"Trite" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Chicago with us and find them some sort of a job, and thus rid ourselves of their presence," answered Slippery, intending to shed himself of their useless company, and ever wary of trouble he wisely added, "Kansas Shorty, you well know the trite saying: 'Two is company; three is a crowd; four is the road to disaster,' so let us give the lads a square deal and take them with us to Chicago and 'drop' them there after finding employment for them." But hardly had he finished this well-meant suggestion, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... portraits; and the proof of that is that no one has ever been able to identify, absolutely, any single character in these books. Indeed, it would be impossible for me to restrict myself to actual portraiture. It is trite to say that photography is not art, and photography has no charm for the artist, or the humanitarian indeed, in the portrayal of life. At its best it is only an exhibition of outer formal characteristics, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that a man actually welcomes a chat with him—only to find out too late that his human foibles have been mercilessly flayed. Pity the poor chap in H. C. Bunner's story, The Interfering Spook, for instance, who was visited nightly by a specter that repeated to him all the silly and trite things he had said during the day, a ghost, moreover, that towered and swelled at every hackneyed phrase, till finally he filled the room and burst after the young man proposed to his admired one, and made subsequent ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... The Iliad does not cease to be poetry in a literal translation; and Addison's Campaign has been very properly denominated a Gazette in rhyme. Common prose differs from poetry, as treating for the most part either of such trite, familiar, and irksome matters of fact, as convey no extraordinary impulse to the imagination, or else of such difficult and laborious processes of the understanding, as do not admit of the wayward or violent movements either of the imagination or ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... preached the gospel more frequently to the heathen; and once we realise that we have to die, and very soon, and that the Catholic Church is the only true church, our ideas about race and nationality fade from us. They come to seem very trite and foolish. We are here, not to make life successful and triumphant, but to gain heaven. That is the truth, and it is to the honour of the Irish people that they have been selected by God to preach the truth, even though they lose their nationality ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... had been! He had started out in the morning, vaguely hoping to divert his mind with some of those trite little happenings that for lack of a better term we call adventures in this humdrum world. And then, with the miraculous, unbelievable luck of youth, he had stumbled plump into the middle of the most wondrous adventure it was possible to conceive. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... reading, as usual, and told him what the old nurse had engaged to do. He then began to debate about how he should write his letter, to cull sentences and to weigh phrases; whether "light of my eyes" was not too trite, and "blood of my liver" rather too forcible. At this the minister's son smiled, and bade the prince not trouble his head with composition. He then drew his inkstand from his waist shawl, nibbed a reed pen, and choosing a piece of pink ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... this, and the remark seemed rather trite for him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my private ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude of Parrington, without being seriously suspicious in itself, was admirably calculated to put a previously ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... sent him bleeding to bed, or shamelessly despoiled him of his merchandise, or bullied and blustered him out of his fair price, knowing he dared not resent. It meant being chaffed and gibed at in language of which he only understood that it was cruel, though certain trite facetiae grew intelligible to him by repetition. Thus once, when he had been interrogated as to the locality of Moses when the light went out, he replied in Yiddish that the light could not go out, for "it stands in the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Less easily guarded against is the delivery of trite expressions. These are phrases and clauses which at first were so eloquent that once heard they stuck in people's minds, who then in an endeavor themselves to be emphatic inserted continually into their speeches these overworked, done-to-death ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only 'acceptance in the beloved,' the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... (terrible). Any thing to do with money or the want of it appeals to the Teutonic mind, although the Germans sneer at us for being a nation of shopkeepers. There are two words we hope never to hear again, "Kultur" and "Unser." "Unser Deutschland," "Unser Kaiser," "Unser Kultur." How weary and trite are these! What an extraordinary mixture the Germans are, brave, conceited, sentimental, prosaic, patriotic, and yet no people so soon lose their national characteristics, and become citizens of another country as Germans. Many of their intellectual poses are absolutely morbid. They adore ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... impression. Her tall, commanding figure, expressive eyes, and features of perfect regularity, must have given her every natural requisite for the higher walks of her profession. As I watched her moving with majestic grace across the stage, irrepressible though trite reflections upon her early career passed through my mind. What audiences she has played before, in the days of the first empire! How many soldiers and statesmen, now numbered with the not-to-be-forgotten dead, have applauded her delivery of the same ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... following story, we have described in our first series of Traditions, where Sir Tarquin, a carnivorous giant, is slain by Sir Lancelot of the Lake. These circumstances, and more of the like purport on this subject, we therefore omit, as being too trite and familiar to bear repetition. We do not suppose the reader to be quite so familiar with the names and fortunes of Captain Harrington and Sir Ralph Molyneux, though they had the good fortune to be born eleven hundred years later, and to have seen the world, in consequence, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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 ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... and men—that man! Is there any use for me to stammer out trite phrases of self-contempt? The fact remains that I am unfit to advise, criticise, or condemn anybody for anything; and it's high ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... different sizes, not unlike those of a limner, he then covers them with a jetty varnish, rivaling even japan in lustre. This operation he performs with a gravity and consequence that can scarcely fail to excite laughter. Yet, according