"Trifler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thought worse of Tom Helmer than he yet deserved. He was a characterless fool, a trifler, a poetic babbler, a good-for-nothing good sort of fellow; that was the worst that as yet was true of him; and better things might with equal truth have been said of him, had there been any one that loved him enough to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... that, like the rest of the world, he considered as a fiction the story of that indefatigable trifler who is said to have enclosed the Iliad in a nutshell. Examining the matter more closely, he thought it possible. One day this learned man trifled half an hour in demonstrating it. A piece of vellum, about ten inches in length and eight in width, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... well is to adapt your conversation as skillfully as may be to your company. Some men make a point of talking commonplace to all ladies alike, as if a woman could only be a trifler. Others, on the contrary, seem to forget in what respects the education of a lady differs from that of a gentleman, and commit the opposite error of conversing on topics with which ladies are seldom acquainted. A woman of ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... lost by the disgrace they bring and the damage they do to what is called "The Lecture System." It is an insult to any lyceum-audience to suppose that it can have a strong and permanent interest in a trifler; and it is a gross injustice to every respectable lecturer in the field to introduce into his guild men who have no better motive and no higher mission than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the profs. letting out classes early and going home to supper at one P. M. you would consider your life well spent. Sounds fiddling now, doesn't it? But I admired you for it then. I really looked up to you, Bill, as a man with a firm, fixed purpose, while I was just a trifler who would be satisfied to steal the hands of the clock or jolly it into striking two ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... retreat, smiled beautifully to himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden, and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted trifler with another ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... was grieved and indignant. With all my fair promises and pretended loyalty I seemed to be an idle trifler. How could my relation to Lettie Conlow be explained away in the light of this visit from a handsome cultured young lady, who had had an assurance of welcome or she would not have come. He loved Marjie as the daughter of his dearest friend. He had longed ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of it,' he returned. 'It is now four years since we were married; and these four years, Seraphina, have not perhaps been happy either for you or for me. I am well aware I was unsuitable to be your husband. I was not young, I had no ambition, I was a trifler; and you despised me, I dare not say unjustly. But to do justice on both sides, you must bear in mind how I have acted. When I found it amused you to play the part of Princess on this little stage, did I not immediately resign ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your thoughts to such silly subjects, lovely trifler!" said Barnstable, "when the time and the occasion both urge us to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fashion is a trifler unworthy of his race; the mere gentleman is a character which may in time become somewhat tiresome; there is a just mean between the two, where a better conduct than either is to be found. It is that of a man who, yielding to others, ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... withdrew to his room, where he read hard until very late. Eustace was no trifler; he had brains, and saw his way to make use of them to the one end which addressed his imagination, that of social self-advancement. His studies to-night were troubled with a resentful fear lest ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Sabine hills, where pursuers were sent after him; but his life was begged for by his friends at Rome, especially by the Vestal Virgins, and Sulla spared his life, saying, however, "Beware; in that young trifler is more than one Marius." Caesar went to join the army in the East for safety, and thus broke off the idle life of pleasure he had been ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... idolatry. [17:17]Then he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and those that were pious, and in the market every day with those he met. [17:18]And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers disputed with him, and some said, What does this trifler mean to say? And others, He seems to be a preacher of strange demons; because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. [17:19]And laying hold of him they brought him to the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is which is taught ...
— The New Testament • Various
... gathers the pollen-dust, prepares the honey in her crop, stores and mixes the paste. This severe labour, so imperious and so active, in which the insect's whole life is spent, manifestly demands a bodily strength which would be quite useless to the male, the amorous trifler. Thus, as a general rule, in the insects which carry on an industry the female ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Wood, in its most imposing form, That climbs the mountain, bows below, Where deep th' unsullied waters flow. Here Gilpin's eye transported scan'd Views by no tricks of fancy plan'd; Gray here, upon the stream reclin'd, Stor'd with delight his ardent mind. But let the vacant trifler stray From thy enchantments far away; For should, from fashion's rainbow train, The idle and the vicious vain, In sacrilege presume to move Through these dear scenes of peace and love, The spirit of the stream would rise ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... literary tastes. That he was no sceptic but a disciple as regards Shakespeare and Milton and Pope and Gray suggests, on the other hand, how foolish it is to regard him as being critically a fashionable trifler. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... in the eyes. "I have seen her. A fair toy vessel to amuse an idle young man's leisure! You are he that in that fool's hole of a Bosekop, is known as the 'rich Englishman,'—an idle trifler with time,—an aimless wanderer from those dull shores where they eat gold till they die of surfeit! I have heard of you,—a mushroom knight, a fungus of nobility,—an ephemeral growth on a grand decaying ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... in your silent grave!— The world, which for an idle day Grace to your mood of sadness gave, Long since hath flung her weeds away. The eternal trifler breaks your spell; But we—we learnt ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... trifler, faineant, And bid me give my life an aim!— You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out, And own your hastiness to blame. I live with but a single thought; My inmost heart and soul are set On one sole task—a mighty one— To ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... secure Of total death, and careless of hereafter; While heaven's high minister, whose awful volume Records each act, each thought of sov'reign man, Surveys your plays with inattentive glance, And leaves the lovely trifler unregarded. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... continual inattention to matters that occur, is the characteristic of a weak mind; the man who gives way to it, is little else than a trifler, a blank in society, which every sensible person overlooks; surely what is worth doing is worth doing well, and nothing can be done well if not properly attended to. When I hear a man say, on being asked ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... before, or comes to him in some lonely place, he should be certain that she is capable of being enjoyed by the use of a little force. A woman who lets a man make up to her, but does not give herself up, even after a long time, should be considered as a trifler in love, but owing to the fickleness of the human mind, even such a woman can be conquered by always keeping up a close ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... capital assumption of gaiety, but to the keen instinct of that experienced trifler with hearts it was an assumption only, and Gertrude turned the question with the easy skill of a woman ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw her dressed for a ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty trifler! I still behold the smiling earth—A large train of disasters were coming on to my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet-door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... a five-cent stamp to aim at yer, and yer won't ketch it onc't," replied the boyish trifler. "I couldn't hit what I was to fire at if it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 25, September 17, 1870 • Various
