41 Triviality Quotes

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word 'booger' in a newspaper comic strip.

When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.

Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?

I could never figure out - or probably did not take the trouble to figure out - what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

Take from the dresser of deal, Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

'My position is neutral with respect to sheep' (2004)

'Get outta my face nigga! Im making juice!'

His weariness is that of the gladiator after the combat; his work was the whitewashing of a corner in a state official's office.

No worse than a bad cold.

Many of us affect a tone of irony about gadgets, as if we lived always in realms above and dealt with trifles only during rare descents from sublime thoughts. The truth is that more and more of the important things in life turn on pinpoints. Our frustrations begin in trivialities - a telephone out of order, a car that will not start, a claim check whose number has been misread. The thing in cellophane that cannot be got at - plain to the sight but sealed like an egg - is the modern version of the torture of Tantalus. Catastrophes we will deal with like heroes, but the bottle top that defies us saps our morale, like the tiny arrows of the Lilliputians that maddened Gulliver and set his strength at naught.

At the foot of the Cross on Calvary Three soldiers sat and diced, And one of them was the Devil And he won the Robe of Christ.

[on the greatest invention] Liquid Prell.

It doesn't have as much fat as the Haagen-Dazs, does it?

In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning...She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (Eileen Atkins), who sometimes prompts her: 'Remember a happy time!' Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with Paris Hilton remembering a good stick of gum.

In mathematics he was greater Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater: For he, by geometric scale, Could take the size of pots of ale; Resolve, by sines and tangents straight, If bread and butter wanted weight; And wisely tell what hour o' th' day The clock doth strike, by algebra.

Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!

Language is a finite instrument crudely applied to an infinity of ideas, and one consequence of the failure to take account of this is that modern philosophy has made itself ridiculous by analysing such statements as, 'This is a good bacon sandwich,' or, 'Bedser had a good wicket.'

Rockin' out...with my cock out...there was much ado about nothing...it was only...my nutsack...

High Dude : Hey Calvin, there is a thin line between fries and shakes

They're making a joke of our universe

(Referring to Walter Bellhaven) Phil, saying that Walter murdered people is like saying Leonardo DaVinci, you know, ah, drew things.

A mere flea hop.

Little things affect little minds.

We may well be ashamed to tell what things we have read or heard in our day. I do not know why my news should be so trivial, - considering what one's dreams and expectations are, why the developments should be so paltry. The news we hear, for the most part, is not news to our genius. It is the stalest repetition.

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the world.

'There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'' 'The mood will pass, sir.'

The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.

'The reason all of this is so horrible,' McVries said, 'is because it's just trivial. You know? We've sold ourselves and traded our souls on trivialities. Olson, he was trivial. He was magnificent, too, but those things aren't mutually exclusive. He was magnificent and trivial. Either way, or both, he died like a bug under a microscope.'

You've heard on aeroplanes, they explode? And that is true, it happened to me ah, over thirty thousand feet. (mimes as if he's just having a conversation on a plane, and then his left breast explodes) 'BrrpphhZZZ' (Mimes wiping exploded stuff off of his chest and then mimes reaching up and pushing the stewardess button overhead) 'Sorry about this... Buung!' (Mimes having a sip of drink while waiting for service) 'Yes, my left breast has... exploded. Have you got a pillow? Oh, and some more nibblie, nibblies?' But then you've got one L cup boob and a D cup boob, and you get a lot of looks! I already get a lot of looks. So by the end it, I've got the fork: (Mimes stabbing himself in the right breast, then reaching up and pushing the overhead service call button again.) 'Buung!' 'Another pillow' And you go off with the biggest tits in Christendom... as the crusaders used to say!