to the trite proverb, it is not the customer who ought to indulge in mirth, but the artist. Although his price is much dearer than that demanded by the other professors of this art, his cabinet is seldom empty from morning to night; and, by a simple calculation, his pencil is found to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... War of the Rebellion against the United Status will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... fancies with increased production. He is an example of how little the skill and touch, belonging to unceasing work, should be despised in comparison with what is called inspiration. Donizetti arrived at his freshest creations at a time when there seemed but little left for him except the trite and threadbare. There are no melodies so rich and well fancied as those to be found in his later works; and in sense of dramatic form and effective instrumentation (always a faulty point with Donizetti) he displayed great progress at the ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... original matter in it, but the proprietor recognized the desirability of having pieces by various hands, and so made long extracts from Prior, Gay, and Fenton. Although there was a considerable number of epitaphs, riddles, and fables, nearly all the jests were well known and trite. But the subjoined have a certain ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... about thrift of time and thirst for fame and the glory of knowledge, that kindle sacred fire in young hearts. It was his own career, intellectual as well as political, that gave to his discourse momentum. It was his own example that to youthful hearers gave new depth to a trite lesson, when he exclaimed: 'Believe me when I tell you that the thrift of time will repay you in after life with an usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it will make ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... nothing which I more wish that you should know, and which fewer people do know, than the true use and value of time. It is in everybody's mouth; but in few people's practice. Every fool, who slatterns away his whole time in nothings, utters, however, some trite commonplace sentence, of which there are millions, to prove, at once, the value and the fleetness of time. The sun-dials, likewise all over Europe, have some ingenious inscription to that effect; so that nobody squanders away their time, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... course, varies, and with it the opportunity of the biographer. I do not mean in degree, which is trite to remark, but in kind, which is less recognized. There are men the value of whose memory to their race lies in their thought and words, whose career is uneventful. Yet even with them the impression of personality is not as vividly produced by masses of correspondence as it may ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a sordid commercial mess. She preferred New York or Washington, but she had to live here. Thus she patronized nearly all of those with whom she condescended to associate, using an upward tilt of the head, a tired droop of the eyelids, and a fine upward arching of the brows to indicate how trite ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Rome the famed Quinquennium Neronis, when, for five years, peace and plenty smiled. It is a trite saying that men who can not manage their own finances can look after those of a nation, but Seneca was a businessman who proved his ability to manage his own private affairs and also succeeded in managing the exchequer of a kingdom. During his reign, gladiatorial contests were ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... succeeding, is omitted. The reason why Mr. D'Israeli did this is obvious from what follows, which shows he did not agree with Lord George, in censuring the Government for not opening depots, and he undertakes to prove that they should not have done so. He uses, amongst others, the old trite argument, when he says: there is reason to believe that the establishment of Government depots at the end of '46, however cautiously introduced, tended in the localities to arrest the development of that retail ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor. Beneath that obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of the philosophic prophet—of the man who, too much for his own quiet, anticipates reasonings, conclusions, ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... The words were trite, but there was a note of intenseness in his tones that made her look sharply at him—then, away, as a trace of color came faintly ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... practice of late with a certain description of people, who have no visible means of subsistence, to string together a few trite images of rural scenery, interspersed with vulgarisms in dialect, and traits of vulgar manners; to dress up these materials in a Sing-Song jingle; and to offer them for sale as a Poem. According to the most approved ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... know not how to address you, in what tone to write, or even as to the propriety of writing to you at all; but the suspense I now suffer is my excuse. I need not reiterate to you how dearly I love you; you know this, dear one, as fully as any assertion of my own could possibly express it. It is trite that my love for you has partaken in no small degree of a character of presumption, daring, as an humble lieutenant of infantry, to lift my eyes to one as peerless and beautiful as yourself, and of a class of society so far ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... Behold the child whose birth was as a fate! Far from the land in which his life began; Walled from the healthful air of hardy man; Reared by cold hearts, and watched by jealous eyes, His guardians jailers, and his comrades spies. Each trite convention courtly fears inspire To stint experience and to dwarf desire; Narrows the action to a puppet stage, And trains the eaglet to the starling's cage. On the dejected brow and smileless cheek, What weary thought the languid lines bespeak; Till drop by drop, from jaded day ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and discreditable: and it was this very feeling, and the inability to defend that which he knew to be wrong and foolish, which made him so certain that he would not be able successfully to persist in his claim to Miss Wyndham's hand in opposition to the trite and well-weighed objections, which he knew her guardian would put forward. He consoled himself, however, with thinking that, at any rate, they could not prevent his seeing her; and he was quite sanguine as to her forgiveness, if he but got a fair opportunity of asking it. ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... handed in my paper with only the title and my name inscribed upon it. No, I could not make up my mind to elaborate the subjects given to us by the "Great Ape"; a sort of instinctive good taste kept me from writing trite commonplaces, and as for putting down things of my own imagining, the knowledge that they would be read and picked to pieces by the old bogey made it impossible for me to ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... service by adding his wisdom and patriotism to the Cabinet. The sort of argument which Mr. Bonteen used to prove that a man who has gained credit as a legislator should in process of time become a member of the executive, is trite and common, and was not used by Mr. Bonteen with any special force. Mr. Bonteen was glib of tongue and possessed that familiarity with the place which poor Phineas had lacked so sorely. There was one moment, however, which was terrible to Phineas. As soon as Mr. Bonteen ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... Trite usages in tamest style Had tended to their plighting. "It's just worth while, Perhaps," they had said. "And saves ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... place. And in our own universities and schools at the present moment, the like antithesis holds. We are guilty of something like a platitude when we say that throughout his after-career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purposes. The remark is trite that in his shop, or his office, in managing his estate or his family, in playing his part as director of a bank or a railway, he is very little aided by this knowledge he took so many years to acquire—so little, that generally the greater part of it drops out of his memory; and if he ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... to depict a modern battlefield, knowing that Shakespeare himself must have waxed trite upon such a theme, the hell-pit of Flanders and the agony of France were draped behind his drama like a curtain. No man had come so near to the truth in naked words. His silence was the silence of genius. The tears of the world ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... possessed. He unties the ribbon. No, the writing is her own, corrected, altered, underlined. He opens a second, a third. Then with a smile he sits down to read. What can they be like, these poems, these stories? He laughs, smoothing the crumpled paper, foreseeing the trite commonness, the shallow sentiment. The poor child! So she likewise would have been a litterateure. Even she had her ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... a trite Observation, but not unserviceable in Life, that a Man had as good be out of the World, as out of the Fashion. This lays me under an Obligation and Necessity of looking out for every Thing new, that starts into ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... that are gloomy, as 'The Sorrow of an Old Convict,' Loti; or old style, 'Christian Gellert's Last Christmas,' Auerbach; or trite, 'The Convict's Return,' Harben; or newspapery, 'Rescued by a Child;' or highly fantastic, 'The Egyptian Fire Eater,' Baumbach; or anecdotal, 'A Fishing Trip;' or sentimental, 'Hope,' Bremer; or repellent, ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... these in date of composition, and in popular estimation at least among English readers, comes, 'Le Pere Goriot.' It is certainly trite to call the book a French "Lear," but the expression emphasizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the motif of one of Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... very earnestly wish I could be at the meeting over which you are to preside in honor of the eightieth birthday of Edward Everett Hale. A classical allusion or comparison is always very trite; but I suppose all of us who have read the simpler classical books think of Timoleon in his last days at Syracuse, loved and honored in his old age by the fellow citizens in whose service he had spent the strength of his best years, as one of the noblest and most attractive figures in all history. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... laurel was not all his own; The plant by Socrates was sown; To Aristotle's greater name The Macedonian[10] owed his fame. 100 The Athenian bird, with pride replete, Their talents equalled in conceit; And, copying the Socratic rule, Set up for master of a school. Dogmatic jargon learnt by heart, Trite sentences, hard terms of art, To vulgar ears seemed so profound, They fancied learning in the sound. The school had fame: the crowded place With pupils swarmed of every race. 110 With these the swan's maternal care Had sent ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... forward, and his indefatigable pertinacity kept him at his strange task throughout the whole of his life. He filled volumes, and the contents of those volumes afford probably the most complete illustration in literature of the very trite proverb—Poeta nascitur, non fit. The spectacle of that heavy German Muse, with her feet crammed into pointed slippers, executing, with incredible conscientiousness, now the stately measure of a Versailles minuet, and now the spritely steps of a Parisian ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... deal in the way a thing is put, was my trite reflection afterward. If I had given Evadne my reason for particularly wishing her to visit the hospital, she would have turned it inside out to show me that it was lined with objections; but, now, because I had ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... unaccountable escape from the destruction which had swept from his side many another whose eagerness for the fray had certes not sprung, like his own, from a desire to court destruction, he shuddered. And there arose in his mind the trite old adage: ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... bronze. It was so when he looked over curios at the dealer's: it was the choicest of its kind that he must have; anything of trifling value, or anything commonplace—he ignored. Olivia had also fixed for him a standard. Compared to her, all other women were trite and incomplete. No matter how beautiful they might be, a certain simplicity of manner was lacking, or the coloring was bad, or the curve of the neck ungraceful. All of these perfections, and countless more, made up Olivia's personality, ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pens and commence writing," said I, in as dry and trite a voice as if I had been addressing only ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... ink, Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague And catches the not too pink, Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause Is the cause of community. Iterate, Iterate, iterate, harp on the trite: Our preacher to win is the supple in stiff: Yet always in measure, with bearing polite: The manner of one that would expiate His share in grandmotherly Laws, Which do the dark thing to destroy, Under ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Gall said: "The measure of culpability and the measure of punishment can not be determined by a study of the illegal act, but only by a study of the individual committing it," he expressed an idea which has, in late years, come to be regarded as a trite truism. This called forth as an unavoidable consequence a more lively interest on the part of various social agencies in the personality of the criminal, with the resultant gradually increasing conviction that ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... intellectual and factual content of great poetry has to do with its significance. The actual meaning of the words in Shakespeare's songs, the purest poetry in English, is generally either trivial or trite. They are nursery-rhymes ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... in