Top 100 Quotes About Trifling
#1. I'd no room left in me for thinking of trifling things. I could feel fear start up and try to take down my rage, but I'd not give it up.
Anna Freeman
#2. Silence - Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Benjamin Franklin
#3. Char me the trunk of a redwood tree. Give me pages of white chalk cliffs to write upon. Magnify me thousands of times, and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania - then might I write largely enough for our subjects.
Charles Fort
#4. The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long life seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed.
..
Virginia Woolf
#5. The botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; and he that is glowing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war and peace.
Samuel Johnson
#6. Men be so foolish as to have delight and pleasure in the doubtful glistering of a trifling little stone, which may behold any of the stars or else the sun itself.
Thomas More
#7. 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
#8. And therefore wishing to break a habit I was getting into of prattling, punning, and joking, which only made me acceptable to trifling company,
Benjamin Franklin
#9. 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
#10. 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.
Ellen G. White
#11. The wife was pretty, trifling, childish, weak; She could not think, but would not cease to speak.
George Crabbe
#12. A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
Philip Dormer Stanhope
#14. Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.
Umberto Eco
#15. Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well? ... Just so's you're sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you're well.
Toni Cade Bambara
#16. When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?
Mark Twain
#17. The foolish undertake a trifling act, and soon desist, discouraged; wise men engage in mighty works, and persevere.
Magha
#18. To a philosopher no circumstance, however trifling, is too minute.
Oliver Goldsmith
#20. 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
#21. There is no trifling with nature; it is always true, grave, and severe; it is always in the light, and the faults and errors fall to our share. It defies incompetency, but reveals its secrets to the competent, the truthful, and the pure.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#22. Each pain is Unbearable / yet Trifling
Seeing the TRUTH is Excruciating / yet Exquisite
Through Laugher & Tears / Grinning & Fear, we face our demons.
Jay Woodman
#23. Frequently the more trifling the subject, the more animated and protracted the discussion.
Franklin Pierce
#24. The devotions we practise in honor of the glorious Virgin Mary, however trifling they be, are very pleasing to her divine Son, and He
Various
#25. 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
#26. 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
#28. I will not say with Lord Hale, that "The Law will admit of no rival" ... but I will say that it is a jealous mistress, and requires a long and constant courtship. It is not to be won by trifling favors, but by lavish homage.
Joseph Story
#29. There are no trifles in the human story, no trifling leaves on the tree.
Victor Hugo
#30. Trifling favors are readily acknowledged, though cheaply esteemed; but important ones are most rarely remembered.
Giovanni Ruffini
#31. 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
#33. The pettiest and slightest nuisances are the most acute; and as small letters hurt and tire the eyes most, so do trifling matters sting us most.
Michel De Montaigne
#34. It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.
Patricia Moyes
#35. Why did one have to put up a hue and cry about anything so trifling as the skin on one's face, which, after all, was only a small part of the human capsule?
Kobo Abe
#36. The man who is not yet wholly dead to self, is soon tempted, and is overcome in small and trifling matters.
Thomas A Kempis
#37. 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
#39. Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
Samuel Johnson
#40. 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
#41. 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
#43. True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!
Honore De Balzac
#44. Nor let us part with justice, like a cheap and common thing, for a small and trifling price.
Plutarch
#45. (E)very genuine act or word, no matter how trifling it seems, leaves a sweet and strengthening influence behind
Louisa May Alcott
#46. In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#47. 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
#48. Death is by no means separate from life ... We all interact with death every day, tasting it as we might a wine, feeling its keen edge even in trifling losses and disappointments, holding it by the hand, as a dancer might a partner, in every separation.
Eugene Kennedy
#49. 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
#50. To the natural philosopher, there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of Nature's works he may learn the greatest lessons.
John Herschel
#51. Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful, and lowdown.
Alice Walker
#52. It is so often the odd, the unexpected, the apparently trifling, that stamps itself upon the memory for ever, while much more memorable things pass away like a breath of wind.
Esther Meynell
#53. My pains are but trifling things compared to my joy.
Karen Cushman
#54. There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind.
Sarah Josepha Hale
#55. Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances.
