Trite Quotes

#1. It is a trite but true definition that examples work more forcibly on the mind than precepts.

Henry Fielding

#2. To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.

Roddy Doyle

#3. The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.

Robert E.Lee

#4. There you have it: an expensive higher education based on sloganeering, on pat, trite phrases that substitute moral posturing for political reasoning. It's elitism masquerading as egalitarianism.

Camille Paglia

#5. Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.

Pema Chodron

#6. You're supposed to take a second if life is going well, to enjoy it and not just move on with the rest of your day worrying about the next thing. And it's a really trite point in some ways. But it's bizarre how little I had done it at various points in my life.

Domhnall Gleeson

#7. How could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears?

Liane Moriarty

#8. I have met so many people who say they've got a book in them, but they've never written a word. To be a writer - this may seem trite, I realize - you have to actually write.

Khaled Hosseini

#9. People create success in their lives by focusing on today. It may sound trite, but today is the only time you have. It's too late for yesterday. And you can't depend on tomorrow. That's why today matters. Most of the time we miss that.

John C. Maxwell

#10. Language is the continuation of coercion by other means."
"Bullshit. It's cooperation." Both theories explained what had happened plausibly. I resisted, because it felt trite, saying that they weren't as contradictory as they sounded.

China Mieville

#11. It's trite to say that the world has gotten smaller in the age of globalization, but my travels have told me that it's wrong to think this means there is some kind of uniform world culture.

Norman Spinrad

#12. It is by vivacity and wit that man shines in company; but trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon.

Lord Chesterfield

#13. Today Matters People create success in their lives by focusing on today. It may sound trite, but today is the only time you have. It's too late for yesterday. And you can't depend on tomorrow. That's why today matters.

John C. Maxwell

#14. It is easier to bear the worries of wandering than to find peace in your hometown, where only the sage can live in a happy house surrounded by trite troubles and daily distractions.

Hermann Hesse

#15. This is going to sound trite, I suppose, but you never know when it's going to be the last time. That you hug someone. That you kiss. That you say goodbye.

Cynthia Hand

#16. If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn't know it by heart

Alfred De Musset

#17. There is nothing more trite than a period room imposed on a contemporary setting.

Van Day Truex

#18. The Christian ministry is difficult, and we must not be lazy or trite. However, we often place burdens upon ourselves and make demands upon ourselves that are not according to the will of God. The more I know God and understand His perfect work on my behalf, the more I am able to rest.

Paul Washer

#19. What [man landing on the moon] is doing up there is indulging his obsession with the impossible. The impossible infuriates and tantalizes him. Show him an impossible job and he will reduce it to a possibility so trite that eventually it bores him.

Russell Baker

#20. The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of musical trash.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

#21. A trite word is an overused word which has lost its identity like an old coat in a second-hand shop. The familiar grows dull and we no longer see, hear, or taste it.

Anais Nin

#22. There are things you mustn't even try to explain. They either become trite or they tie you down to something that's only half true.

Martha Albrand

#23. It is a trite but true Observation, that Examples work more forcibly on the Mind than Precepts: and if this be just in what is odious and blameable, it is more strongly so in what is amiable and praiseworthy.

Henry Fielding

#24. Every adventure requires a first step. Trite but true, even here.

American McGee

#25. The trite objects of human efforts-possessions, superficial success, luxury-have always seemed contemptible to me.

Albert Einstein

#26. I don't mean to be trite about abortion, but I do feel it's a woman's body, and I don't think anyone should take away her choice of having or not having a child.

Joanna Cassidy

#27. The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.

Charles Caleb Colton

#28. Some say Twitter seems trite and lacks weightiness - but in actuality, it lends itself to poetry - it can be very compressed and intense ...

John Geddes

#29. Denys (Finch-Hatton) has been written about before and he will be written about again. If someone has not already said it, someone will say that he was a great man who never achieved greatness, and this will not only be trite, but wrong; he was a great man who never achieved arrogance.

