Word: tritely
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...must remain for people a wild and impossible conjecture. Most people, with casual cowardice, do not contemplate death as they approach it. The result of the mind's bouncing, like a tennis ball, between the racquets of Life and Death, is usually expressed completely, inarticulately, paradoxically, in the trite phrase: "What does it all matter?" Having reached this point, normal people have breakfast; abnormal people kill themselves...
...plot is neither new nor many-sided. Only a writer of M. Maurois' taste and charm could have kept out of all danger of becoming trite or tiresome. Under his pen the story keeps up one's expectant interest although it never becomes absorbing. His chapters often glint with quiet humor as when "Daddy Leroy", and old mill-hand, is perched on a pile of cloth, holding a pistol to his head, and his superiors discuss the pros and cons of suicide with him, while his fellow hands sit by with their fingers in their ears...
...again encounter overt U. S. curiosity about his fancy waist and waistcoats, his night-club complexion, his affinities and affectations. He will not feel whole literary cocktail parties hanging on his lightest utterance, for it is well agreed now what he can and cannot say; what a pleasantly trite clam he is sometimes and how low he once brought bold Edna .Ferber in a single exchange of shots about looking feminine.** He will be permitted to enjoy himself and the U. S. this time and his real friends, of whom he made quite a number, will see something...
...only this kind of writing, but any writing having to do with war, has become trite and hackneyed. It is one of the unfortunate consequences of the last decade. A dead and dangerous apathy is the result. If war is ever to be outlawed, if the ringing phrases of President Wilson are to become more than effective recruiting slogans, there can be no such thing as overemphasis of peace...
...racoons--and Eleanora Sears awalking. From Boston to Providence, from the Biltmore to Beacon Street and all the time with swinging arms and vigorous stride. Like hour exams Miss Sears' pedestrian expeditions have become traditional, if superfluous. She walks fastest who walks alone degenerates not only into a trite axiom but even into a prevarication when Miss Sears takes to the road; a tennis star and four--count 'em four--pacers accompany her, and behind trail two "massive automobiles". This is walking de luxe. But if Trudie merits a jazz band why not pacers and motors for Eleanora...