June,' and receiving the very marked attentions of Captain Dancy, on one side, and of Mr Rice Rice, junior, on the other. He scarcely knew which was most irritating, 'the idioms,' or her affected giggle. Trite but true is the proverb, 'There is no rose without its thorn;' and Howel was pricked severely by the thorns surrounding the rose of his ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... man who came dragging his limbs behind him, supported on either side by a servant. He was quite a young man, with a wonderfully handsome, clean-shaven face. Indeed, so handsome was he, that Venner could think of no more fitting simile for his beauty than the trite old comparison of the Greek god. The man's features were perfectly chiselled, slightly melancholy and romantic, and strongly suggestive of the early portraits of Lord Byron. Yet, all the same, the ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... Episcopal Church is not used, yet responsive chords vibrate to some mystic touch. The church is plain and music faulty. In pulpit utterances there is nothing strikingly trite or profound. The preacher has none of oratorical gifts. Oswald cannot account for his own interest. While those imperfectly sharped and flatted notes are sounding, he wonders if that peculiarly adjusted, harmonious ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... a more flexible style than was possessed by any other dramatist of the time, excepting Sheridan, he was influenced to this extent by contemporary usage, that often when he became serious he also became artificial and stilted. The sentimental part of The Heir at Law is trite in plan and hard in expression. Furthermore that portion of it which, in the character of Dr. Pangloss, satirises the indigent, mercenary, disreputable private tutors who constituted a distinct and pernicious class of social humbugs in Colman's ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Alas! I did not know what trite meant. How could I ever judge Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority? I doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for cinders with her,—she in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... trite—coming after that," Deane said. "But anyway, I'll have to say that I feel ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to see how the world changes its codes of respectability, and how, what is anathema in one generation, becomes trite orthodoxy in the next. The political sins in the work were, that "my brother had attacked the corn-laws with some severity; and I have attempted to level a battery against that sort of servile homage which the poor ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... gloom, as may be surmised, fell upon all. Lees had been no great favorite of late, and it had been the trite remark for a year that he was looking like death; but at this juncture the tidings came ominously enough. One member, at least, of the Southern Colony would never share the winnings of Auburn Risque, and now that they referred ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Grinnell victory! That these loyal rooters had been disappointed as regularly as the annual conflicts arrived, did not seem to dampen the ardor of the next season's support. "Hope springs eternal" was the trite but simple explanation offered by certain zealous followers who steadfastly refused to concede Pomeroy's vaunted superiority. Coach Edward's advent at Grinnell had served to heighten the interest when the small college ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... wine. Some are laughable enough, but the majority are so deplorably stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, that when the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing left to attract the reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old world puns, and the trite stories of Hook 'remains.' Remains! indeed; they had better have remained where ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... for such evils as this country has suffered except general military education. In my opinion, no man is fit for a seat in Congress unless he has had such an education. The first thing he ought to learn is the old and trite military maxim that the only was to carry on war economically is to make it "short, sharp, and decisive." To dole out military appropriations in driblets is to invite disaster and ultimate bankruptcy. So it is in respect to ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... If we must naturalize that portentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation is not a truism. For example: A good name helps a man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject and predicate. But when the thing predicated is involved in the term of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... flies in green pathless forests; or of the great Pacific Ocean, that the natives look upon as the gulf that parts time from eternity, and that is to waft them to the spirits of their fathers? After all this, Mr. Hunter must find Mr. Owen and his parallellograms trite and flat, and will, we suspect, take an opportunity to ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Jacqueline, "for you are only a trite, conventional officer, after all. But how much merrier it would be if you were—were——" and suddenly she leaned over the paper and placed an impetuous finger on the bandit's name. "So," she continued wistfully, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... curiosity it was nearly half-past eight when he arrived at Mr. Tredgold's that evening, and was admitted by his host. The latter, with a somewhat trite remark about the virtues of punctuality, led the way upstairs and threw open the door of ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... the study of structure, textual changes, development of Shakespeare's art, date of publication, etc., will be left out entirely. On the other hand, the needs of a fourth year class would require a considerably different treatment of this same play. It may seem trite to say that the wisest plan is that which keeps the pupil interested in reading and re-reading the text. The more he reads the more he understands, and the more he understands the more he delights to read. This lies at the bottom of all the plans ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... permitted him as yet to note and verify more than a few symptoms; but he feels a just pride, on his arrival at the end of his difficult enterprise, from the consciousness that he is leaving to his successors a new field of research; and that in a matter apparently so trite, not only was there much to be said, but also very many points are found remaining which may yet be brought into the clear light of observation. He therefore presents here without order or connection the rough outlines which he has so far ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... terms, which mean something or nothing, are expressions that have become trite and hackneyed. At some time they were accurate phrases, saying just what was needed. By being used for all sorts of purposes, they have lost the original thought of which they were the accurate expression. They have no freshness. The sounding phrases repeated ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... from the circumstance, that Mr Bennoch's connexions with the Continent, and more especially with the United States, contribute very frequently to engraft upon these "re-unions" a variety of eminent foreigners and intellectual citizens of America. It is a trite saying, that few men can be good or useful abroad who are not happy at home. Mr Bennoch has been fortunate in wedded life. She who is the theme of many of his sweetest and most touching verses, is a woman whom a poet may love and a wise man consult; in whom ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... method of computing that balance, as well as the usual objection to it, that the entries at the Custom-House were not always true. As you probably remember them, I shall not repeat them here. On the one hand, I am not surprised that the same trite objection is perpetually renewed by the detractors of our national affluence; and on the other hand, I am gratified in perceiving that the balance of trade seems to be now computed in a manner much clearer than it used to be from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... (compare the phrase "an old saw"); modern means "moderate," "commonplace"; instances means what we mean by it today, "examples," "illustrations." (Line 18 as a whole gives us a vivid sense of the justice's readiness to speak sapiently, after the manner of justices, and to trot out his trite illustrations on the slightest provocation.) The word pantaloon in line 20 is interesting. The patron saint of Venice was St. Pantaleon (the term is from Greek, means "all-lion," and possibly refers to the lion of St. Mark's Cathedral). Pantaloon came therefore to signify ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... dimly lighted alcove where, unobserved, he could watch her movements with their rhythmic grace or catch the music of her voice, the sight or sound thrilling him with joy so exquisite as to be akin to pain. The oft-repeated compliments of the crowd about him seemed to him empty, trite, meaningless; what could they know of her real beauty compared with himself who saw her through ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... her while her father bided near and talked to me of the community I had left, and which had given me my certificate to friend Hicks's Meeting. And yet I fear me that I made several dubious replies to his many trite questions as we sat on the porch in the quiet of the evening, for friend Barbara's eyes were upon me, and she had a little dint in either cheek which affected me amazingly. (I have heard such dints called dimples—by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... only be known to those who have suffered the horrors of restraint. That is a trite enough statement, but when one is describing elemental things there is no room for subtlety. The voyage was a fairly eventless one. We saw very little of Kara, who did not intrude himself upon us, and our main excitement lay in the apprehension that we should be held up by a British ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... a subject on which very few of us have specific information. It is as important as it is trite to point out that the amount and the type of insurance should be governed by the kind of hazards against which you should provide. Yet it is necessary to realize that the need of protection changes as life ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... vivid lines assume The garb and dignity of ancient Rome.— Let college verse-men trite conceits express, Trick'd out in splendid shreds of Virgil's dress; From playful Ovid cull the tinsel phrase, And vapid notions hitch in pilfer'd lays: Then with mosaick art the piece combine, And boast the glitter of each dulcet line: Johnson adventur'd boldly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... servitude and chains—to-morrow, upon the assurance of a good dividend, it will pay the wages of the soldiery who have successfully desolated that country, and exterminated or enslaved its defenders. Trite, if sad commonplaces these, to which the world listens, if at all, with impatient indifference. I have not a very strong faith in the soundness of the commercial evangel upon this subject; still, the very ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... of this first period of my life, I am tempted to enter a protest against the trite and lavish praise of the happiness of our boyish years, which is echoed with so much affectation in the world. That happiness I have never known, that time I have never regretted; and were my poor aunt still alive, she would bear testimony to the ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... State debts; but by the great Accountant who keeps a record of all our deeds of this nature, whether it be to make money by means of cruising ships, or cruising scrip. It is true, these rovers encountered very differently-looking victims, in the first place; but it is a somewhat trite remark, that the aggregate of human beings is pretty much the same in all situations. There were widows and orphans as much connected with the condemnation of prizes, as with the prices of condemned stock; and I do not see that fraud is any worse when carried on by scriveners ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... occurrences a study of physics is necessary. It is trite to mention the development in recent years of those mechanical and electrical arts that have made modern civilization. The submarine, vitalized by storage battery and Diesel engine, the torpedo with its gyroscopic ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Avoid stale and trite remarks on commonplace subjects; also all egotism and anecdotes of personal adventure and exploit, unless they should be called out by persons you ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... distinguish twentieth century France; for morals are reformed only very gradually! Is it not necessary, in order to produce the slightest change, that the most daring dreams of the past century become the most trite ideas of the present one? We have touched upon this question merely in a trifling mood, for the purposes of showing that we are not blind to its importance, and of bequeathing also to posterity the outline of a work, which they may complete. To speak more accurately there is a third work ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... by the form of poetry upon its substance are similar to those made by music upon the words in a song, only less stringent. The content must be emotional and significant; it cannot be trite and cold. The meaning of words would permit the poet to bring before the mind all possible objects, events, and ideas, but the music of words would be incongruous with most of them. Events narrated must be stirring, thoughts uttered must be emotionally toned, things described must be related ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... prescribing variously the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on,—shall I confess?