Livy
#58. A battle sometimes decides everything; and sometimes the most trifling thing decides the fate of a battle.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#59. A warrior should not say something fainthearted, even casually. He should set his mind to this beforehand. Even in trifling matters the depths of one's heart can be seen.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
#60. A profound theme is of trifling importance if the characters knocked around by it are uninteresting, and brilliant technique is a nuisance if it pointlessly prevents us from seeing the characters and what they do.
John Gardner
#61. When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.
Yann Martel
#62. When he thought of a joke he made it, and was called brilliant. When he could not think of a joke he said that this was no time for trifling, and was called able.
G.K. Chesterton
#63. I am surprised that Chicago - the Big-Shouldered City - is so trifling that they won't let you eat in a restaurant if it's on fire. Even if you already paid.
Jill Conner Browne
#64. However insignificant the minority, and however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.
Herbert Spencer
#65. Fashion is a great restraint upon your persons of taste and fancy; who would otherwise in the most trifling instances be able to distinguish themselves from the vulgar.
William Shenstone
#66. God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.
Martin Luther
#67. Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions; ... that laws were like cobwebs, - for that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.
Diogenes
#68. Alas! the joys that fortune brings
Are trifling, and decay,
And those who prize the trifling things,
More trifling still than they.
Oliver Goldsmith
#69. Contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory.
Philip Sidney
#70. I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.
Jane Austen
#71. The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings - and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.
Rabindranath Tagore
#72. In all human sorrow nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no sorrow is trifling.
Leo Tolstoy
#73. At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#74. What is the secret to great living? Entire separation to Christ and devotion to Him. Thus speaks every man and woman whose life has made more than a passing flicker in the spiritual realm. It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts.
Amy Carmichael
#75. They insist upon the shaving of the moustache, I think, in order that they may accustom the young men to obedience in the most trifling matters.
Plutarch
#76. It is trifling to believe in what you do or in what others do. You should avoid simulacra and even "realities"; you should take up a position external to everything and everyone, drive off or grind down your appetites, live, according to a Hindu adage, with as few desires as a "solitary elephant.
Emil Cioran
#77. Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement
however serious, however trifling
all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#78. Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
Henry Miller
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. If a weakly mortal is to do anything in the world besides eat the bread thereof, there must be a determined subordination of the whole nature to the one aim no trifling with time, which is passing, with strength which is only too limited.
Beatrice Webb
#82. 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
#83. If I set for myself a task, be it so trifling, I shall see it through. How else shall I have confidence in myself to do important things?
George S. Clason
#84. When the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seem saturated with his one great sorrow.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
#85. First, there is the power of the Wind, constantly exerted over the globe ... Here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it.
Henry David Thoreau
#86. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.
Henry David Thoreau
#87. I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists.
Vladimir Nabokov
#88. Love is not, anywhere, taken seriously. It's not respected. It's the one thing in the world everyone wants, but for some reason people are obliged to pretend that love is trifling and foolish.
Carol Shields
#89. These joys were so trifling as to be as imperceptible as grains of gold among the sand, and in moments of depression she saw nothing but the sand; yet there were brighter moments when she felt nothing but joy, saw nothing but the gold.
Leo Tolstoy
#90. One likes to hear what is going on, to be au fait as to the newest modes of being trifling and silly.
Jane Austen
#91. Prayer covers the whole of man's life. There is no thought, feeling, yearning, or desire, however low, trifling, or vulgar we may deem it, which if it affects our real interest or happiness, we may not lay before God and be sure of sympathy.
Henry Ward Beecher
#92. Though so trifling, the success of our first Buffalo hunt gave us quite a social lift.
Ernest Thompson Seton
#93. Take patiently the petty annoyances, the trifling discomforts, the unimportant losses which come upon all of us daily; for by means of these little matters, lovingly and freely accepted, you will give Him your whole heart, and win His.
Francis De Sales
#94. Employ oneself upon trifling professional matters which others could do.
James Wyatt
#95. It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
John Holmes
#96. None so nearly disposed to scoffing at religion as those who have accustomed themselves to swear on trifling occasions.
John Tillotson
#98. In revolutions the occasions may be trifling but great interest are at stake.
Aristotle.
#99. It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
William Cowper
