Trifling Sentence Examples

trifling
  • Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.

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  • But these figures are trifling compared with those at the end of the middle ages.

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  • Although iron, copper, coal and lignite are worked, the mineral wealth is trifling.

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  • It follows that the depth of definition of the microscope is in general very trifling.

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  • I added my plates up after about 4, and realized that I'd only amassed a trifling sum.

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  • He was almost physically sick with the horror of this trifling incident.

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  • The Mahommedan legends regarding him are curious, but trifling.

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  • His patrimony and his wife's dowry must both have been trifling.

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  • The old laws among the Hova were very barbarous in their punishments, and death in various cruel forms was inflicted for very trifling offences.

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  • Out of twenty so-called species he considers six to be really distinct, while the others are merely synonymous or trifling variations.

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  • Under his hand the most trifling subjects gained a new importance; yet he treated the gravest with a touch so light that he seemed to have invented the sciences rather than learnt them, for he was always a creator, always original, and himself was imitable of none."

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  • Moissan, contains only a trifling amount of morphia, and the effect produced by it is apparently due, not to that alkaloid, but to such decomposition products as pyrrol, acetone and pyridine and hydropyridine bases.

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  • Marey repeats Borelli and Diirckheim with very trifling modifications, so late as 1869.

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  • The truth is that we possess but a trifling portion of a very much larger Avesta, if we are to believe native tradition, carrying us back to the Sassanian period, which tells of a larger Avesta in twenty-one books called nasks or nosks, as to the names of which we have several more or less detailed accounts, particularly in the Pahlavi Dinkard (9th century A.D.) and in the Rivayats.

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  • Of these one or two, as we have evidence, tried their hands at engraving; among their engravings were these "knots," which, being things of use for decorative craftsmen to copy, were inscribed for identification, and perhaps for protection, as coming from the Achademia Leonardi Vinci; a trifling matter altogether, and quite unfit to sustain the elaborate structure of conjecture which has been built on it.

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  • For these densities, the deviation of the water face from the vertical in the figure of least sectional area is, however, so trifling that, so far as this consideration is concerned, it may be neglected.

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  • In one of these trifling affairs on the 27th of August 1782, on the Combahee river, Laurens exposed himself needlessly and was killed.

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  • Pierre Battifol' is correct in supposing that the Disciplina arcani was more or less of a makebelieve, a bit of belletristic trifling on the part of the overrhetorical Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries.

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  • Only so far as we can get away from the modern view that a person's name is a trifling accident, and breathe the atmosphere which broods over ancient religions, can we understand the use of the name in baptisms, exorcisms, prayers, purifications and consecrations.

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  • A study of the few sentences under this head might have obviated the trifling criticism of Hamilton's objection which has been set afloat recently, that the denial of a knowledge of the absolute or infinite implies a foregone knowledge of it.

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  • Some of the clauses are unimportant concessions to individuals, or deal with matters of trifling importancesuch as the celebrated weirs or kiddies on Thames and Medway, or the expulsion of the condottieri chiefs Gerard dAthies and Engeihart de Cigogn.

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  • The earl, who could only raise a trifling force in the Marches, where the barons were all his enemies, failed in several attempts to force a passage eastward.

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  • Marching with a trifling Battle of force to expel her from the north, he was surprised and Wakefield.

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  • The jubilee showed conclusively that, whatever politicians might say, the ties of blood and kinship, which united the two peoples, were too close to be severed by either for some trifling cause; that the wisest heads in both nations were aware of the advantages which must arise from the closer union of the Anglo-Saxon races; and that the true interests of both countries lay in their mutual friendship. A war in which the United States was subsequently engaged with Spain cemented this feeling.

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  • These animals are of great use and profit to their masters, for their wool is very good and fine, particularly that of the species called pacas, which have very long fleeces; and the expense of their food is trifling, as a handful of maize suffices them, and they can go four or five days without water.

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  • In spite of the "enormities and filthinesses," which Giraldus says defiled the Irish Church, nothing worse could be found to condemn than marriages within the prohibited degrees and trifling irregularities about baptism.

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  • The danger on land seemed trifling to Venice so long as she could keep the sea open to her trade and press the war against the Genoese in the Levant.

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  • Whether the entrance pupil be before or behind the object, in general its position is such that it lies not too near the object, so that the principal rays will have in the object space only trifling inclinations towards one another or are strictly parallel.

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  • Aratus was no astronomer, while Hipparchus was; and from the fact that the latter adopted, with but trifling exceptions, the constellation system portrayed by Aratus, it may be concluded that the system was already familiar in Greek thought.

