Insignificance Quotes - Page 4

• It needs more skill than I can tell
  To play the second fiddle well.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Play, Skills, Needs

  Spurgeon, Charles H. (2015). “The Salt Cellars”, p.300, Delmarva Publications, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's only one way for an individual to remain upright, not to fall to pieces, not to sink into the mire of self-oblivionorself-contempt. That's calmly to turn away from everything, to say, "Enough!" and, folding one's useless arms across one's empty breast, to retain the ultimate, the sole attainable virtue, the virtue of recognizing one's own insignificance.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fall, Self, Pieces

  16 Copy quote

• A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Cousin, Uncles, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.350, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space?

  Stanley Kubrick

  Writing, Men, Symphony

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophic argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with the apparent insignificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my reason for the faith that is in me; but my heart has always assured and reassured me that

  Daniel Webster

  Faith, Heart, Vastness

  Daniel Webster (1853). “The Life, Eulogy, and Great Orations of Daniel Webster”, p.32

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.

  Laura Marling

  Country, Book, Night

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.

  Joseph Conrad

  Believe, Ocean, Floating

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Selected Letters of Joseph Conrad”, p.145, Cambridge University Press

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great many persons are able to become Members of this House without losing their insignificance.

  Beverley Baxter

  House, Able, Losing

  1946 Speech, House of Commons.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationship between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos.

  Carl Jung

  Sex, Real, Men

  Carl Gustav Jung, Michael Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1970). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Civilization in transition”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is one thing that makes life mighty in its veriest trifles, worthy in its smallest deeds, that delivers it from monotony, that delivers it from insignificance. All will be great, nothing will be overpowering, when, living in communion with Jesus Christ, we say as He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Jesus, Meat, Deeds

  Alexander Maclaren (1873). “Sermons Preached in Manchester: third series”, p.282

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• When one becomes for an instant one's former self, that is to say different from what one has been for some time past, one's sensibility, being no longer dulled by habit, receives from the slightest stimulus vivid impressions which make everything that has preceded them fade into insignificance, impressions to which, because of their intensity, we attach ourselves with the momentary enthusiasm of a drunkard.

  Marcel Proust

  Past, Self, Different

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.537, Modern Library

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.

  Benjamin Graham

  Cost, Financial, Great Depression

  "Storage and Stability". Book by Benjamin Graham. Part II, Chapter IX, The Cost of the Reservoir Plan, p. 114, 1937.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ever since the Reformation, the case of legislation confining Catholics had been constructed primarily to protect a nervously Protestant against what was assumed to be a fifth column in its midst... Ministers believedm with some justice, that Catholics retained an attachment to their exiled co-religionists, the princes of the House of Stuart. After the Battle of Culloden had confirmed Jacobitism's insignificance, however, government attitudes towards Catholicism began perceptibly and logically to relax.

  Linda Colley

  Attitude, Government, Attachment

  5 Copy quote

• As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Eye, Numbers, Envy

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.190

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• it is not the inferiority of women that has caused their historical insignificance; it is rather their historical insignificance that has doomed them to inferiority.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Women, History, Historical

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.

  Agnes Repplier

  Church, Sides, Demand

  Agnes Repplier (1904). “Compromises”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation: but the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty.

  Hannah More

  Anger, Character, People

  Hannah More (1835). “The works of Hannah More”, p.106

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not quite true that there are no good letters written in America: among my own circle of correspondents there, there are ladies and gentlemen whose letters would stand a comparison with any for frankness, grace, and epistolary beauty of every kind. But I am not aware of any medium between this excellence and the boarding-school insignificance which characterizes the rest.

  Harriet Martineau

  School, Circles, America

  Harriet Martineau (1837). “Society in America”, p.110

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Animal, Safety, Giving

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Self Esteem, Men, Democracy

  262 Copy quote

• If you come from insignificance and when you die you return to insignificance, then nothing is significant now.

  Timothy Keller

  Return, Significant, Dies

  4 Copy quote

• I fear insignificance more than I fear failure.

  Orrin Woodward

  4 Copy quote

• If you consider the contribution of plumbing to human life, the other sciences fade into insignificance.

  James P. Gorman

  Technology, Human Life, Plumbing

  49 Copy quote

• I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Pride, Eminence

  "Libussa". Play by Franz Grillparzer. Act 2, 1848.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Quote from CARE OF THE SOUL...Thomas Moore ...to the soul, the most minute details and the most ordinary activities, carried out with mindfullness and art, have an effect far beyond their apparant insignificance.

  Thomas Moore

  Art, Soul, Ordinary

  22 Copy quote