Neither of the development of national life, nor of the clash of nations, did he really know anything that was not inessential and anecdotic.
Without mentally referring to the environment in which they lived, we cannot hope to penetrate below the inessential and temporary to the absolute and permanent value of their thought.
Elimination and suppression of inessential and relatively unimportant matters will enable him to set forth adequately, though in a few words, a story of real body and interest.
We judge by little, inessential things, we're exacting about unimportant trifles.
After a while he sat down, and she told him about it, with that faithfulness to inessential detail that marks her class.
The less he concentrates, the less is his real personality expressed; the weaker the will, the more evident the inessential and slovenly parts of his nature; the weaker the intelligence, the less adequate is his attempt to express himself.
Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between essential and inessential forms.
The critics of the preceding generations wasted their energies upon inessential details.
The detail may have been small, but it was not inessential when it could turn Tasker Jevons from the Grand Attack as he was turned that night.
VIII Norah has often told me that I exaggerated the importance of the Nougat Incident; that my weakness is a tendency to dwell with a morbid concentration on small, inessential details.
