A Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.

Oliver Goldsmith

Quote Topics

Amusement Become Concerns Find First Last Most Place Serious Those Trifles Will

Quote Author

Oliver Goldsmith
Irish - Novelist
November 10, 1730 - April 4, 1774

All big things are made up of trifles. My entire life has been built on trifles.

Mahatma Gandhi

Revolutions are not about trifles, but spring from trifles.

Aristotle

Are we not rude and deserve blame, if we leave Him alone, to busy ourselves about trifles, which do not please Him and perhaps offend Him? 'Tis to be feared these trifles will one day cost us dear.

Brother Lawrence

Delude not yourself with the notion that you may be untrue and uncertain in trifles and in important things the contrary. Trifles make up existence, and give the observer the measure by which to try us; and the fearful power of habit, after a time, suffers not the best will to ripen into action.

Carl Maria von Weber

In mortals there is a care for trifles which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from thought, which is most noble; and a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.

John Ruskin

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

Doris Lessing

These trifles will lead to serious mischief. [Lat., Hae nugae seria ducent In mala.]

Horace

We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.

Christiaan Huygens

Trifles, trifles are what matter!

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes.

Lord Chesterfield

It is always a sign of an unproductive time when it concerns itself with petty and technical aspects [in philology], and likewiseit is a sign of an unproductive person to pursue such trifles.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other country. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people.

Oliver Goldsmith

The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or "caves in.