—in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exertions—and mine had not been inconsiderable—are commonly followed by a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... numerous places of interest. There are plenty to choose from, but most of them go to the same places over and over, instead of searching out unfrequented nooks that give one a feeling of proprietorship when discovered. It is an old saying, and a trite one, that "Familiarity breeds contempt." It is certainly true, however, that we often pass over the familiar and commonplace to go into raptures over some lofty mountain peak, ignoring the gems that lie hidden ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... who say, in these enlightened days, That splendid lies are all the Poet's praise; That strained invention, ever on the wing, Alone impels the modern Bard to sing. 'Tis true that all who rhyme, nay, all who write, Shrink from that fatal word to genius, trite: Yet Truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires. This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest; Though Nature's sternest painter, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... save the chronology some insert {trite} before {genee}, but this will be useless unless the clause {kata de ton auton khronon tou kreteros te arpage} be omitted, as it is also proposed to do. Periander is thought to have died about 585 ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... that he had gone too far, he tempered his ill-humor and the brutality of his diagnosis with a bolus of trite, axiomatic observations.—He must be careful. Medicine was not magic. The power of the Jenkins Pearls was limited by human strength, the necessities of advancing age, the resources of nature, which, unhappily, are not inexhaustible. The ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 61. Avoid trite or hackneyed expressions. Such expressions may be tags from everyday speech (the worse for wear, had the time of my life); or stale phrases from newspapers (taken into custody, the officiating ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... bring proof of this. Surely, it is Bishop Heber's trite stanzas repeated in unison by the forgiving populace—they are sung everywhere, and why not in Ceylon's great seaport? The ship churns forward to her moorings. It is singing; there is no mistaking it. But the air! Does it deal with "spicy breezes," and "pleasing prospects?" ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... wisdom, or with its concurrence with natural justice, fundamental principles of government, or spirit of the Constitution.[280] In various forms this maxim has been repeated to such an extent that it has become trite and has increasingly come to be incorporated in constitutional cases as a reason for fortifying a finding of unconstitutionality. Through absorption of natural rights doctrines into the text of the Constitution, the Court was ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... around us," such was the course of natural though trite reflection, which flowed upon Tyrrel's mind; "wherefore should loves and friendships have a longer date than our dwellings and our monuments?" As he indulged these sombre recollections, his officious landlady disturbed their ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... subject exactly the same as mine, even to the choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... day, when Madame Beck's large school turned out rampant, and externes and pensionnaires were spread abroad, vying with the denizens of the boys' college close at hand, in the brazen exercise of their lungs and limbs—doubtless then the garden was a trite, trodden-down place enough. But at sunset or the hour of salut, when the externes were gone home, and the boarders quiet at their studies; pleasant was it then to stray down the peaceful alleys, and hear the bells of St. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... learn base-ball is to play it, and it is a trite saying that the best practice for a ball player is base-ball itself. Still, there are points outside of the game, such as the preliminary training, diet, and exercise, an observance of which will be of great advantage when the regular work is begun. The method and style of play ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... moments are the only ones we are sure of Those whom you can make like themselves better Timidity and diffidence To be heard with success, you must be heard with pleasure To be pleased one must please Trifle only with triflers; and be serious only with the serious Trite jokes and loud laughter reduce him to a buffoon Unwilling and forced; it will never please Well dressed, not finely dressed What is impossible, and what is only difficult What pleases you in others, will ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... Trite and common-place though it be, I mention this circumstance attending my introduction to college, because it formed the first cause which tended to diminish my faith in the institution to which I was attached. I soon grew to regard my university training as a sort of necessary evil, to be patiently ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... quarter-deck against a mob of ruffians with no weapon but a marline-spike. And hereafter, as he tells you in his 'Voyage to New South Wales,' he was accorded the fullest liberty to come or go. He visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; he packed a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received with obsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'future situation should be such as would render his banishment ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... the trite but, nevertheless, all-powerfully true assertion that the Press is the Archimidean lever which moves the world, cannot but regret the unblushing statement of the editor of our esteemed contemporary, the Planters' Friend, that he has been the victim of a soul-destroying, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... brain of the general. Printing has established, as indestructible, all knowledge, and disseminated, as the common property of every one, all thought; while paper has made the work of printing cheap. Such reflections as these, however, are trite, and must occur to every mind. It is far more to the purpose to repeat that not the inventions, but the intelligence that used them, the conscious calculating spirit of the modern world, should rivet our attention when we direct it to the phenomena ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... long balmy night, by a sunrise which repeats the colours of the sunset, but this time gaudy, dazzling, triumphant, as befits the season of faith and hope. Such imagery, it may be said, is hackneyed now, and trite even to impertinence. It might be so at home; but here, in presence of the magnificent pageant of tropic sunlight, it is natural, almost inevitable; and the old myth of the daily birth and death of Helios, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and Noel and I gave our testimony before the coroner's jury, and he was bound over for trial before the next term of the circuit court to sit six months hence. There is an old and very trite saying in Texas that, "a dead witness is better than a live one." This was gently whispered into our ears, and accordingly one night about a month after this, Noel and I "folded our tents, and like ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... trite remarks upon the