Beryl Markham

#30. Surely, nothing can be more plain or even more trite common sense than the proposition that innovation [ ... ] is at the center of practically all the phenomena, difficulties, and problems of economic life in capitalist society.

Joseph A. Schumpeter

#31. In the 20th century, artists did a great disservice to fairies. They painted fairies in a way that was shallow and trite. So when people see my stuff, they suddenly realize the depth of fairies.

Brian Froud

#32. Walter turned on the radio: electric violins wailing, twisted romance, the four-square beat of heartbreak. Trite suffering, but suffering nonetheless. The entertainment business. What voyeurs we have all become.

Margaret Atwood

#33. A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.

Ambrose Bierce

#34. I wonder sometimes why we don't have more words to express forgiveness. The words we use are so trite, so limited. How do you describe that first melting of a friend's face after a vicious fight, the moment when you suddenly know that eventually, you will survive this.

Edmond Manning

#35. The trite answer is that everything is true but none of it happened. It is emotionally true, but the events, the plotting, the narrative, isn't true of my life, though I've experienced most of the emotions experienced by the characters in the play.

Patrick Marber

#36. Talking about the democratization of fashion is just one of the many trite things people say these days.

Miuccia Prada

#37. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism.

Charles Lamb

#38. I'd like to be a working actor.It sounds really trite, but there really are no small parts, only small actors. And so as long as I'm a working actor, I can improve.

Anne Hathaway

#39. Despite her words about letting go, melancholy washed over her. Because words are easy and often thrown around with trite intentions.

A. Lynn

#40. Not prettiness, mind you, whose nature is trite, but beauty, which sinks to the depths

Kanan Makiya

#41. My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.

David Duchovny

#42. What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed tomorrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.

Wendell Phillips

#43. They came looking for dark and terrible revelations and instead found out something even more dark and terrible: that their lives were trite and boring. I

David Wong

#44. It sounds trite to go after men who are nice but when you've been hurt a lot it becomes appealing.

Salma Hayek

#45. We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice

Jean De La Bruyere

#46. It sounds so trite, but my private life is mine.

Portia De Rossi

#47. It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you're trying to say.

Chuck Palahniuk

#48. Without Satan, with God only, how poor a universe, how trite a music!

Olaf Stapledon

#49. When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

Doug Liman

#50. What's terrible is that there's nothing terrible, that the very essence of life is petty, uninteresting, and degradingly trite.

Ivan Turgenev

#51. It sounds so trite but in relationships, you have to communicate.

Peter Krause

#52. I don't think I could ever do a network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite circumstance. I don't want to be a part of a show where it's mostly about coming up with the jokes.

Sherilyn Fenn

#53. Love that defied trite words or even description, that carried with it tenderness and passion and laughter and friendship. Love that made her eyes sparkle and her breath stop when she saw him and imbued life with more meaning and more purpose.

Karen Ranney

#54. One must console oneself with the thought that time has a sieve through which most of these important things run into the ocean of oblivion and what remains after this selection is often still trite and bad.

Albert Einstein

#55. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#56. There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.

Jan Karon

#57. To atone, I teach and try to set an example ... I love spreading this stuff around. Just because it's trite doesn't mean it isn't right. In fact, I like to say, 'If it's trite, it's right.'

Charlie Munger

#58. We gazed at the constellations, praising the portentous architecture of the sky with trite formulas.

Elena Ferrante

#59. There is no gender to my music. There's no male or female voice, no trite lyrics or poetry. It's much more abstract, so it lives with you longer.

Yanni

#60. It is, of course, a trite observation to say that we live "in a period of transition." Many people have said this at many times. Adam may well have made the remark to Eve on leaving the Garden of Eden.

Harold Macmillan

#61. It sounds trite, but I like telling stories.

Rebecca Hall

#62. Misery loves company, as someone unbearably trite said once.

George R R Martin

#63. It sounds like something on a very trite T-shirt, but life is what happens.

