Puny Quotes

The outward work will never be puny if the inward work is great. (Meister Eckhart)
There seems to be no end to the senseless wickedness done on this little planet in a minor solar system, and we puny mortals appear to be decreasing in importance so far as the universe is concerned. View quote
Alec Guinness
The Now, that indivisible point which studs the length of infinite line Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine. View quote
Richard Francis Burton
Strong as it looks at the outset, State-agency perpetually disappoints every one. Puny as are its first stages, private efforts daily achieve results that astound the world. View quote
Herbert Spencer
The true beauty of nature is her amplitude; she exists neither for nor because of us, and possesses a staying power that all our nuclear arsenals cannot threaten (much as we can easily destroy our puny selves). View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
Only puny secrets need protection. Big secrets are protected by public incredulity. View quote
Marshall McLuhan
My dreams have become puny with the reality my life has become. View quote
Imelda Marcos
In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: "Help me!" View quote
Victor Hugo
Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest... View quote
James Branch Cabell
Even the largest of my dreams and ambitions, I realize with increasing dismay, were puny, measly, compared to the object of my dreaming. I would not say my life to date has been built overmuch of compromise, but still, it surrounds me. View quote
Rick Bass
In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and the clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only parts of that unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to the common eye seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air. (James Frazer)
For fourteen years, the secularists had worked hard to keep the lid on the Ayodhya evidence and they didn't want some puny radar scanner or muddy-handed archaeologist to bring the facts to light and thereby expose their mendaciousness. View quote
Koenraad Elst
There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly. View quote
Alfred North Whitehead
The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials. View quote
Henry Miller
Conceit is the finest armor that a man can wear. Upon its smooth, impenetrable surface the puny dagger-thrusts of spite and envy glance harmlessly aside. Without that breast-plate the sword of talent cannot force its way through the battle of life, for blows have to be borne as well as dealt. View quote
Jerome K. Jerome
Cocoa? Cocoa! Damn miserable puny stuff, fit for kittens and unwashed boys. Did Shakespeare drink cocoa? View quote
Shirley Jackson
A puny body weakens the soul. View quote
Paul Cézanne
How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words! View quote
Vladimir Nabokov
Our puny sentimentalism has caused us to forget that a human life is sacred only when it may be of some use to itself and to the world. View quote
Helen Keller
There are things of such darkness and horror-just, I suppose, as there are things of such great beauty-that they will not fit through the puny human doors of perception. View quote
Stephen King
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we are. (Carl Sagan)
We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The name of the new religion,” said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. "The flag of that church will be blue and gold,” said Rumfoord. "These words will be written on that flag in gold letters on a blue field: Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself. "The two chief teachings of this religion are these,” said Rumfoord: "Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God. View quote
Kurt Vonnegut
What," said I, "does the puny creature mean by 'it'?" "He means himself," said the Sphere: "have you not noticed before now, that babies and babyish people who cannot distinguish themselves from the world, speak of themselves in the Third Person? But hush!" "It fills all Space," continued the little soliloquizing Creature, "and what It fills, It is. What It thinks, that It utters; and what It utters, that It hears; and It itself is Thinker, Utterer, Hearer, Thought, Word, Audition; it is the One, and yet the All in All. Ah, the happiness ah, the happiness of Being!" "Can you not startle the little thing out of its complacency?" said I. "Tell it what it really is, as you told me; reveal to it the narrow limitations of Pointland, and lead it up to something higher." "That is no easy task," said my Master; "try you. View quote
Edwin Abbott Abbott
I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God's grace and Christ's help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires. View quote
Malcolm Muggeridge