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  • Later in the year another convention, to which the proposed constitution had been referred, adopted instead the constitution of North Carolina with a few trifling changes, and William Cocke was chosen to present to Congress a memorial requesting recognition as a state.

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  • I had long been aware that such trifling presents are often very serviceable.

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  • The secular, mundane world becomes not only trifling, but those concerned with it, somewhat tainted.

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  • I may mention one very trifling anecdote, which at the time struck me more forcibly than any story of cruelty.

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  • Not at all something comparatively trifling, something of a temporal and material nature.

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  • This income, tho apparently trifling, represented a purchasing power of £ 900 of present money.

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  • True, she falsely trifled with his love; but he, perhaps, was only trifling with her vanity.

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  • Thus Descartes is a type of that spirit of science to which erudition and all the heritage of the past seem but elegant trifling.

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  • If it blows horizontally over the open end of a vertical tube it causes a decrease of pressure, but this fact is not of any practical use in anemometry, because the magnitude of the decrease depends on the wind striking the tube exactly at right angles to its axis, the most trifling departure from the true direction causing great variations in the magnitude.

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  • In the United Kingdom the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 empowered the Board of Trade to require all passenger trains, within a reasonable period, to be fitted with automatic continuous brakes, and now all the passenger stock, with a few trifling exceptions, is provided with either compressed-air or vacuum brakes (see Brake), and sometimes with both.

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  • In West Africa the Mpongwe believe in local spirits, just as do the Eskimo; but they are regarded as inoffensive in the main; true, the passerby must make some trifling offering as he nears their place of abode; but it is only occasionally that mischievous acts, such as the throwing down of a tree on a passer-by, are, in the view of the natives, perpetuated by the Ombuiri.

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  • Subsequently, whether from the fact that such bold speculations were obnoxious to the general sense of propriety in Elea, or from the inferiority of its leaders, the school degenerated into verbal disputes as to the possibility of motion, and similar academic trifling.

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  • The error due to the neglect of the former would at most amount to 1%, while a reduction to the mean level of the sea necessitates but a trifling reduction, amounting, in the case of a base-line 300,000 metres in length, measured on a plateau of 3700 metres (12,000 ft.) in height, to 57 metres only.

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  • But commentators are not at one as to which countess of Salisbury was the heroine of the adventure, whether she was Katherine Montacute or Joan the Fair Maid of Kent, while Heylyn rejects the legend as " a vain and idle romance derogatory both to the founder and the order, first published by Polydor Vergil, a stranger to the affairs of England, and by him taken upon no better ground than fama vulgi, the tradition of the common people, too trifling a foundation for so great a building."

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  • His earliest publication, a Carta de un residente en Roma (1725), is a panegyric of trifling interest, and La Juventud triunfante (1727) was written in collaboration with Luis de Lovada.

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  • Against Lalande, owing to some trifling pique, he closed his doors "during an entire revolution of the moon's nodes."

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  • For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them--who were above such trifling.

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  • To the majority, this is a trifling matter, but obviously it constitutes a serious moral transgression for a Christian.

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  • Then again, was it so trifling a skirmish to such mighty warriors as to have been forgotten already?

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  • He did not want the trifling sum which every New York policeman acquires.

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  • I have noted this trifling circumstance only to point out how bad temper blinds its victims.

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  • Christians would be less caught up in activities that often seem trifling, trivial, parochial in the narrow sense of the word.

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  • The lakes of Central Italy, which are comparatively of trifling dimensions, belong to a wholly different class.

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  • At Naples a trifling disturbance in September 1849, led to the lion oi arrest of a large number of persons connected with the Liberals Unitd Italiana, a society somewhat similar to the in Naples.

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  • The land in Scotland was now, with trifling exceptions, let on leases for terms varying from twenty to thirty years, and in farms of sufficient size to employ at the least two or three ploughs.

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  • Timur did not cross into Europe, and contented himself with accepting some trifling presents from the Greek emperor.

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  • His advice was successfully followed, and the "Argo" made the passage unscathed, except for trifling damage to the stern.

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  • These, however, gave way before the threat of the advancing French and after a few trifling skirmishes.

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  • Many of the wooden and iron vessels listed in the Naval Annual, 1906, though obsolete and of no value whatever as fighting machines, are used for river and harbour service, and in the suppression of trifling insurrections.

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  • Except for some trifling notices of sounds heard in certain diseases, this method was entirely new.

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  • The later poetry of the Augus tan age had ended in trifling dilettantism, for the continuance of which the atmosphere of the court was no longer favourable.

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  • The Ionians were naturally averse from prolonged warfare, and in the prosperity which must have followed the final rout of the Persians and the freeing of the Aegean from the pirates (a very important feature in the league's policy) a money contribution was only a trifling burden.

