All 12 Uses
trifle
in
Selected Essays
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- At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles.†
Chpt 3. *trifles = things of small importance
- Thus every man passes his life in the search after friendship, and if he should record his true sentiment, he might write a letter like this, to each new candidate for his love:— DEAR FRIEND:— If I was sure of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never think again of trifles, in relation to thy comings and goings.†
Chpt 4.
- The gifts of fortune may be present or absent, but all the hap in that contest depends on intrinsic nobleness, and the contempt of trifles.†
Chpt 4.
- Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall.†
Chpt 6.
- The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles.†
Chpt 8.
- The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration.†
Chpt 9. *trifle with = treat thoughtlessly or without respect
- Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters.†
Chpt 10.trifles = things of small importance
- let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law;†
Chpt 1.
- —and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order: there is no trifle, there is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.†
Chpt 1.
- But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.†
Chpt 3.
- We are holden to men by every sort of tie, by blood, by pride, by fear, by hope, by lucre, by lust, by hate, by admiration, by every circumstance and badge and trifle, but we can scarce believe that so much character can subsist in another as to draw us by love.†
Chpt 4.
- There is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching Queen Elizabeth,[599] and King James,[600] and the Essexes,[601] Leicesters,[602] Burleighs,[603] and Buckinghams;[604] and lets pass without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the Tudor dynasty[605] to be remembered,—the man who carries the Saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias.†
Chpt 9.
Definitions:
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(1)
(trifle as in: a trifling matter) something of small importance; or a small quantity
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(2)
(trifle with as in: trifle with her affections) to treat somebody or something thoughtlessly or without respect
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(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) A trifle can refer to a kind of dessert. In classic literature, trifling can be a synonym for small talk.