... room in loops of flight I watch you wayward go; Dance down a shaft of glancing light, Review my books a-row; Before the bust you flaunt and flit Of "blind Maeonides"— Ah, trifler, on his lips there lit Not butterflies, ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the character, extended their influence over every other. The second generation of the statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of Grammont, and the tiring-room of Nell. In no other age could such a trifler as Buckingham have exercised any political influence. In no other age could the path to power and glory have been thrown open to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should be so frightfully misunderstood? Ive tried all my life to be sincere and simple, to be unassuming and kindly. Ive lived a blameless life. Ive supported the Censorship in the face of ridicule and insult. And now I'm told that I'm a centre of Immoralism! of Modern Minxism! a trifler with the most sacred subjects! a Nietzschean!! ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... who was so alone of a sudden found that he possessed this relative, and it seemed to him almost too good to be true. That the relative had never before noticed his existence, that he was supposed to be a trifler and a ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... not here, and you are," the Duke answered. "Remember that I am no trifler with words. I have said that I insist. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not speak the truth. For against all the world is my sermon; every one contradicts it. If I go about with lies, then I have Christ against me; therefore I have heaven and earth against me, and how then could I stand? As such a trifler with holy things how should I dare rise up? Believe me, I speak the truth, I have seen it with my eyes, and touched it with my hands. Believe it! If I speak not the truth, I consign myself body and soul to destruction; ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... our all relies, Let him be honest, and he must be wise, Let him no trifler from his school, Nor like his ... still a ... Be but a man! unminister'd, alone, And free at once the senate and the throne; 90 Esteem the public love his best supply, A [symbol]'s[126] true glory his integrity: Rich with his ... in his ... strong, Affect no conquest, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... considered this as if he found a serious flaw in it; after which he began again: "I never supposed you a trifler." ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... expert in the art of testifying, like some of the others, he has not yet become expert; what he may descend to later cannot be known; he entered upon his first experience, I think, with my brother Duncan, who is no trifler when he comes to deal with these questions, and for several months Mr. Clarke was pursued up and down, over a range of suggestions of what he would have thought if he had thought something else had been said at some time when something else ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy who construes de and, instead of de but, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... agitation in order to work upon your sensibility. My desire is not to surprize, but to reconcile you to my plan. What is it I seek in Miss Beverley? An Heiress? No, as such she has seen I could resist her; nor yet the light trifler of a spring or two, neglected when no longer a novelty; no, no!—it is a companion for ever, it is a solace for every care, it is a bosom friend through every period of life that I seek in Miss ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... Pastorals, that it ought to be confin'd to the State, Manners, Apprehension and even common phrases of Sheapards: for nothing can {23} be said to be Pastoral, which is not accommodated to their condition; and for this Reason Nannius Alcmaritanus in my opinion is a trifler, who, in his comments on Virgils Eclogues, thinks that those sorts of Composures may now and then be lofty, and treat of great subjects: where he likewise divides the matter of Bucolicks, into ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... full of wit and wisdom and sound advice is certain. Mr. Strachey, in his preface, seems to be under the impression that in the popular estimate Chesterfield is reckoned an elegant trifler, a man of no serious account. What the popular or vulgar estimate of Chesterfield may be it would be hard to determine, nor is it of the least importance, for no one who knows about Lord Chesterfield can possibly entertain any such opinion. How it came about that ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... the author. The companion writers in the Collegian were Simmons, who wrote over the signature of "Lockfast"; John O. Sargent, poet and essayist, whose nom de plume was "Charles Sherry"; Robert Habersham, the "Mr. Airy" of the group; and that clever young trifler, Theodore Snow, who delighted the readers of the periodical with the works of "Geoffrey La Touche." Of these, of course, Holmes was the life and soul, and though sixty years have passed away since he enriched the columns of the Collegian with the fruits of his muse, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... (1853,) I presume the reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years ago, supposed him. Assuredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler, but lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. To him, being such a man by ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Meissonier there lies the gulf that separates the genius and the hard-working man of talent. Nevertheless Meissonier's statue is in the garden of the Louvre, Meissonier is extolled as a master, while Fortuny is usually described in patronising terms as a facile trifler. The reverse is the truth. No one has painted sunlight with more intensity; he was an impressionist before the word was coined. He is a colourist almost as sumptuous as Monticelli, with a precision of vision never attained ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday, that quaint philosopher frequently doggishly nicknamed Owd Bob, went to Washington lately to see President Harding. His eye fell upon the White House Airedale. Now Owd Bob is himself something of an Airedale trifler, and cherishes the memory of a certain Tristram Shandy, an animal that frequently appeared in the lighter editorials of the Bookman when Mr. Holliday (then the editor) could think of nothing else to write about. And of Mr. Harding's dog Mr. Holliday reports, with grave sorrow: ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... were made with the despatch which characterized Mrs. Hardy. She was a stickler for precedent; any departure from the beaten paths was in her decalogue the unpardonable sin, but when she had arrived at a decision she was no trifler. She accepted the situation with the resignation which she deemed to be correct under such circumstances, but the boundless prairies were to her so much desolation and ugliness. It was apparent that dwellers in the little four-cornered houses ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... her, or of any other trifler of the court, when there hangs over us so great a sorrow, Endymion, as our separation? Endymion, my best beloved," and she threw her arms round his neck, "my heart! my life! Is it