Littleness Quotes - page 2

We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness. (Teresa of Ávila)
We shall never learn to know ourselves except by endeavoring to know God; for, beholding His greatness we realize our own littleness; His purity shows us our foulness; and by meditating upon His humility we find how very far we are from being humble. View quote
Teresa of Ávila
In this our social state, where petty cares And mercenary interests only look Upon the present's littleness, and shrink From the bold future, and the stately past,-. View quote
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars. View quote
Mary Renault
When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests. View quote
Maria Mitchell
It has sunk him, I cannot say how much it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!-None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that distain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life. View quote
Jane Austen
Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer it dignifies meanness it magnifies littleness to what is contemptible, it gives authority to what is law, exaltation. View quote
Charles Caleb Colton
Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities. Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent. Live fully, live passionately, live disastrously. Let's live, you and I, as none have ever lived before. - to Vita Sackville-West, October 25, 1918. View quote
Violet Trefusis
I am not so wonderful but that in the hour of my triumph I am frightened by my own littleness. View quote
James Branch Cabell
Hatred is the vice of narrow souls they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician. On leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more than a state of dependance, I viewed the greatness and the littleness of the court with contempt, the frivolities of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with indignation. The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself tranquil only when sailing between the continent whose powers I had braved, and that where, although our arrival and our ultimate success were problematical, I could, at the age of nineteen, take refuge in the alternative of conquering or perishing in the cause to which I had devoted myself. (Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette)
It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that. How many have tried, because of him? Not only those I have seen; there will be men to come. Those who look in mankind only for their own littleness, and make them believe in that, kill more than he ever will in all his wars. View quote
Mary Renault
It needeth us to have knowing of the littleness of creatures and to hold as nought all-thing that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest. God willeth to be known, and it pleaseth Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us. And this is the cause why that no soul is rested till it is made nought as to all things that are made. When it is willingly made nought, for love, to have Him that is all, then is it able to receive spiritual rest. View quote
Julian of Norwich
Yet instant to fore-shadowed need ⁠The eternal balance swings; ⁠That winged men the Fates may breed ⁠So soon as Fate hath wings. ⁠⁠These shall possess ⁠⁠Our littleness, ⁠And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay ⁠Up our lives' all to piece one giant day. View quote
Rudyard Kipling
She seemed to have had a sudden terrible glimpse of life as it really was, and was ready to weep at the thought of its strange dusty littleness. View quote
J. B. Priestley