Petty Quotes - Page 6

• How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sweet, Nature, Morning

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes”, p.121, Race Point Publishing

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• You cannot have a good character today and at the same time have a small mind and a little heart. You cannot have a good character today and be merely a petty reformer.

  A. Powell Davies

  Heart, Character, Mind

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• Let us be done with the notion that religion is confined to petty pieties and small constraints. All too often people who have possessed these pieties have wrought great evil.

  A. Powell Davies

  People, Evil, Religion

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• The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.

  Harold S. Kushner

  Hurt, Believe, Upset

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• I don't think there's a petty system of heaven and hell. The love of God is much more forgiving. I'm not a believer in a wrathful God at all.

  Susan Sarandon

  Thinking, Heaven, Forgiving

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• A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction.
  You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Military, Men, Order

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• By removing that which is petty and self-seeking, we bring forth all that is glorious and mindful of the whole.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Self, Mindfulness, Glorious

  Eknath Easwaran (2010). “Timeless Wisdom: Passages for Meditation from the World's Saints and Sages”, p.13, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• the writer must resist this temptation [to quote] and do his best with his own tools. It would be most convenient for us musicians if, arrived at a given emotional crisis in our work, we could simply stick in a few bars of Brahms or Schubert. Indeed many composers have no hesitation in so doing. But I have never heard the practice defended; possibly because that hideous symbol of petty larceny, the inverted comma, cannot well be worked into a musical score.

  Ethel Smyth

  Emotional, Practice, Temptation

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• The Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran.

  Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

  Past, America, Rights

  "The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77". Book by Asadollah Alam, p. 535, 1991.

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• the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

  Gertrude Atherton

  Reality, Wings, Long

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• What was the function of poetry if not to improve the petty, cautious minds of evasive children?

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Children, Poetry, Mind

  Bharati Mukherjee (2007). “The Middleman and Other Stories”, p.194, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The Hindu marriage may be described as the union of two families. In this union, there is no room for petty ambitions and personal ego-trips. What is involved is love for the entire family that one is marrying into.

  Dada Vaswani

  Love, Ambition, Two

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• Do no evilness because it is a small one; do not leave a small deed undone because it is just a petty one.

  Liu Bei

  Deeds, Undone, Evilness

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• Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us; from all the petty vexations that meet us; from the sin-promptings that assail us; from the world-sirens that lure us to ill

  Frances Sargent Osgood

  Sorrow, World, Sirens

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• Have a policy of pre-emptive forgiveness. Refuse to get offended by petty things. Make a decision early on to cut the other person some slack in everyday life. Then you can take comfort in knowing they'll do it for you, as well. Accepting each other, flaws and all, is what love is all about.

  Gaelen Foley

  Cutting, Love Is, Knowing

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• As for the petty little world of journalism, the media demonstrates how it, more than anyone, is careful to traffic only in authorized ideas and wares; while at the same time it fosters, through its antics, the illusion of a free circulation of ideas and opinions - not unlike jesters in a tyrant's court.

  Robert Faurisson

  Media, Tyrants, Ideas

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• A man who has once perceived, however temporarily and however briefly, what makes greatness of soul, can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what fate may have in store for him. The man capable of greatness of soul will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fate, Blow, Greatness

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.132, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.

  Xunzi

  Believe, Animal, Men

  Xunzi (1999). “Xunzi”

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• Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

  Mao Zedong

  Struggle, Class, Wings

  "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works".

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• I believe that they were brave people. One should be of courageous character to do what they had done, not only this, one should be a person of strong character and bravery - not ordinary people. That what I would call them. It's not like some petty official or something that decided to defect to the other side. For them it was a very serious moment.

  Vladimir Semichastny

  Strong, Believe, Character

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• If Nature here wishes to make a mountain, she runs a range for five hundred miles; if a plain, she levels eighty; if a rock, she tilts five thousand feet of strata on end; our skies are higher and more intensely blue; our waves larger than others; our rivers fiercer. There is nothing measured, small nor petty in South Africa.

  Olive Schreiner

  Running, Rocks, Blue

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• Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

  Paul Fussell

  Strong, Military, Discipline

  "Private Ryan was a hero, but there were bums, too" by Stephen Ambrose, www.cnn.com. August 5, 1998.

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• Beware of those who attribute petty instructions to God.

  Abdul Sattar Edhi

  Instruction, Attributes

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• Only the luckless, the petty or the deranged [end] up in court.

  Adam Haslett

  Ends, Court, Deranged

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• Fill your brain with giant dreams so it has no space for petty pursuits.

  Robin Sharma

  Dream, Space, Brain

  FaceBook post by Robin Sharma from Jan 29, 2013

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