possible that you can leave me, and so ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... who was then only a courtier in Versailles, came to Madame Geoffrin's parties. He was a man who combined in a most surprising manner true philosophy and a deep knowledge of political economy, with the outward appearance of a fop and a trifler. Among the other distinguished men who lived in Paris, Marmontel names with high praise the Abbe Galliani, Caraccioli, who was afterward Neapolitan ambassador, and the Swedish ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... been kind to me. Have your researches into English literature ever chanced to lead you into reading Horace Walpole, I wonder? That polite trifler is fond of a word which he coined himself—'Serendipity.' It derives from the name of a certain happy Indian Prince Serendip, whom he unearthed (or invented) in some obscure Oriental story; a prince for whom the fairies or the genii always managed to make everything pleasant. It implies ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... to the dangers of too great intimacy. Nothing here advanced is intended to make you a mere trifler, or to sink the dignity of your own sex. Although you are to respect females because of their sex, yet there are some who bestow upon them a species of attention extremely injurious to themselves, and unpleasant and degrading to ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of her patient, unremitting delving, of the digging up, up, up to get to the light which most human beings are privileged to enjoy with no effort at all! The mind that accepts this wealth with no thought, no sense of responsibility, is a trifler with riches that are about us for God-given purposes. Think of the way in which Stevenson and John Richard Green and George Eliot rose above their ill-health and did their work in despite of it! Perhaps some of us have superb health and have never made any ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... distinctly include the prose-works of the former; for we do not think his poetry alone by any means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his poetry, though pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler: it is in his anonymous productions that he has shewn himself ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... her. You may think me a trifler, Easelmann; but every nerve I have is quivering with agony at the thought of the pain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... Wayne would welcome him to her birthday feast? He had thrown her kindness back into her face, had first accepted and then carelessly repudiated her friendship; and it was only too probable she had written him down as a casual and discourteous trifler with whom, in future, she ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... light wing through the air, and duped the multitude, and eluded the threats of the Bull. {Now} if the Bull had kept in mind his strength of neck, and had contemned an ignoble foe, the vapouring of the trifler would have ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... hedge. I got spies out and they say he's been in every cafe in town looking for me. Wants to make up. Watch little birdie here. If he comes monkeying around me again I'll pick up one of these and knock him clean out from under his hat. Trifler. How I ever fell for him certainly gets me. How anybody could love a press agent or an actor gets me for that matter. I have been crossed in love and ...
— The Sorrows of a Show Girl • Kenneth McGaffey
... what old Judge Hinky used to call "shifting the issue." I wanted to make one stab at just one man—not the whole party—on grounds that the rest of the crowd, who was plainly all good two-handed punchers, would see was perfectly fair. And I intended to land that stab so's they'd see I was no trifler. It was my bad luck that not a soul in the crowd knew me—even by reputation, or my hair would have made it easy for me. So I put a little ginger in the tone of ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... would not take offense he slid the lines on Indian Summer into his breast pocket, to keep company with the lucky-stone. The situation had become riskily sentimental and intensely stimulating to Burr's disposition as a social trifler. He was reckless of consequences, vain of conquest over any woman, and scrupulous only to avoid failure in his amours. The more innocent and virtuous the victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap unsuspecting game without exciting alarm ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... conceit, [112]si quid, forsan omissum, quod is animo conceperit, si quae dictio, &c. If aught be omitted, or added, which he likes, or dislikes, thou art mancipium paucae lectionis, an idiot, an ass, nullus es, or plagiarius, a trifler, a trivant, thou art an idle fellow; or else it is a thing of mere industry, a collection without wit or invention, a very toy. [113]Facilia sic putant omnes quae jam facta, nec de salebris cogitant, ubi via strata; so men are valued, their labours vilified by fellows of no worth themselves, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... more and more confirmed as a trifler and an idler, and he suffered that terrible ennui, which dogs the shadow of wasted time. Associating habitually with men who were his inferiors in ability, and whose tastes were lower than his own, the vacuity of mind and lassitude of body, which at times ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Drawing-room in her bedroom: "she looked at us round with her fan in her mouth, and once a minute said about three words to some that were nearest her." We see Harley, afterwards the Earl of Oxford, "a pure trifler," who was always putting off important business; Bolingbroke, "a thorough rake"; the prudent Lord Dartmouth, the other Secretary of State, from whom Swift could never "work out a dinner." There is Marlborough, "covetous as Hell, and ambitious ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... a sad trifler, after all," she would say to Madam Wetherill. "Shall I ever be like my dear mother or have any of the sober Henry ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... careerist is rather obvious, easily recognizable, with diaphanous motives and conduct. But there is another and rarer bird, the careerist of talent, even the careerist of genius, whom it is not so easy to see through. Clever and brainy, he may be a good all around trifler, or his specific gift for some line of achievement may make him more effective. There is nothing he may not call himself: conservative, liberal, progressive, or radical. Often he is an agnostic about social and political affairs ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... fills the breast, and our love for them was pure. The men and women we sought, were they not worthy of honor? The artist comes to bid us trust the Ideal Tendency, and not dishonor him who moves therein. He is no trifler, then, to be thrust aside by the doctors with their sciences, or the economists with production and use. He offers manhood to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... catastrophe of a man, so incapable of all the posts he had occupied, who displayed chimeras and audacity in the place of prudence and sagacity, who everywhere appeared a trifler and a comedian, and whose universal and profound ignorance (except of the meanest arts of the courtier) made plainly visible the thin covering of probity and of virtue with which he tried to hide his ingratitude, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... for the peace of Utrecht. We are indeed no admirers of the statesmen who concluded that peace. Harley, we believe, was a solemn trifler, St. John a brilliant knave. The great body of their followers consisted of the country clergy and the country gentry; two classes of men who were then inferior in intelligence to decent shopkeepers or farmers of our time. