trite remark

In the speech, Wheeler discussed the debate over a particular temperance bill: “As I sat in the gallery noting the care and eagerness and anxiety of the leaders to secure its passage I could not help but think of that trite remark of Abraham Lincoln: ‘You can fool all of the people, some of the time.

“It was never a trite remark,” he said.

To save Mrs. Jackson and Betty from spasms, Dalrymple had warned them previously of Mr. Garth's coming, but the men, and Elmdale generally, were not thus enlightened, and some of them would certainly have bolted had they not seen "the new guv'nor" shaking hands with "the old guv'nor," and had not the latter stopped to greet Begonia Smith with the exceedingly trite remark: "Well, Smith, I'm not so dead as you thought me!"

"It is a trite remark," she began.

The latter, with a somewhat trite remark about the virtues of punctuality, led the way upstairs and threw open the door of his study.