Pay attention to the vital few and ignore the trivial many.
But such a tiny and trivial thing as an umbrella can deprive you of the sight of such a stupendous fact as the sun.
The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things. . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.
Egotism exists everywhere, but it has a different flavor in England, where the tabloid culture goes much deeper. It's just the indulgence of vulgarity, the wallowing in vulgarity. As with everything English, there's a sort of irony to it. They write a great deal about these trivial people who have a certain eminence, always with a bit of, "Isn't it ridiculous that we are writing about this person?"
To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else -- these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.
The more a man desirous to pass at a value above his worth can contrast, by dignified silence, the garrulity of trivial minds, the more the world will give him credit for the wealth which he does not possess.
All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial.
Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred.
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.
The form of religion was always a trivial matter to me. . . . The pageantry of the Roman Church that first mothered and nurtured me touches me to this day. I love the Protestant prayers of the English Church. And I love the stern and knotty argument, the sermon with heads and sequences, of the New England Congregationalist. For this catholicity Catholics have upbraided me, churchmen rebuked me, and dissenters denied that I had any religion at all.
Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.
The elixir of life, the philosopher's stone is yours if you surrender sterile logic, trivial reason.
Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.
We are vegans not simply because being vegan will reduce suffering. We are vegan because every sentient being values her or his life even if no one else does. We are vegan because justice minimally requires that we not take life for trivial purposes.
. . . the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race forever.
A sudden light transfigures a trivial thing, a weather-vane, a windmill, a winnowing flail, the dust in the barn door; a moment - and the thing has vanished, because it was pure effect; but it leaves a relish behind it, a longing that the accident may happen again.
If you continually ask yourself, "What's important now?", you won't waste time on the trivial.