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for why, thought I, should there be a personal quarrel between us? We talked on many things for an hour or more, and his I found the keenest mind that ever I have met. There was in him a dispassionateness, a breadth, which seemed most strange in a trifler of the Court, in an exquisite—for such he was. I sometimes think that his elegance and flippancy were deliberate, lest he should be taking himself or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me, held ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of a duty. A reavowal of the fundamental belief that our system was worthy of the support, and our Government of the confidence, of all loyal men. And there was danger in the middle distance of our view into the future, —danger of attack, or dangerous duty of advance, just enough to keep any trifler from feeling that his pledge ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... be said, however, that Condorcet showed himself no pedantic nor fastidious trifler with the tremendous movement which he had contributed to set afoot. The same practical spirit which drove him into the strife, guided him in the midst of it. He never wrung his hands, nor wept, nor bewailed the unreason of the multitudes to whom in vain he preached reason. Unlike the typical man ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... esteems trifles for their own sake is a trifler, but one who values them, rather, for the deductions that may be drawn from ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... manner he exercised an ever-increasing influence upon the popular understanding, his sympathetic nature endeared him more and more to the popular heart. In vain did journals and speakers of the opposition represent him as a lightminded trifler, who amused himself with frivolous story-telling and coarse jokes, while the blood of the people was flowing in streams. The people knew that the man at the head of affairs, on whose haggard face the twinkle of humor so frequently changed into an expression of profoundest sadness, was more than ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... Away, you trifler. Love! I know thee not, I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world To play with mammets, and to tilt with lips; We must have bloody noses ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... America. The course he took in the early stage of that conflict, and his disappearance from the theatre of politics at the time when it was ripening into the magnitude of its nature, have marked Junius in my mind as a man of small things—a splendid trifler, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... priggishness of demeanour. For instance, how could I have been so prescient to have coupled Emerson and Schopenhauer together so persistently? Here, smudged and corrected to distraction, is a passionate defence of the former, occasioned by some academical trifler dubbing him a mere echo of Carlyle and Coleridge. I almost lived on Emerson in those days, to such good purpose, indeed, that I know him by heart. And, if I mistake not, he will come to his own again in the near future, when there will be no talk ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond himself, expressed by him; nor to believe me guilty of the like folly with Timaeus, who, hoping in his history to surpass Thucydides in art, and to make Philistus appear a trifler and a novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles, sea-fights, and public speeches, in recording which they have been most successful, without meriting so much as to be compared ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... From strong physical health, and that vigor of heart Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance, From a generous vanity native to France, With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry, Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles: But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles, No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind. Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen Floating faint ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... God dwelt in her richly, in all wisdom, so that she was able to teach and admonish others with singular propriety and power. Her accurate and extensive acquaintance with the scriptures gave a richness and impressiveness to her conversation, which awed the trifler, edified the thoughtful, and shed light and comfort upon the minds of anxious inquirers. Many of her own sex resorted to her for counsel as to an oracle; and as she generally joined in prayer with her inquiring ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... this water-fly] A water-fly, skips up and down upon the surface of the water, without any apparent purpose or reason, and is thence the proper emblem of a busy trifler. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... (insensibility) 823; imprudence, recklessness &c 863; slovenliness &c (disorder) 59, (dirt) 653; improvidence &c 674; noncompletion &c 730; inexactness &c (error) 495. paralipsis, paralepsis, paraleipsis (in rhetoric). trifler, waiter on Providence; Micawber. V. be negligent &c adj.; take no care of &c (take care of) &c 459; neglect; let slip, let go; lay aside, set aside, cst aside, put aside; keep out of sight, put out of sight; lose sight of. overlook, disregard; pass over, pas by; let pass; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... gone. Half a century ago or more an Englishman by the name of M. F. Tupper published a book called "Proverbial Philosophy" which had a brief season of popularity, and then went out like a rush-light, or a blaze of tissue paper. Novels like Miss Sprague's "Earnest Trifler," Du Maurier's "Trilby," and Wallace's "Ben Hur" have had their little day, and been forgotten. In the art world the Cubists' crazy work drew the attention of the public long enough for it to be seen how spurious and absurd it was. Brownell's war poems turned out to be ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... opinion, not mine, nor yours, but that of all these ages. I will stand by the sentence of the word of God: the Spirit breatheth where it will (John iii. 8). There he is at it again; what circumvolutions, what wheels he is making! This trifler, this arch-contriver of words and sophisms, I know not to whom he can be formidable: tiresome he possibly will be. His tiresomeness will find its corrective in your sagacity: all that was formidable about him facts ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... chief or head of a people." Edward II would satisfy neither of these definitions. He lacked all disposition to do anything himself; he equally lacked power to incite others to do. By nature he was a jester, trifler, and waster of time. ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... experienced a warm suffusion in the vicinity of his throat. In the next breath he felt genuinely guilty. As he looked deep into the anxious, appealing gray eyes of Miss Vost, he cursed himself for being, or having the tendencies to be, a trifler; and in his estimation a trifler was not far removed from the reptile class. Yet somehow, damn it, that trip to Ching-Fu on the Hankow appealed to him now as a most profitable excursion, for Ching-Fu was only a few hundred li ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... time, with the dead and dying all about them, was "more shocking than a game of cards on Sunday." She regarded his attentions, glances, tones, as mere well-bred persiflage, indulged in for his own amusement, and she put him down as a trifler for his pains. That he, as she would phrase it, "was just smitten without any rhyme or reason" seemed preposterous. She had done nothing for him as she had for Scoville. The friendly or the frankly admiring looks of strangers, the hearty gratitude and goodwill of ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... wind of their fists, and so overawed them by this display of resolution that they forthwith swallowed their complaints and joined his ranks with as good a grace as they might. I myself, in these first days, saw a little incident which impressed me that the man was no trifler. I was in his quarters one day, when an officer came in and made a report to him about some matter of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... disputations. Anabaptists were on one side, and Quakers on the other; and hereby five or six persons have been confused. But the rest cleave so much the closer together. Nor does it appear that there is now one trifler, much less a disorderly walker, among them." Wednesday, 17th (August, 1763).