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  • He was then attacked by a complaint at first apparently trifling; but his strength daily and rapidly declined till the 1st of January 1748, when he died peacefully in his sleep.

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  • He is free from the scholastic trifling and learned frivolity which tainted the rhetorical culture of his century.

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  • If the scale is only slightly out of the perpendicular, a few taps of the hammer will modify any trifling error."

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  • With the trifling exception of the south-east of Bautzen, which sends its waters by the Neisse to the Oder, Saxony lies wholly in the basin of the Elbe, which has a navigable course of 72 m.

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  • McDowell, instead of marching to join McClellan, was ordered to the Valley to assist in "trapping Jackson," an operation which, at one critical moment very near success, ended in the defeat of Fremont at Cross Keys and of McDowell's advanced troops at Port Republic (June 8-9) and the escape of the daring Confederates with trifling loss.

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  • These operations were very skilfully conducted by Rosecrans and his second-in-command, Thomas, and, at a trifling cost, advanced the Union outposts to the borders of Georgia.

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  • He occupied part of his time in dabbling in literature, science and various trifling arts, but gave himself up chiefly to excess and debauchery.

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  • In 1907, with an annual production of nearly fifty million bushels, only a trifling percentage was exported, the rest being fed at home and exported in the form of produce without loss from impoverishment of the soil.

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  • N.B.-A trifling quantity of Californian and Australian wheat was imported in the period in question, but the Board of Trade records do not distinguish the quantities, therefore they cannot be given.

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  • In the casting of iron, steel and brass, the addition of a trifling proportion (0.005%) removes oxide and renders the molten metal more fluid, causing the finished products to be more homogeneous, free from blow-holes and solid all through.

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  • Thus we have reasons enough why the blast-furnace has displaced all competing processes, without taking into account its further advantage in lending itself easily to working on an enormous scale and with trifling consumption of labour, still further lessened by the general practice of transferring the molten cast iron in enormous ladles into the vessels in which its conversion into steel takes place.

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  • Bernstorff was bound by treaty to assist Russia in such a contingency, but he took care that the assistance so rendered should be as trifling as possible, to avoid offending Great Britain and Prussia.

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  • The result has been, as already stated, that with a complete failure of the Nile flood the loss to the country has been trifling compared with that of 1877.

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  • Not all the sins named are equally heinous according to modern conceptions; many of them deal with petty offences against religious usages that seem to us but trifling.

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  • The attack had been preceded by a trifling fire at a threshing floor, either accidentally caused (but not by the officers shots) or lit as a signal for the assault.

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  • He had already gained some popularity by writing in favour of reform, and in 1819 he issued A defence of the People in reply to Lord Erskine's "Two Defences of the Whigs," followed by A trifling mistake in Thomas, Lord Erskine's recent preface.

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  • He returned to Aberdeen to paint landscapes and portraits for any trifling sum which his work could command.

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  • And instead of interpreting the other articles in harmony done; but its practical value was trifling.

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  • He devoted himself to philosophical trifling, petty administrative and judicial details, while his craze for economy developed into avarice.

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  • Despite the entreaties of wife and elector he resolved to do what he could to end some trifling dispute about inheritance which threatened the peace of the House of Mansfeld.

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  • Nowhere is crime committed on such trifling grounds, or with such general impunity, though when it is punished the punishment is atrocious.

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  • Near the watershed it is generally more; but there is here no ridge of high ground between the Indus and the Ganges, and a very trifling change of level would often turn the upper waters of one river into the other.

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  • The leniency of the sentences indicates the comparatively trifling character of the wrongdoing.

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  • It must not be thought that this trifling with logical rules has no effect.

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  • The clue to the discovery of transcendental conditions Kant finds in the existence of judgments, most manifest in mathematics and in the pure science of nature, which are certain, yet not trifling, necessary and yet not reducible to identities, synthetic therefore and a priori, and so accounted for neither by Locke nor by Leibnitz.

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  • The Danish dependencies in the Antilles are but trifling in extent or importance.

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  • He takes as much pains in laying bare the trifling causes of a petty war with Pisa as in probing the deep-seated ulcer of the papacy.

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  • The feebleness of Michael, whose chief interest lay in trifling academic pursuits, and the avarice of his ministers, was disastrous to the empire.

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  • The ascetic instinct is probably as old as humanity, yet we must not forget that early religious practices are apt to be deficient in lofty spiritual meaning, many things being esteemed holy that are from a modern point of view trifling and even obscene.

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  • On the north bank of the great river, lands of this sort run down the whole length of the valley, except where they are interrupted by the beds of the hill streams. The breadth of these plains is in some places very trifling, whilst in others they comprise a tract of many miles, according to the number and the height of the rocks or hills that protect them from the aberrations of the river.

