Triviality

A picture must not be invented but felt. Observe the form exactly, both the smallest and the large and do not separate the small from the large, but rather the trivial from the important. ~ Caspar David Friedrich

Triviality is the quality of being trivial or unimportant.

Quotes

• Exceptional fortunes are built up in industries with very little connection to our sincere and significant needs, industries where it is difficult to escape from the disparity between a seriousness of means and a triviality of ends.
  • Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 103

• A picture must not be invented but felt. Observe the form exactly, both the smallest and the large and do not separate the small from the large, but rather the trivial from the important.
  • Caspar David Friedrich, as quoted in The Romantic Imagination: Literature and Art in England and Germany (1996) by Fredrick Berwick and Jürgn Klein

• Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.
  • Herman Hesse, Hermine in Steppenwolf, B. Creighton, trans., (New York: 1990), p. 151

• Our triviality is proportionate to the seriousness with which we take ourselves.
  • Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition (2006), #176

• 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, “Life without Principle”