—"Hence we rode to Coleford. The wind being high, I consented to preach in their new room; but large as it was, it would not ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... only herself to blame," he said, as he struggled with his feelings. "I forewarned her; I gave her to understand clearly what she had to expect. My word is passed. I have said it; and that ends the matter. I am no childish trifler. What I say, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... thought, my boy. In May I knew you had a heart; but one who heard you in the woods would have set you down just for a kindly, practical man of the world. Last night, and most of the time to-day, you were the trifler, the incorrigible jester. Why do you belie yourself so and hide your inmost self from all ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flitted across the field of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection opens up all ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the broad earth," judge that desirable, good, and profitable, which being present we use, and absent we want and desire. But that which no man thinks worth his concern, either for his profit or delight, is indifferent. For we by no other means distinguish a laborious man from a trifler, who is for the most part also employed in action, but that the one busies himself in useless matters and indifferently, and the other in things commodious and profitable. But these men act quite contrary; for with them, a wise and prudent ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... frailty. Him, as well as the great Englishman and a Frenchman, his mind called Father, and his conscience replied to that progenitor's questioning of him, but said 'You know the love of woman: He loved indeed, but he was not an amatory trifler. He too was a worker, a champion worker. He doated on the prospect of plunging into his work; the vision of jolly giant labours told of peace obtained, and there could be no peace without ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in tears failed to arrest the dark apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett, Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous trifler. Mrs. Bassett, Dan was aware, valued her social position highly. As the daughter of Blackford Singleton she considered herself unassailably a member of the upper crust of the Hoosier aristocracy. And Dan suspected that Bassett also harbored ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... of analysis and classification as are the flora and fauna of Patagonia or New Zealand. But while the Patagonian naturalist secures recognition and is decorated, every jaunty man of letters feels at liberty to scoff at the liturgiologist as a laborious trifler. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... education of the mind and heart, they are ripe for the customs and fashions of life in harmony therewith; and totally averse to the purer, manlier and nobler duties and pleasures of a better state of society. To dress and exhibit themselves; to crowd the saloon of every foreign trifler, who, under the abused name of art, and for the sake of gold, seeks to minister to us those meretricious excitements which associate themselves with declining states and artificial forms of life; to waste the most precious hours of night, set apart by the God of nature for repose, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the individual.—In society each individual raises or lowers the level of democracy according to what he is and does. The idler fails to make any contributions to the well-being of society and thus lowers the average of citizenship. The trifler and dawdler lower the level of democracy by reason of their inefficiency. They may exercise their right to vote but fail to exercise their right to act the part of efficient citizens. If all citizens emulated their example, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... was not easy to suspect him of acting, as it was next to impossible to mistake him for a trifler. His tall figure, his carriage, the fine pose of his head, his resonant manly voice, all forbade it, no less than did the wild scenery to which he drew our attention with an easy proprietary wave ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented, what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... interest to please. To follow the plans suggested by these thoughts, I saw that I must avoid what is called bad company, that I must give up my old habits and pretensions, which would be sure to make me enemies, who would have no scruple in representing me as a trifler, and not fit to be trusted with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... such boobies! You are as great a fool as Antoine de Navarre! Out of my sight! Leave me; I want a better negotiator than you! You are an ass, a popinjay, a poet! Go and make your elegies and your acrostics, you trifler! Hence!" ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... broad and expansive brow is always exposed, his person is ever carefully dressed, to exhibit his face and form aright and with success. He is a gallant and fashionable man. He seems often to neglect great matters for small ones, and I have often thought him a trifler; yet he is universally, by the common people, esteemed grave and great. He is an aristocrat in his feelings, though the people who know him think him all condescension. He is a prince among those who are equals, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... stuck a chord that changed the whole manner of the other. His air, which had borne the character of a genteel trifler, became more grave and dignified; and notwithstanding there was the evidence of a reckless disposition in his features, dress and carriage, his tall and not ungraceful form, as he walked slowly onward, by ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... civilization. Indeed the good sense which I have met with among the poor women who have had few advantages of education, and yet have acted heroically, strongly confirmed me in the opinion, that trifling employments have rendered women a trifler. Men, taking her ('I take her body,' says Ranger.) body, the mind is left to rust; so that while physical love enervates man, as being his favourite recreation, he will endeavour to enslave woman: and who can tell how many generations may be necessary ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Racine!" said Lissac. "In those days, I dreamed of being Musset, I a gourmand, and what have I become? A spectator, a trifler, a Parisian, a rolling stone.—Nothing. And you who dreamed of being a second Barnave, Vergniaud or Barbaroux, your dream ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Plymley Letters, advocating the claims of Catholic emancipation, and extolling Fox and Grenville at the expense of Perceval and Canning. Very edifying is it to find Sydney Smith objecting to this latter that he is a "diner out," a "maker of jokes and parodies," a trifler on important subjects—in fact each and all of the things which the Rev. Sydney Smith himself was, in a perfection only equalled by the object of his righteous wrath. But ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... guilt, and that what we see before us is a great spirit carried away by passion—that something beyond reason, beyond all human power to restrain, which sometimes binds an angelic woman to a villain, and sometimes a man of the highest power and wisdom to a lovely trifler or a fool. It seems to me as at once more consistent with the facts and with human nature to realise the position of the unhappy Queen as transported by that overwhelming sentiment, and wrought on the other side to an impatience almost maddening, by the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of Hinduism at the beginning of this twentieth century. Man, under the growing influence of western thought, civilization, and faith, has largely lost his moorings and is growing increasingly insincere and a trifler with religious beliefs and institutions. The woman, on the other