Pettiness Quotes - Page 2

• The Constitution gives us a standard to follow. We cannot define impeachable offenses to a greater degree than the language of the Constitution. But we all agree the issue is the public trust. Our duty is not to punish anyone. And our challenge is to avoid pettiness.

  Asa Hutchinson

  Issues, Giving, Challenges

  "Transcript: House Judiciary Committee meeting", www.cnn.com. October 5, 1998.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Mean, Eye, Yellow

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History”, p.87

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.

  Simone Weil

  Stress, Writing, Biographies

  9 Copy quote

• Always in all my books I'm trying to reveal or help to reveal the hidden greatness of the small, of the little, of the unknown - and the pettiness of the big.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Book, Greatness, Trying

  13 Copy quote

• I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.

  Kevin Costner

  Wall, Believe, People

  "Keeper of the flame" by Jonathan Freedland, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2001.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some young folks have wind-fall minds, prematurely detached from the tree of knowledge for a life-long sourness and pettiness.

  George Iles

  Fall, Science, Wind

  8 Copy quote

• Poor fool! in whose petty estimation all things are little.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Littles, Fool, Poor

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.32, e-artnow

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens... . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature's depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.

  A. D. Gordon

  Flower, Land, Roots

  33 Copy quote

• You must realize that if you are going to reach the heights you have been called to reach, you may elicit some criticism from those who are jealous, petty or angry because they were left behind.

  T. D. Jakes

  Jealous, Criticism, May

  T. D. Jakes (1999). “Maximize the Moment: God's Action Plan for Your Life”, Putnam Publishing Group

  225 Copy quote

  Show source

• The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.

  Gore Vidal

  Drama, Self, Has Beens

  Gore Vidal, Donald Weise (1999). “Gore Vidal: Sexually Speaking, Collected Sex Writings”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big.

  Emma Goldman

  Bigs, Broads, Breadth

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.150, Sheba Blake Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pettiness seems to go hand in hand with vindictiveness. The smaller the person, the larger the need for revenge. This may account for the fact that some consensual crimes have stiffer penalties than do most crimes with innocent victims.

  Peter McWilliams

  Revenge, Hands, Needs

  Peter McWilliams (1993). “Ain't nobody's business if you do: the absurdity of consensual crimes in a free society”, Mary Book / Prelude Pr

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Tao has no place for pettiness, and nor has Virtue. Pettiness is dangerous to Virtue; pettiness is dangerous to the Tao. It is said, rectify yourself and be done.

  Zhuangzi

  Done, Tao, Virtue

  7 Copy quote

• A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

  Eric Hoffer

  Wall, Real, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• We overcome the accuser of our brothers and sisters, we overcome our consciences, we overcome our bad tempers, we overcome our defeats, we overcome our lusts, we overcome our fears, we overcome our pettiness on the basis of the blood of the Lamb.

  D. A. Carson

  Brother, Blood, Lust

  15 Copy quote

• You are chosen to be faithful women of God in our day, to stand above pettiness, gossip, selfishness, lewdness, and all other forms of ungodliness. Recognize your divine birthright as daughters of our Heavenly Father.

  Howard W. Hunter

  Daughter, Father, Gossip

  9 Copy quote

• How full of trifles everything is! It is only one's thoughts that fill a room with something more than furniture.

  Wallace Stevens

  Rooms, Furniture, Trifles

  "Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens" edited by Holly Stevens, (Ch. 9), 1977.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think now it's a very odd time in politics. It should be mostly about good governing. We need a government, not politics. Because there's too much politics. Of course there should be debate. But there seems to be so much pettiness and not enough good faith. It is civilized to agree to disagree and this idea is slowly disintegrating. The great statesmen of the past knew this, and I think it helps drive civilization.

  Daphne Guinness

  Past, Thinking, Helping

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today I offer a prayer of forgiveness:
  forgive the pettiness of my ingratitude...
  the absence of profound thankfulness.

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  Prayer, Butterfly, Profound

  Mary Anne Radmacher (2008). “Live Boldly: Cultivate the Qualities That Can Change Your Life”, p.33, Conari Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the absence of a great dream pettiness prevails. Shred visions foster risk taking, courage and innovation. Keeping the end in mind creates the confidence to make decisions even in moments of crisis.

  Peter Senge

  Dream, Decision, Innovation

  11 Copy quote

• Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Greed, Abuse, Power Of Love

  8 Copy quote

• We all have demons inside us, Nick. The Tsalagi have an old saying—every heart holds two wolves. One is the white wolf, who is made up of love, kindness, respect, decency, compassion, and all the things that are good in life. The black wolf is born of jealousy, hatred, pettiness, prejudice, vindictiveness, and all the poisons of the human personality. The two constantly war with each other for dominance. And one day, one wolf will overtake and devour the other.” - Acheron

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Kindness, War, Heart

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2013). “Inferno: Chronicles of Nick”, p.71, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think you are a liar because you think you know what is true. You think you feel what is true. But you do not yet know what you do feel and what you do know. Your desire and do not take; you love and are too afraid to feel your love; you conceal your vanity and pettiness from yourself; you are afraid to look into your soul and see what you are. That iis why i think you are a liar.

  Alison Croggon

  Liars, Love You, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!

  Frances Power Cobbe

  Sex, Men, Vanity

  Frances Power Cobbe (1882). “The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think I was a little disappointed in her. I expected then people to be more of a piece than I do now, and I was distressed to find so much vindictiveness in so charming a creature. I did not realize how motley are the qualities that go to make up a human being. Now I am well aware that pettiness and grandeur, malice and charity, hatred and love, can find place side by side in the same human heart.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Heart, Thinking, People

  W. Somerset Maugham (2012). “The Moon and Sixpence”, p.44, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

  Show source