldier has lost his life by burying his weapon so deep in the enemy's breast that it could not be withdrawn quickly enough to be used against a second assailant. To prevent this happening, the point must be delivered smartly, with but little exertion of force, more like a dart than a thrust, and instantly afterwards the bayonet must be smartly withdrawn. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
If we use no ceremony toward others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect. View quote
William Hazlitt
We all know, in fact, that the insane.. ..derive a great deal of comfort and consolation from their imagination, that they enjoy their madness sufficiently to endure the thought that its validity does not extend beyond themselves. And, indeed, hallucinations, illusions, etc., are not a source of trifling pleasure... These people are honest to a fault, and their 'naiveté' has no peer but my own. Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured. View quote
André Breton
I know that even in this faithless age there are many persons to whom the Bible is what it was to Calvin - its smallest word as really the voice of God, its most trifling part as sacred; and to these persons I know I shall have given very great pain. They may not believe me when I say I am sorry for it; but if they will not, at least they will believe with me, that those who fight against God are most fighting against themselves; that He can and will protect His truth, and that every blow which is aimed against it will not injure truth, but will recoil on the striker's head. So far they will go with me. In the prayer that it may be so, may they and I unite. View quote
James Anthony Froude
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones. View quote
G. K. Chesterton
The Gnostics were the earliest Christians with anything like a regular theological system, and it is only too evident that it was Jesus who was made to fit their theology as Christos, and not their theology that was developed out of his sayings and doings. Their ancestors had maintained, before the Christian era, that the Great Serpent - Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the Father and "Good Divinity," had glided into the couch of Semele, and now, the post-Christian Gnostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same "Good Divinity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. View quote
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
Interviewer: So you weren't surprised by the Dan Rather debacle? Wolfe: I wasn't surprised it happened. The media have a pretty wild history in this respect. Whenever somebody would make up a story, they would say, 'Oh, that's the influence of the New Journalism.' God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism. View quote
Tom Wolfe
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)
It is their duty to make frequent and through inspection of the engines, so as to guard them from accidents and injuries which may result from the want of seasonable and trifling renewals: also to see that the engines are otherwise in efficient condition for use. They are also required to report to the Division Superintendents all cases they may discover of abuse or maltreatment of locomotives by engineers or dispatchers. View quote
Daniel McCallum
Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. View quote
François de La Rochefoucauld
The young are in great danger. Much evil results from their light and trifling reading. Much time is lost which should be spent in useful employment. Some would even deprive themselves of sleep that they might finish some ridiculous love story. View quote
Ellen G. White
As for a few trifling delusions like the "past" and "present" and "future" of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple of billion supermechanized submorons but they're much too small for one human being. View quote
E. E. Cummings
No real belief, however trifling and fragmentary it may seem, is ever truly insignificant; it prepares us to receive more of its like, confirms those which resembled it before, and weakens others; and so gradually it lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character for ever. View quote
William Kingdon Clifford
The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or at nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer but if he sees you at the billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day. View quote
Benjamin Franklin
It is by little things that we know ourselves; a soul would very probably mistake itself for another, when once disembodied, were it not for individual experiences which differ from those of others only in details seemingly trifling. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
William Osler
Looking back at the end of the year created a little more serious mood than before. To bring children [his son de:Felix Klee] in the world is no trifling matter! Over the entire horizon, bluish, phosphorescent flashes of sheet shining.... In fact, I really do go out into the snow [near Munich] in all seriousness, station myself there, freeze, freeze stiff, but work. I accomplish little in comparison with the abundance around me, but I accomplish a great deal in comparison with the poverty and simplicity of a small bourgeois homestead. View quote
Paul Klee
Living in the world as a cripple allows you to see more clearly the crippled hearts of some people whose bodies are whole and sound. All of us, from time to time, suffer this crippling. Some suffer it daily and nightly; and while most of us, nearly all of us, have compassion and love in our hearts, we cannot of will not see these barely visible wounds of other human beings, and so cannot or will not pick up the telephone or travel to someone's house or write a note or make some other seemingly trifling gesture to give to someone what only we, and God, can give: an hour's respite, or a day's, or a night's; and sometimes more than respite: sometimes joy. (Andre Dubus)
There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree. View quote
Victor Hugo
Who hath not saved some trifling thing More prized than jewels rare, A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair. View quote
Ellen Clementine Howarth
There is no trifling with nature, it is always true, grave, and severe, it is always in the right, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure. View quote
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Be careful of your word, even in keeping the most trifling appointment. But do not blame another for a failure of that kind till you have heard his excuse. View quote
James Burgh