hand, is a conservative of the conservatives. In her superstition she is deeply sincere; her faith has no questionings, and her piety shapes ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... noble looking face. No matter whether he were poor or rich; all the rags in the world, all the finery in the world, could not have made him look like a snob or a swell. He was a thoughtful man, too; no one with such a forehead could have been a trifler: a kindly man, too, and honest—one that may have played merrily enough with his grandchildren, and put his hand in his purse for many a widow and orphan. Look what a bright, clear, straightforward, gentle look he has, almost a smile; ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... and gracious motion, more than that of favor. That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express; no, nor the first sight of the life. There is no excellent beauty, that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether Apelles, or Albert Durer, were the more trifler; whereof the one, would make a personage by geometrical proportions; the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody, but the painter that made them. Not but I think a painter may make a better ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... once more of Miss Willard, no one enjoyed a really laughable thing more than she did, but I never felt like being a foolish trifler in her presence. Her outlook was so far above mine that I always felt not rebuked, but ashamed of my ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... Now the trifler again resumes her pen. I am in some pain, Miss, for to-morrow, because of the rules we observe of late in our family on Sundays, and of going through a crowd to church; which will afford new scenes to our noble visitors, either for censure or otherwise: but I will sooner be censured for doing what ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... rugged forehead was fringed with bushy eyebrows, which gave him a somewhat fierce appearance. His nose was large, his mouth was large, and his chin, too, was large, square, and determined. He was no ordinary man. There was the stamp of unusual power upon him. He was no trifler, and yet beneath his look of determination and energy something was lacking. He seemed as though his determination needed to be roused, his energy to be stimulated. Yet I could see nothing in his appearance which justified ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... him and find out what he means, what influences have been at work, what is underneath it all. Warn him of the danger of even appearing doubtful, or for a moment lukewarm. The one person whom the public will not have in politics is the trifler. Think how many there have been, brilliant men, too, who have lost their places through a single false step, a single year, a month of dilettantism. Remind him of them. The man who moves in a great cause may move slowly, if you will, but he must move all the time. Remind him, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no sympathy, we can and do feel a deep respect. But for your ambidextrous apologist or theologian, the fellow who can make words bear double meanings, and even infallible oracles tell contradictory stories, we have nothing but contempt, because he is a trifler with truth. ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... to have operated, consciously or unconsciously, in shaping the views on this subject expressed by such writers. Probably acting under similar sentiments Ludovicus Cappellus, †1658 (quoted by Ball, 325a), calls the author "a trifler" (nugator), and styles his ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... great deal of experience. She is like a mother to the younger ones. She has not been spending her time in fooling around idly and dancing and being out on the river, like so many girls. Rose is not worth half of Marie, and I do not see how I shall ever get the trifler trained to take Marie's place. But there need ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... heart that he was as little wretched as a man can be who is a living monument of the too common folly of being captivated by a sudden glare of person and parts; and of the fatal error of those men who seek in marriage for an amusing trifler rather than a rational and amiable companion, and too late find that the vivacity which pleases in the mistress is often a fatal vice in a wife. He lives chiefly in the country, has generally a few friends in the house with him, and takes a great deal of pains in ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... fool that I am! to fix all my happiness on such a trifler! 'Sdeath! to make herself the pipe and ballad-monger of a circle! to soothe her light heart with catches and glees!—What can ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the motive power has no such consideration as the military functions in the navies of the Latin nations. The studious and systematic side of the French character also inclined the French officer, when not a trifler, to consider and develop tactical questions in a logical manner; to prepare himself to handle fleets, not merely as a seaman but as a military man. The result showed, in the American Revolutionary War, that despite a mournful history of governmental neglect, men who were first of all ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... unique, or peculiarly his own; always brief; never loud, vehement, or impassioned, but conciliating, persuasive, and impressive; and when his subject called for gravity or seriousness, his manner was stern and peremptory. He was too dignified ever to be a trifler; and his sarcasm, sometimes indulged in, rarely created a laugh, but powerfully told upon those who had provoked it. His enunciation was slow, distinct, and emphatic; perhaps too emphatic; and this was pronounced, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to the lively question of the Lady Frances in her usual straightforward and unpresuming manner: a manner that afforded considerable amusement to the merry trifler, by whom the little Puritan was commonly spoken of, while absent, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... other branches of my education going on at this time outside the pale of the school, in which, though I succeeded in amusing myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a deep interest ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... imperial trifler had exhausted his store of grain, and satisfied the cravings of his voracious favourites, he was relieved of his silver vase by two attendants. The flock of poultry was then ushered out at one door, while the flock of geniuses was ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... second reproach. ] Secondly, the trifler shamefully reporteth, that adulteries and whoredomes are not onely publique, and common vices amongst Islanders: but that they are not accounted by ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Pope shall fret, It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave, Loudly to damn, and loudly save, And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven! One hour, one little hour, is given, If thou could'st but repent. But no! To ruin thou shalt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Trifler, idler, Cheat, drunkard, whoremaster, and prodigal. —Think this, and think that you ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... Their names, their numbers; how they rise and fall: Like baneful herbs the gazer's eye they seize, Rush to the head, and poison where they please: Like idle flies, a busy, buzzing train, They drop their maggots in the trifler's brain: That genia soil receives the fruitful store, And there they grow, and breed a thousand more. Now be their arts display'd, how first they choose A cause and party, as the bard his Muse; Inspired by these, with clamorous zeal they cry, And through the town their dreams and ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... already said of Horace Walpole's letters, but practically nothing of his other works except his novel and his play, something more may be added here to show that he was not merely a "trifler." His private press at "Strawberry" was