Quotes: Trifles

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

Women are only children of a larger growth. A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.

I have been an “Official” all my life, without the least turn for it. I never could attain a true official manner, which is highly artificial and handles trifles with ludicrously disproportionate gravity.

Seeks painted trifles and fantastic toys, and eagerly pursues imaginary joys.

Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of human life.

A great proportion of the wretchedness which has embittered married life, has originated in a negligence of trifles.

Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.