Before I went we had eliminated the facile and banal explanation that the man was mad, and had fallen back upon the two inevitable alternatives: Crime and Disappointed Love.
J. D. Beresford. The Misanthrope in R. Chetwynd Hayes' Cornish Tales of Terror. Amazon
I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications.
That is complete nonsense because those offences encompass such banal things as walking around in the street with ordinary prescription drugs or, indeed, drugs that may be banned nationally, such as steroids, which are not exactly abused on a large scale.
The messages in fortune cookies are typically vague, banal and optimistic.
Maria Aspan, The New York Times, 8 October 2007. New York Times
It sounds banal to say we'll miss him, but, although you cannot leave a physical blank space in a newspaper, there will be a metaphorical one where his column used to run.
Daniel Finkelstein, The Observer, 21 October 2007.