Petty Quotes - Page 4

• ... it is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind.... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas.

  Alice Foote MacDougall

  Spiritual, Lonely, Business

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• The irrevocable Hand
  That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut
  The portals of our earthly destinies;
  We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors
  Close after us, for ever.
  
  Pause, my soul,
  On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound
  Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise
  Our human moans make on the shores of Time.
  O Thou that openest, and no man shuts;
  That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Destiny, Men, Doors

  "Poems" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, ("April"), 1859.

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• I'm an environmentalist, and I don't want you to have a disposable aluminum can. I sure as hell don't want to have a disposable worker and I don't care who you vote for. You've got to have that as a moral position. Otherwise, my concern is, all we are is this petty interest group people who can't say anything back to a petty interest group of white nationalism.

  Van Jones

  White, People, Say Anything

  Source: pen.org

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• It has well been said that the arch-flatterer, with whom all petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self.

  Francis Bacon

  Men, Self, Arches

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• The tea party had a lot of nasty tactics that were needlessly aggressive and petty and scary. But they proved it is indeed possible for a committed, relatively small number of folks across the country to make Congress listen to them and to slow and stop an agenda.

  Ezra G. Levin

  Country, Party, Small Numbers

  Source: m.motherjones.com

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• I think there's a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians, but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty, who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver, but he's also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

  John Shelton Reed

  Nice, Successful, Thinking

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• The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Self, Expression, Greed

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• In an interview with a journalist, you look petty taking the pot shot but in a slick ad you can really do damage - including unfair damage - from afar. It is not that much different than waging a war by a drone than by hand-to-hand combat.

  Greta Van Susteren

  War, Hands, Afar

  "Candidate Fundraising: Is This All Messed Up, or Am I Wrong?" by Greta Van Susteren, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 13, 2012.

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• Have we not all, amid life's petty strife, / Some pure idea of a noble life / That once seemed possible?

  Adelaide Anne Procter

  Ideas, Noble, Strife

  Adelaide Anne Procter (1861). “Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses”, p.15

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• It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Distance, Government, Rome

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• We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Character, Ideas, Two

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• Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Casts

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• Contentions fierce, Ardent, and dire, spring from no petty cause.

  Walter Scott

  Spring, Causes, Fierce

  Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott (1841). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart”, p.700

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• The weak are not a noble breed. Their sublime deeds of faith, daring, and self-sacrifice usually spring from questionable motives. The weak hate not wickedness but weakness; and one instance of their hatred of weakness is hatred of self. All the passionate pursuits of the weak are in some degree a striving to escape, blur, or disguise an unwanted self. It is a striving shot through with malice, envy, self-deception, and a host of petty impulses; yet it often culminates in superb achievements.

  Eric Hoffer

  Hate, Spring, Sacrifice

  Eric Hoffer (1963). “The Ordeal of Change”

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• The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Men, Vices, Deceit

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• I do not see why I should be polite to tyrants, who slobber of humanitarianism and think only of their own petty interests.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Thinking, Tyrants, Should

  "Science in a Free Society". Book by Paul Feyerabend, 1978.

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• Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?

  Shashi Tharoor

  Identity Politics, Vedas, Fundamentals

  Shashi Tharoor (2007). “The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone: Reflections on India, the Emerging 21st-century Power”, p.75, Penguin Books India

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• Artists should be aware that petty stroking could be the source of arrested productivity. An artist's job includes the avoidance of premature closure by the begged or gratuitous approval of others.

  Robert Genn

  Jobs, Artist, Approval Of Others

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• Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Past, Vices, Energy

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Three, Chapter XI, 1840.

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• The fact of the matter is that poor men do not often steal, and when they do, it is petty theft, something to eat or perhaps an item of clothing to keep them from the cold. Thieves are usually those who have something and want more.

  Louis L'Amour

  Men, Thieves, Want

  Louis L'Amour (2008). “Education of a Wandering Man”, p.19, Bantam

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• This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships - they can't. It interferes.

  Adriana Trigiani

  Men, Competition, Different

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• No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

  Edward Abbey

  Government, Clerks, Gadgets

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.18, RosettaBooks

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• The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.

  Norman Mailer

  Mean, Important, Today

  Norman Mailer, Michael Lennon (1988). “Conversations with Norman Mailer”, p.34, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Most men only commit great crimes because of their scruples about petty ones.

  Jean Francois Paul de Gondi

  Men, Crime, Scruples

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• But they were as different as fire and ice. Robert Kennedy thought Eugene McCarthy was pompous, petty, and venal. McCarthy thought Kennedy was a spoiled, unintelligent demagogue.

  Jack Newfield

  Fire, Ice, Different

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