art, the doctor, either to flatter Salvator, or in imitation of the physician of the Cardinal Colonna, who asked for one of Raffaelle's finest pictures as a fee for saving the Cardinal's life, requested Don Mario to give him a picture by Salvator ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... and prospect as the heavens are beyond the earth, or as Mr. Rawlence was above an 'inmate' of St. Peter's. To a twentieth-century English artist, Mr. Rawlence might have seemed a shade crude, possibly rather pompous and affected, somewhat jejune and trite, perhaps. But our talk took place in the 'seventies of last century, in New South Wales. The Board School was a new invention in England, and in Australia there was quite a lot of bushranging still to come, and the arrival of transported ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple, so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... abundant—and all felt intuitively from within. Into his creations, Shakespeare pours wide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or shut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great sense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and dried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life itself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents this sense of varied life as manifested or objectified in his ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... is that other cooking depots though similar were not the same. An attempt was made in London some years ago to establish a restaurant on the same principle, but although it was backed by the advice and influence of Lord Houghton and some other leading men, it proved a complete failure. It is a trite saying that "too many cooks spoil the broth," but in this instance the saying was verified. A large committee was appointed to take charge of the arrangements. A committee means divided management and conflicting ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Not long since the trite and frivolous question following was debated in a very polite and learned company, viz., Who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... their people. It was these who brought disease and death; these who tempted to lie, steal, and kill; disobedience in their wives when they refused to perform their duties or became bellicose, as wives sometimes will, of every people on earth. It was a trite saying, shut up the cave in your heart and smother or put out the bad spirit. It was a belief that these imps or little devils found much more easy access to the caves in the hearts of women than into those of men, and that they encouraged them to come and nestle there. Is the belief alone the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... judgments could not but be damnatory, and their expression in journalistic phrase would disturb his mind with evil rancour. No one would have insight enough to appreciate the nature and cause of his book's demerits; every comment would be wide of the mark; sneer, ridicule, trite objection, would but madden him with a sense ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... "wild tears" and "clasping hands," he had bidden her an eternal farewell—by moonlight. She was, moreover, perturbed by the paucity of her native language. There appeared to be nothing to rhyme with "love" except "shove," "above," and "dove." Of these one was impossible and two were trite. Scowling fiercely at the ocean, she finally gave the bird to the hungry line and repeated the final ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... condescension they are very suitable. To suppose that by our betters are meant the Gods, is very harsh, because to imitate the Gods has been hitherto reckoned the highest pitch of human virtue. The whole is a trite and obvious thought, uttered by Timon with a kind of affected modesty. If I would make any alteration, it should be only to reform the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... said Jorworth, bending his keen, wild blue eye on the stolid and unexpressive face of the Netherlander, like an eager student who seeks to discover some hidden and mysterious meaning in a passage of a classic author, the direct import of which seems trite ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... said, "for the novelty of an evening walk in the woods. I enjoy it, I confess, very highly. Look at those dark, mysterious vistas, and those deepening shadows blending the bank with its mirror; how different from the trite daylight truth! It took ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... "Don't make trite remarks, Bella," says Mrs. Bohun, languidly. "You know if you did meet one he would bore you to death. The orthodox good man, the oppressive being we read about, but never see, is unknown to me or you, for which I, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Federal party, but moderate in tone. During the first three years of the existence of this paper, Daniel Webster, then a student, was a frequent contributor; he wrote both prose and poetry, more frequently the latter. The topics were trite, but the thoughts were always serious and elevated. In the issue of December 9, 1799, Mr. Webster published a poem on winter; he was then a Junior in college. The European wars commanded his ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... hearty laugh that was infectious and carried the laughter of everyone else with it. Longford, irritated, turned to his next neighbour with some trite observation, and allowed the discussion to drop. But Walden had heard it, and his heart went out to Gigue for the manner in which he had, for the moment at least, quenched the light of the 'Savage ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... reader, the greater part of these once admired pieces will appear trite, prosaic, and tedious; but an uncultivated age—like the children and the common people of all ages—is most attracted and impressed by that mode of narration which leaves the least to be supplied by the imagination of the hearer or reader; and when this collection ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... ambrosiac water; I will sup of it again. By thy favour, sweet fount. See, the water, a more running, subtile, and humorous nymph than she permits me to touch, and handle her. What should I infer? if my behaviours had been of a cheap or customary garb; my accent or phrase vulgar; my garments trite; my countenance illiterate, or unpractised in the encounter of a beautiful and brave attired piece; then I might, with some change of colour, have suspected my faculties: But, knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel; ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... he produced, from inside a purse which he had handy, a transcribed office-philactery, which he handed over to Yue-ts'un; who upon perusal, found it full of trite and unpolished expressions of public opinion, with regard to the leading clans and notable official families in that particular ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... placed him in comparative affluence; the "Masque of Alfred," with its popular song "Rule Britannia," and his greatest work "The Castle of Indolence" (1748), were the outcome of his later years of leisure; often tediously