Nigella Lawson

#64. In mathematics, by placing our fingers on a given problem, no matter how trite or pedestrian it apparently seems, we may end up measuring the pulse of the universe. p. 119

G. Arnell Williams

#65. Success is not necessarily about connections, or cutting corners, or chamba - the three Cs of bad business. Call it trite, but believe me: success can be achieved through hard work, frugality, integrity, responsiveness to change, and most of all, boldness to dream.

John Gokongwei

#66. When you read a novel, it seems that everything is clear, trite and understandable. But when you yourself fall in love, you understand that nobody knows anything and everyone must decide for themselves.

Sarah Ruhl

#67. Everybody has done something about Marco Polo. It's the tiredest, most trite and worked-over subject in the world, and that was why it appealed to me, because I wanted to do something really new and different about something that had been worked over all these centuries, and I think I did.

Gary Jennings

#68. So I simply said one of the great trite truths: There is generally more than one side to a story.

Roger Zelazny

#69. If you'll curtail your literary pursuits a moment I'll introduce you to my counterpart and Nemesis; I would be trite and say, 'to my better half,' but I think that phrase indicates some kind of basically equal division, don't you?

Ken Kesey

#70. Hatred has a way of destroying the hater more surely than the hated'. Trite, but true in a most terrible way.

Valerie Fitzgerald

#71. The greatest influence in writing was G. K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite.

Fulton J. Sheen

#72. What we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.

Malcolm Gladwell

#73. Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing with more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.

Lord Chesterfield

#74. That nasty, blonde, skank Hayley looked pleased with herself. Draped all over my boyfriend in her oh-so-trite, size negative-two, designer clothes. Her attitude matched the price tags.

Harriet Showman

#75. I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

Jerry Seinfeld

#76. The glamorous life is a facade, a fraud
a farce of frivolous trite
The storybook is blank inside
Chivalry has died

Donato DiCristino

#77. I've always liked New York even before I lived in New York. It represents something, I think, and it would be trite to say what it represents really because it's been said so many times.

Michelle Stuart

#78. I've got passion, and for people who don't, I make them see how trite their lives are.

John Singleton

#79. In a popular medium, you're going to get loads of stuff that is trite, but there'll also be some really special moments.

Kate Bush

#80. I know it sounds trite but I wanted to make a difference. Political debates with my father had been fraught because he was uncompromising and explosive but if he taught me one thing it was to air my views.

Vince Cable

#81. As trite as the thought was, even her butterflies got the butterflies with just a tilt of his lips, and it had always been so.

Genevieve Dewey

#82. If my wife finds comfort in trite Gispy homilies, I have no objection to your offering them. However, if you ever kiss her again, no matter how platonic the fashion, I'll make a eunuch of you.

Lisa Kleypas

#83. I lost a girlfriend when I was in my 30s. She was 46. It all sounds so trite, but I put a Post-it on my dressing-room wall. It said, 'The past is history. The future is a mystery. This moment is a gift, which is why it's called the present.'

Samantha Bond

#84. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without condition or limits.

Henri Nouwen

#85. Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects.

Charlotte Bronte

#86. If you're a waiter, the worst thing you can do is go to work resenting your job. This will sound trite - but it's the reality, and part of my personality - yet when I was a waiter, I tried to be the best waiter, and when I was a bingo-caller I tried to be the best bingo-caller.

Russell Crowe

#87. This may sound trite, but bad things happen to good people, and when you're facing terrorism, natural disaster, you can have every wonderful plan in place, but I am a realist.

Warren Rudman

#88. It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.

Charles De Lint

#89. One of those largish US women writers on the metaphysics of shagging had declared, as if it were a revelation - and a terrible one - that the sex act inevitably entailed violence on the female. Well, of course it did, you well-meaning, trite, benighted duck.

Bill James

#90. This really happens. It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up what you're trying to say.

Chuck Palahniuk

#91. Writing is a form of art. Do not use New Times Roman or Arial because it's boring and hackneyed.

Natalya Vorobyova