You stand silent, incredulous, as over a platitude that borders on the Infinite.
For the old Anarchic Brute-gods it may be well enough, but it is a Platitude which Men should be above countenancing by their presence in it.
He saw phantasts all about him who refused to be reconciled to the gap between the infinitude of their longing and the platitude of their actual lot.
Homais and like figures Flaubert simply means to symbolize contemporary life and the immeasurable abyss of platitude in which it is losing itself through its lack of imagination and ideal.
Yet this same platitude exercises on him a horrid fascination.
It would not have seemed a platitude in the eighteenth century.
The writer probably meant merely that "fear is one of the causes of cruelty," and had he used a colourless abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged.
Question, hypothesis, lamentation, and platitude dance their allotted round and fill the ordained space, while Ignorance masquerades in the garb of criticism, and Folly proffers her ancient epilogue of chastened hope.
Our minor poets still wrote in the style of Pope, and the narrative shared honors with the moral platitude in popular regard.
When he opened his lips we waited always in the expectation of some ridiculous remark, even though it should clothe a platitude or a piece of good, common-sense advice.
When I awoke from my reverie the Reverend Mr. Platitude was quitting the apartment.
These illiterate boors, as he supposed them, caught him at once in a false concord, and Mr. Platitude had to slink home overwhelmed with shame.
Mr. Platitude was filled with wrath, and abused Dissenters in most unmeasured terms.
This being has some powers of conversation and some learning, but he carries the countenance of an arch villain; Platitude is evidently his tool.
Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; to his original folly was superadded a vast quantity of conceit.
I continued in my reverie for some time, and probably should have continued longer, had I not been suddenly aroused by the voice of Mr. Platitude raised to a very high key.
Such examples give a clear idea of the degree of base platitude that prestige can provoke.
What do they seek the fierce ice-flames of the stars in the platitude of arc-lights?
Everybody can repeat the platitude that the mob can be the greatest of all tyrants.
It was a platitude which they had always held in theory unexpectedly put into practice.
Lady Dainton was sitting on my left, and when opportunity offered I opened with a platitude on the economic position of woman.
It is a platitude just now worth repeating that the civilization of a people is indicated by the position accorded to its women.
For the old Anarchic Brute-gods it may be well enough; but it is a Platitude which Men should be above countenancing by their presence in it.
A platitude may be given an appearance of importance if uttered in an impressive manner, and it may be employed to suggest far more than it categorically affirms.
These two facts are appreciated by many nostrum exploiters and we find that they have adopted the impressive manner to secure attention, and the platitude to suggest far more than they could defend in direct statement.
These illiterate boors, as he had supposed them, caught him at once in a false concord, and Mr. Platitude had to slink home overwhelmed with shame.
This being has some powers of conversation and some learning, but carries the countenance of an arch villain; Platitude is evidently his tool.
Young Mr. Platitude did not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one: he went to college an ass, and returned a prig; to his original folly was superadded a vast quantity of conceit.
Once only I heard of him uttering a platitude and from any one else that platitude would have been a paradox.
Feldmarschall Browne firing up, belike, at some platitude past or coming, at some advice of his rejected, some imputation cast on him, or we know not what.
That's very British," said Martin, who could still mistake a platitude for an epigram.
Nothing could be a platitude in such a place and such an hour.
It seems a mere platitude to say that a man who can occupy his spare moments in writing or reading is likely to be happier and more even-tempered than one who is never seen with a book or a pen in his hand.
They tell us that George Sand had "a childishness in her ideas and a platitude of expression.
Madame Sand was extremely pleasant; she praised us a great deal, but with a childishness of ideas, a platitude of expression and a mournful good-naturedness that was as chilling as the bare wall of a room.
It was the vulgar, ordinary platitude of an Italian intimacy of this kind.
When a platitude they have blindly upheld seems about to betray them they fall on it and tear it to pieces.
This was a superior platitude because it came also under the index of good manners.
And finally platitude cautioned him indignantly against affronting three good women--a mother and two daughters--with the presence of one lately come from the flesh pots of Satan.
This is because a platitude is kept alive blindly and it must be destroyed blindly.
By viciously denouncing the one platitude they manage to assure themselves that all the others are all right.
When a platitude commits the offense of becoming obviously, too obviously, a lie or an incipient danger, people are of course overcome with the horrible doubt that all platitudes are lies and dangers.
Such a platitude from Beau Ripple can only have been provoked by the intensest despair.