verbose, not infrequently stiff and conventional in diction and trite in its moralisings, the poetry of Thomson was yet the first of the 18th century to shake itself free of the town, and to lead, as Stopford Brooke says, "the English people into that new world of nature which has enchanted us in the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... introduced our Apollo, he found The maiden in torrents of sympathy drowned— "Floods of tears" is too trite and too common: Her eyes were quite swelled—her lips pouting and pale; For she just had been reading that heartbreaking tale, "Annabelle, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... pages with extracts from the older British poets, who wrote when these rites were more prevalent, and delighted frequently to allude to them; but I have already quoted more than is necessary. I cannot, however, refrain from giving a passage from Shakespeare, even though it should appear trite, which illustrates the emblematical meaning often conveyed in these floral tributes, and at the same time possesses that magic of language and appositeness of imagery for ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... phrase is so well turned and contempered with itself, and so everywhere conspiring, that, while it traverses many passions and humors and is accommodated to all sorts of persons, it still shows the same, and retains its semblance even in trite, familiar, and everyday expressions. And if his master do now and then require something of rant and noise, he doth but (like a skilful flutist) set open all the holes of his pipe, and their presently stop them again with good decorum and restore the tune to its natural state. And though ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... is trite to say that Bismarck foresaw that a war with France was inevitable. Behind this simple statement is a world of intrigue and ambition. The French still hold that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was the price not of war but of Bismarck's brigandage. The French also ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... be trite, but we won't let you be at the conference," returned the leader, sternly. "Come, four of you, lead them out of earshot. Take your guns, and ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... bright and silken distance he had not seen his Bishop it might have glowed into a cordiality of speech with his distinctive individual stamp on it. But he saw his Bishop, his ceinture tightened on him, and he uttered only the trite saying about the folly of counting on the sensibility ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... man of business, rather than the passion of the orator. Of this clearness of statement Pitt had little or none. He was no ready debater like Walpole, no speaker of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set speeches were always his worst, for in these his want of taste, his love of effect, his trite quotations and extravagant metaphors came at once to the front. That with defects like these he stood far above every orator of his time was due above all to his profound conviction, to the earnestness and sincerity with which he spoke. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... as well say it is not always the easiest path! Mine is a very hard life, so far as work is concerned, you know. I toil early and late. But how can you be so awfully trite, Mr. Trent? I did not ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... was in circulation, and this appears to have been very limited, for it is somewhat scarce, though a specimen may easily be procured of any dealer in coins for a few shillings. This bears the bust of the {84} Queen, with the legend ANNA DEI GRATIA—reverse, BRITANNIA around the trite figure of Britannia with the spear and olive-branch: the date 1714 in the exergue. Those with Peace in a car, Britannia standing with olive-branch and spear, or seated under an arch, are patterns; the second has the legend BELLO ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... anti-natural, bordering on hallucination, and they betray a desire for impossible novelty; but it is allowable to prefer them to the sickly simplicity of those so-called poems that embroider with old faded wools upon the canvas of worn-out truisms, trite, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the law is, your lordship will tell me, a trite topic, and which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained of? A man's property is to serve for the purposes of his support; and therefore, to delay a determination concerning that, is the worst injustice, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... were what the learned say And envy called the tune Mayhap 'twere trite what treason saith That man is dust and ends in death; We'd slay with proof of printed law Whatever was new that seers saw, If Truth were what the learned say ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... young gentlemen, were here," said Mrs. Towers, "they might improve themselves in all the graces of polite and sincere complaisance. But, compared to this, I have generally heard such trite and coarse stuff from our race of would-be wits, that what they say may be compared to the fawnings and salutations of the ass in the fable, who, emulating the lap-dog, merited a cudgel rather ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... great act of faith, which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the present and the future. From the nature of ratiocination, it is obvious that the axioms, on which it is based, cannot be demonstrated by ratiocination. It is also a trite observation that, in the business of life, we constantly take the most serious action upon evidence of an utterly insufficient character. But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... brief and death is sure, that light loves and ancient wines are good, that riches are burdensome, and enough is better than a feast, that country life is delightful, that old age comes on us apace, that our friends leave us sorrowing and our sorrow does not bring them back. Trite sayings no doubt; but embellished one and all with an adorable force and novelty at once sadly earnest and vividly exact; not too simple for the profound and not too artful for the shallow; consecrated by the verbal felicity which belongs only to an age of ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... moral cultivation of mankind imposes upon them the necessity for greater physical culture. "Wiser and weaker," is a trite saying, and means that the exercise of the higher nature discloses the equivalent necessity of culturing the body, in order to support the increasing expenditures of the former. Mental and moral discipline are essential for a proper understanding how to provide for the body, for physical ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Yet, trite and self-evident as this truism is, it is constantly violated in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or eight years of study. These readers contain ...
— New Ideals in Rural Schools • George Herbert Betts
... that have not the mental capacity to appreciate his work. 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 ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke |
