“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”

— Oscar Wilde

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied t…" by Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

“Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.”

Quentin Crisp (1908–1999) writer, Actor

“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.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: 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.

“Your memories become fantasies if they are not shared,
and your life in all its triviality becomes a legend.”

Aleksandar Hemon Nowhere Man

Source: Nowhere Man

“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.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

“There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

“People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things.”

Alice Munro (1931) Canadian novelist

"Friend of My Youth", in Friend of My Youth https://books.google.com/books?id=JHO0R0im-WsC&pg=PT94 (1990)
Context: People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.
And they may get it wrong, after all. I may have got it wrong.