Pettiness Quotes

• If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

  Martin Heidegger

  Anxiety, Faces, Existentialism

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• Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.

  George Will

  People, Purpose, Tendencies

  George F. Will (1992). “Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986-1990”

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• Those who occupy their minds with small matters, generally become incapable of greatness.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Greatness, Mind, Matter

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• Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

  Honore de Balzac

  Jealousy, Fear, Heart

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• In our daily life, we encounter people we are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying ere is so their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together.

  Margaret J. Wheatley

  Work, Anger, People

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• In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.

  Robert Fritz

  Dream, Absence, Learning Organization

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• Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year's time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings.

  Andre Maurois

  Life, Motivational, Real

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• Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.

  Madeleine de Souvre, marquise de Sable

  Believe, Ignorance, People

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• Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace.

  Brennan Manning

  Grace, Trying, Guilt

  Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.13, Multnomah

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• One of the gifts our planet gave us is to love completely. Without jealousy or insecurity or fear. Without pettiness. Without anger.

  Pittacus Lore

  Anger, Insecurity, Planets

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• It belongs to small-mindedness to be unable to bear either honor or dishonor, either good fortune or bad, but to be filled with conceit when honored and puffed up by trifling good fortune, and to be unable to bear even the smallest dishonor and to deem any chance failure a great misfortune, and to be distressed and annonyed at everything. Moreover the small-minded man is the sort of person to call all slights an insult and dishonor, even those that are due to ignorance or forgetfulness. Small-mindedness is accompanied by pettiness, querulousness, pessimism and self-abasement.

  Aristotle

  Ignorance, Men, Self

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• Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.

  Rob Brezsny

  Dream, Commitment, Heart

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.8, Frog Books

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• To the mean all becomes mean.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.194, Penguin

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• One thing must be avoided at all costs: narrow-mindedness, pedantry, dull pettiness.

  Bruno Schulz

  Cost, Dull, Avoided

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• A noble heart cannot suspect in others the pettiness and malice that it has never felt.

  Jean Racine

  Heart, Noble, Malice

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• Je sais de quelles petitesses meurent les plus grandes amours. I know how pettiness ruins the greatest loves.

  Jean Anouilh

  Greatest Love, Ruins, Plus

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• You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Men, Thinking, Important

  "Listen, Little Man!". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1948.

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• In larger things we are convivial; what causes trouble is the trivial.

  Richard Armour

  Causes, Corny, Trouble

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• Once you have been confronted with a life-and-death situation, trivia no longer matters. Your perspective grows and you live at a deeper level. There's no time for pettiness.

  Happy Rockefeller

  Life, Optimism, Perspective

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• The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy.

  Andre Gide

  Mind, Adoration, Blasphemy

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• It is only when we are very happy that we can bear to gaze merrily upon the vast and limitless expanse of water, rolling on and on with such persistent, irritating monotony, to the accompaniment of our thoughts, whether grave or gay.

  Baroness Orczy

  Gay, Water, Rolling

  Baroness Orczy (2013). “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, p.151, House of Stratus

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• Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Feelings, Alive, Inexplicable

  Sebastian Faulks (2007). “Engleby: A Novel”, Doubleday Books

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• When they are gay, the waves echo their gaiety; but when they are sad, then every breaker, as it rolls, seems to bring additional sadness, and to speak to us of hopelessness and of the pettiness of all our joys.

  Baroness Orczy

  Sadness, Gay, Echoes

  Baroness Orczy (2012). “The Scarlet Pimpernel”, p.140, Courier Corporation

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• We believe - we believe that, if we tell the people the truth, that they will act bigger than the pettiness we see in Washington, D.C. We believe it is possible to forge bipartisan compromise, and stand up for our conservative principles.

  Chris Christie

  Believe, People, Principles

  Speech at the Republican National Convention, www.foxnews.com. August 28, 2012.

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• When we play the part of a great man too much, we seem very small.

  Philippe Nericault Destouches

  Men, Play, Too Much

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