Petty Quotes - Page 5

• Guilt is petty; I am above guilt.

  Susan Cheever

  Guilt

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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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• Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
  And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
  For who would live so petty and unblest
  That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
  Rather than, screened by safe majority,
  Preserve his little life to little end,
  And never raise a rebel cry!

  John Galsworthy

  Sky, Majority, Rebel

  John Galsworthy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of John Galsworthy (Illustrated)”, p.7107, Delphi Classics

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• The Master said, “The gentleman understands what is right, whereas the petty man understands profit.” (Analects 4.16)

  Confucius

  Men, Gentleman, Masters

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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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• But like infection is the petty thought: it creeps and hides, and wants to be nowhere--until the whole body is decayed and withered by the petty infection... Thus spoke Zarathustra.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Body, Want, Infection

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Great necessity elevates man, petty necessity casts him down

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Casts

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• A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.

  Novalis

  Men, Solitude, Mind

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• A man has only a limited number of ways in which he can express strong emotions or violent passions. He uses the same gestures as when what he feels is only petty and unimportant. He utters the same ordinary words.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Strong, Passion, Men

  Tadeusz Borowski (1976). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• If someone is being unkind or petty or jealous or distant or weird, you don't have to take it in. You don't have to turn it into a big psychodrama about your worth. That behavior so often is not even about you. Don't own other people's crap.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Jealousy, Often Is, People

  Cheryl Strayed (2015). “Brave Enough: A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul”, p.82, Atlantic Books Ltd

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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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• 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 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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• I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

  E. M. Forster

  Hate, Stupidity, Unselfishness

  E. M. Forster (2014). “Great Novels of E. M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End”, p.71, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• To mourn deeply for the death of another loosens from myself the petty desire for, and the animal adherence to life. We have gained the end of the philosopher, and view without shrinking the coffin and the pall.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Death, Animal, Views

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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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• 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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• There is a sort of natural instinct of human dignity in the heart of man which steels his very nerves not to bend beneath the heavy blows of a great adversity. The palm-tree grows best beneath a ponderous weight, even so the character of man. There is no merit in it, it is a law of psychology. The petty pangs of small daily cares have often bent the character of men, but great misfortunes seldom. There is less danger in this than in great good luck.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Character, Good Luck, Adversity

  Lajos Kossuth (1852). “Proceedings, Speeches,&c. at the Dinner given to Louis Kossuth at the National Hotel, Washington, Jan. 7, 1852”, p.3

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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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