paltriness

The mail was very late this time: hence the paltriness of this note.

He must see her as such a pigmy—how could he ever care for such paltriness?

Yet, surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguish is lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness.

The paltriness and vulgarity of these local broils and disaffections lend to his warning a more severe impressiveness.

The opportunity of contrasting the paltriness of earth with the sublimity and reality of the unseen was too great to be resisted.