mainly a means of amusement to him, like a billiard-room or a tennis-court. But it provided some useful books—such as editions of Anthony Hamilton's Memoirs of Grammont, of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Life and of part of Gray's Poems. He had ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... Scott. The book was not an historical romance, and the manners, sentiments, language, all were modern. Walpole knew little about the Middle Ages and was not in touch with their spirit. At bottom he was a trifler, a fribble; and his incurable superficiality, dilettantism, and want of seriousness, made all his real cleverness of no avail when applied to such a subject as "The Castle ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... instant abandoned his ambitions and his plans—and at night he drifted into the land where were warmth and light and lawlessness. He had his duty there, such as it might be, for he was both a gambler and a protector, and, young as he was, callow as he was, within a year he had become one in demand, no trifler at the table, and an object of rivalry among those whose regard means fee of body and of soul. He, himself, at that time, did not appreciate the remarkable nature of his changing. So rapidly he aged in knowledge of all undercurrents that he passed ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... to me, John?" she answered, with a depth of grief which made me seem a trifler. "It can never matter now, when there ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... wrong; whose virtues are obscured by negligence, and whose understanding is dissipated by levity. In his idle hours he is rather loose than wicked; and when the occasion forces out his latent qualities, he is great without effort, and brave without tumult. The trifler is roused into a hero, and the hero again reposes in the trifler. This character is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... an Almanach de Gotha, and spoke of a distinguished poet in a contemptuous tone, said he was going to the "conferences of Saint-Francis," complained of his larynx, swallowed from time to time a pellet of gummatum, and in the meantime kept talking about music, and played the part of the elegant trifler. Mademoiselle Cecile, M. Dambreuse's niece, who happened to be embroidering a pair of ruffles, gazed at him with her pale blue eyes; and Miss John, the governess, who had a flat nose, laid aside her tapestry on his account. Both of them ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... marriage—I thought it among the list of possible things, no more—to see if that crystal pool, called Violetta d'Isorella, could be discoloured by stirring. Did you watch her face? I don't know what she wanted with Carlo, for she's cold as poison—a female trifler; one of those women whom I, and I have a chaste body, despise as worse than wantons; but she certainly did not want him to be married. It seems like a victory—though we're beaten. You have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'Volatile trifler!' said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. 'She is well, she is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our currant ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the fourth place, a willingness to be saved. "What must I do to be saved?" This man is not asking this question to gather material for a future argument. He is no speculator. He is no trifler. He is not even asking it because he is intellectually curious. He is not simply asking that he may know the conditions of salvation. He is asking with the earnest purpose in his heart to meet ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... that the majesty of the law, the sacredness of the lives of Roman noblemen, and the security of their property be publicly vindicated: I am here to undo all that Lollius Corbulo supinely allowed to be done. You shall perceive that I am wholly unlike any such trifler. Of one feature only of his procedure do I approve. I highly acclaim his notions as to the right kind of torture. Slaves like you, however pampered, are property, like horses or cattle. Their value lies in their usefulness. Any slave, after torture, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... nearest the door, and Batty Langton was the one moderately sober man of the company. He had not heard, in time to interfere, the proposal to send for Ruth: it had started somewhere at the Collector's end of the table. But trifler though he was, he thought it cruel to the girl—a damnable shame—and pulled himself together to prevent what mischief he might. At the same time he felt curious to see her, curious to learn if these many months of seclusion had fulfilled ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... for your great geniuses. And it is ten to one but what the father is plagued into taking the boy home and giving him a private tutor, who fixes him into a prig forever. A coxcomb in dress," said the marquis, smiling, "is a trifler it would ill become me to condemn, and I own that I would rather see a youth a fop than a sloven; but a coxcomb in ideas—why, the younger he is, the more unnatural and disagreeable. Now, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the artist can bring whatever of that vision has touched him into his work we should ask no more, and must not expect him to be more righteously minded than his Creator, or to add a finishing tag of moral to justify it all, to show that Deity is solemnly minded and no mere idle trifler with ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... to what punishment he moves nor can even guess what fitting one is decreed. But the time is surely appointed and the place. Poor trifler with Destiny, who ever had so ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... hesitated, and looked down on him, frowning and pulling at his moustache. Then, more quickly than one would have expected from so careless a trifler, his mind ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... you told me so, as I saw you loved me, otherwise I could not obey your Commands in letting you know my Thoughts so sincerely as I do at present. I know the Creature for whom I resign so much of my Character is all that you said of her; but then the Trifler has something in her so undesigning and harmless, that her Guilt in one kind disappears by the Comparison of her Innocence in another. Will you, Virtuous Men, allow no alteration of Offences? Must Dear [Chloe [2]] be called by the hard Name ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifler I had been when I clerked in ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... am not a scholar; a very noble title that, and not to be given to a lazy trifler on the surface of ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is that Mackenzie is a humorous writer, and that the wiseacres who want the novel to be 'serious' are barking up the wrong tree. At any rate, there the book is, and it is admitted to be a good book by all who have been condemning Mackenzie as a trifler; and Mackenzie is going on with his sequel to it in the pleasant land of Italy. I did not see him in Italy, but in Herm, one of the minor Channel Islands. It took me a night to reach the place—a night of fog and fog-signals—a night of mystery, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... are very good. But I hope my wine is better than my scholarship. This is our man of learning," he slapped Harry on the shoulder. "And Harry counts me a mere trifler, a literary exquisite, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... betrayed, after implying such esteem in the earlier phase of their intercourse, made Olive's cheeks occasionally flush. She prayed heaven that she might never become so personal, so narrow. She was frivolous, worldly, an amateur, a trifler, a frequenter of Beacon Street; her taking up Verena Tarrant was only a kind of elderly, ridiculous doll-dressing: this was the light in which Miss Chancellor had reason to believe that it now suited Mrs. Farrinder to regard her! It was fortunate, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... Mr. Quirk; he would not resume argument with such a trifler; nor, indeed, was there any opportunity; for Lord