Who have not saved some trifling thing
More prized than jewels rare,
A faded flower, a broken ring,
A tress of golden hair. [ Ellen C. Howarth ]
Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least virtue; life's poor span
Make not an ell by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains;
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains. [ George Herbert ]
No class escapes them - from the poor man's pay
The nostrum takes no trifling part away;
Time, too, with cash is wasted; 'tis the fate
Of real helpers, to be called too late;
This find the sick, when time and patience gone
Death with a tenfold terror hurries on. [ Crabbe ]
Contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Benevolence and feeling ennoble the most trifling actions. [ Thackeray ]
Events of great consequence often spring from trifling circumstances. [ Livy ]
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones. [ Chesterfield ]
Those who bestow too much application on trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. [ Rochefoucauld ]
There are hours in life when the most trifling annoyances assume the proportions of a catastrophe. [ E. Souvestre ]
Certain trifling flaws sit as disgracefully on a character of elegance as a ragged button on a court dress. [ Lavater ]
There is no praise we have not lavished upon prudence; and yet she cannot assure to us the most trifling event. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the wrist parries a mortal thrust. [ R. Sharp ]
If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect. [ Hazlitt ]
Avarice often produces opposite effects; there is an infinite number of people who sacrifice all their property to doubtful and distant expectations; others despise great future advantages to obtain present interests of a trifling nature. [ Kochefoucauld ]
Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life. [ Lord Greville ]
A beau is one who arranges his curled locks gracefully, who ever smells of balm, and cinnamon; who hums the songs of the Nile, and Cadiz; who throws his sleek arms into various attitudes; who idles away the whole day among the chairs of the ladies and is ever whispering into some one's ear; who reads little billets-doux from this quarter and that, and writes them in return; who avoids ruffling his dress by contact with his neighbors sleeve, who knows with whom everybody is in love; who flutters from feast to feast, who can recount exactly the pedigree of Hirpinus. What do you tell me? is this a beau, Cotilus? Then a beau, Cotilus, is a very trifling thing. [ Martial ]