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  • The latter victory, obtained with but trifling loss, was stained by the massacre of a third of the Mahommedan population.

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  • Trifling border-quarrels followed, but in 1017 a truce was arranged between Norway and Vestergotland, where Earl Ragnvald was still in power.

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  • After some trifling fighting Mangasha submitted, and Ras Makonnen despatched a force to subdue Beni Shangul, the chief of which gold country, Wad Tur el Guri, was showing signs of disaffection.

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  • He therefore bought an English edition of Euclid with an index of propositions at the end of it, and, having turned to two or three which he thought likely to remove his difficulties, he found them so selfevident that he put aside Euclid " as a trifling book," and applied himself to the study of Descartes's Geometry.

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  • No little woman is so trifling and sordid, no handmaid so squalid, but that she gained some advantage from his death.

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  • The quantity sown, is, however, very trifling.

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  • No need to overly concern ourselves with such minor, trifling matters.

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  • Now we'll fix you up for a trifling amount.

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  • A Poem about Dark Matter A trifling thing is Dark Matter.

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  • Ancient Celtic literature shows fairies as tall, shining, otherworldly beings who are said to be remarkably beautiful and have an occasional disposition for trifling with humans.

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  • He also carried to a very extreme limit his views of nomenclature, which were certainly not in accordance with those held by most zoologists,, though this is a matter so trifling as to need no details in illustration.

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  • Momus is reported to have burst with chagrin at being unable to find any but the most trifling defects in Aphrodite.

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  • He accorded at first only a few trifling reforms, which were far from removing the popular discontent, while he retained the unpopular minister, Count Detlew von Einsiedel (1773-1861), and continued the encouragement of the Roman Catholics.

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  • Innocent's letters, however, not only reveal that superior wisdom which can take into account practical needs and relax severity of principle at the right moment, as well as that spirit of tolerance and equity which is opposed to the excess of zeal and intellectual narrowness of subordinates, but they also prove that, in the internal government of the Church, he was bent on gathering into his hands all the motive threads, and that he stretched the absolutist tradition to its furthest limits, intervening in the most trifling acts in the lives of the clergy, and regarding it as an obligation of his office to act and think for all.

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  • During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.

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  • It was adopted by Augustus as the boundary of Gallia Cispadana; the far-famed Rubicon was a trifling stream a few miles farther north, now called Fiumicino.

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  • To the first part unstinted praise must be accorded; it may be said that, with the materials at the author's disposition, it hardly admitted of improvement, except in trifling details.

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  • These logic must seize upon and develop as far as they will go; for the breach of some trifling consequence of a rule might mean the loss of the deity's favour.

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  • To the Church he left little and to the pope only a trifling souvenir.

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  • It was a trifling set-off that in 1567 the pope again enjoined the fathers to keep choir and to admit only the professed to priests' orders, especially as Gregory XIII.

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  • His astonishing talents were wasted on trifling themes and in a, fruitless resistance to the modern spirit in literature.

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  • In England, Robert Recorde had indeed published his mathematical treatises, but they were of trifling importance and without influence on the history of science.

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  • The latter, making some trifling concessions, consented to present himself before Elizabeth.

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  • Questions of affinity, and the details of geographical distribution, were endowed with a real interest, in comparison with which any interest that had hitherto been taken was a trifling pastime.

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  • There are wide areas on the plains of West Siberia and on the high plateau of East Siberia, which, virtually, are still passing through the Lacustrine period; but the total area now under water bears but a trifling proportion to the vast surface .which the lakes covered even at a very recent period, when Neolithic man inhabited Siberia.

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  • Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another.

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  • The wound was trifling and would probably have been cured with ease if he had been allowed to employ an English doctor whom he trusted.

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  • The surface of the vessel may be hard, but the vessel is liable to fracture on receiving a trifling shock.

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  • Upon this apparently trifling question arose a controversy which lasted many years, occupied several universities, and led to the interposition of personages no less important than the pope and the emperor, but which is thought to have largely contributed to the final downfall of the Arabian medicine.

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  • There have been since that time some trifling outbreaks on the part of agitators allied with the extreme republican element, but at no time was the security of the government in danger.

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  • Trifling acts of her father are described at length in exaggerated terms, while little notice is taken of important constitutional matters.

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  • The want of a central government opelated injuriously, for it often happened that intricate negotiations and solemn treaties between several sovereign states were required before a line could be constructed; and, moreover, the course it was to take was often determined less by the general exigencies of commerce than by many trifling interests or desires of neighboring states.

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  • She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.

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