Rockminster now suggested they should go into the drawing-room—and Ichabod had to leave that ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... heart, When one among the prime of these rose up,— One, of whose name from childhood we had heard 495 Familiarly, a household term, like those, The Bedfords, Glosters, Salsburys, of old Whom the fifth Harry talks of. [Y] Silence! hush! This is no trifler, no short-flighted wit, No stammerer of a minute, painfully 500 Delivered. No! the Orator hath yoked The Hours, like young Aurora, to his car: Thrice welcome Presence! how can patience e'er Grow weary of attending ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Queen, and the glass which reflected the smiles and frowns of royalty. He afterwards saw her the idol of the party which opposed government, sung by Waller, flattered by Holland, presiding with all the frivolity and pride of a pretty trifler at the dark divan, while Pym and St. John disclosed their hopes of extending their aggressions to seizing the remaining prerogatives of the alarmed and conceding King. Weak, vain, passionate, and unprincipled, with no determined object but her own aggrandizement—no ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... with such unctuous satisfaction that even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer, the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler. ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... haggard face from my shoulder, and heard my pitying, soothing voice, it was not the grief of a trifler at the loss of fondled toys that spoke in the fallen lines of her lip, in the ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... deeper than the green cloth of the gaming table. Now, I tell you, my time has come—my day at last is here. I tell you that I shall prove to you everything which I said to you long ago, back there in old England. I shall prove to you that I have not been altogether an idler and a trifler. I shall bring to you, as I promised you long ago, all the wealth, all ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... already become what Harry uneasily felt she might become, was it not his duty to go to the rescue of his friend and try to save him from any rash act on account of a woman that might prove to be entirely unworthy of him; for trifler and visionary as he was, Harry deserved ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... distinguished in many fields. At court, though no trifler or flatterer, he was a favourite counsellor in three successive reigns, but he never meddled much in civil or temporal affairs. His learning made him the equal and the friend of Grotius, and of the foremost contemporary scholars. His preaching was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... re-appearance of her natty uniform and sweet smile. Yes, I was desperately in love with Josephine, for besides being fair to look upon, she could do something to add to my comfort. I forgot all about Eleanor and ideals; not because I was a trifler with the hearts of women, but simply because in this matter, as in everything, I did not know my own mind. I was very reluctant to leave the hospital and remained as long as I could. Before going, however, I made love overtures toward Josephine. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... brought him cruel sufferings, and seemed likely to be mortal. It was then for the first time that he read the Greek and Latin poets. These studies came too late to make him what he so much desired to be, a trifler in Greek and Latin verse, like so many others of his time now forgotten; instead, they made him a lover of his own homely native tongue, that poor starveling stock of the French [165] language. It was through this fortunate short-coming in his ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... in great moral questions here is one that must compel reverence from all but the poor trifler with his "hollow smile ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... you trifler: Loue, I loue thee not, I care not for thee Kate: this is no world To play with Mammets, and to tilt with lips. We must haue bloodie Noses, and crack'd Crownes, And passe them currant too. Gods me, my horse. What say'st thou Kate? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sufficient reason, that there is in the commentary too much of unseasonable levity and affected gaiety; that too many appeals are made to the ladies, and the ease which is so carefully preserved is, sometimes, the ease of a trifler. Every art has its terms, and every kind of instruction its proper style; the gravity of common criticks may be tedious, but is less despicable ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... trifler, this 435 To lay before the Gods!'—'Nay, Father, nay, When you have understood the business, Say not that I alone am fond of prey. I found this little boy in a recess Under Cyllene's mountains far away— 440 A manifest and most apparent thief, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... nearly everything that is unsatisfactory in your life. If you had ever been sincerely devoted to a woman, be assured your powers would have developed in a way of which you have no conception. It's no answer to tell me that I am still a mere trifler, never likely to do anything of account; I haven't it in me to be anything better, and I might easily have become much worse. But you might have made yourself a great position—I mean, you might ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... their Food or Conversation with the utmost Impatience. One of these Promisers sometimes shall make his Excuses for not coming at all, so late that half the Company have only to lament, that they have neglected Matters of Moment to meet him whom they find a Trifler. They immediately repent of the Value they had for him; and such Treatment repeated, makes Company never depend upon his Promise any more; so that he often comes at the Middle of a Meal, where he is secretly slighted ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... know Christ as Truth demands truth in heart and life. The insincere man; the trifler; the flippant jester who takes nothing seriously; the superficial man who uses the deepest expressions, as counters for society talk; the inconsistent man who is daily doing violence to his convictions, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... looking up at her and tingling with daring thoughts. He was a littleish man, you must remember, but neither mean-looking nor unhandsome in those days, sunburnt by his holiday and now warmly flushed. He had an inspiration to simple speech that no practised trifler with love could have bettered. "There is love at first sight," he ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... extinction of French independence seemed to be inevitable. The chivalry of France had been wasted in terrible wars, and the spirits of her soldiers were daunted by repeated disaster. The English king had been proclaimed in Paris, and the "native prince was a dissolute trifler, stained with the assassination of the most powerful noble of the land."[77] Anarchy and brigandage everywhere prevailed, and the condition of the peasantry was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... as the story in Jack Hinton of the way Ulick Bourke acquitted himself of his debt to Father Tom. And behind all Lever's conventional types there is a real fund of observation and knowledge which is absolutely wanting in Lover, who simply lacked the brains to be anything more than a trifler. ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... knows these things, which a trifler is so quick to see. He did not know, perhaps; or perhaps he was not certain enough to turn his horse and ride back to repair his omission. Presently he rode on slowly, his head bent, the bridle-reins ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Holmes were rather ignorant). He is not over "the threshold of Eld" (as were Judge Webb and Lord Penzance when they took up Shakespearean criticism). His knowledge of Elizabethan literature is vastly superior to mine, for I speak merely, in Matthew Arnold's words, as "a belletristic trifler." ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang |
