meaning-in-context
I'm reading "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James, and I found the following two sentences.
"I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything," her aunt rejoined. "After that one needn't stand on trifles."
What does "one needn't stand on trifles" mean?
In the US, run for office is much more common than either run for election or stand for election. Consider this NGram (American English corpus):
Thus, if you are in the US, I'd agree with the correction you were suggested, especially since run for [office] can be and usually is used with the name of a specific office. Since your sentence talks about not just a generic election, but election to a lodge office, it seems a little redundant to say standing for election to a lodge office when you could just say running for a lodge office.
Addendum: Though this wouldn't really fit in the example sentence you gave, if you want a stock phrase of similar meaning that uses the word election, Americans often say that a person is up for election. e.g. "Bush was up for election in 2000, and again in 2004."
To make the grade simply means to meet some standard set. It does not refer to academic grading. The quote involving the public schools simply refers to whether they meet the standard or not.
Best Answer
To stand on something means to insist on something, to be particular about something in this sentence.
Trifles are trivial things, things that are of little importance.
Hence your sentence means after that, it is unnecessary to be particular about trivial things. I don't know the story, which is why I don't know exactly why her aunt says this. Perhaps she means that refusing a lord increases a woman's status so much that, afterwards, one may safely risk some loss of status due to less reputable behaviour. Or perhaps it is just that, after this important event, anything else probably fades in comparison.