Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Little

"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor, but, even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." -

"Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility." -

"Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears." -

"There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest." -

"Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

"Revenge is the poor delight of little minds." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

"We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions." - Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz

"Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves - and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves." - Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

"Wealth is the mans, and the people are the ends. All our material riches will avail us little if we do not use them to expand the opportunities of our people." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

"Pity may represent little more than impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The experience of another is not valid for the understanding of reality. But the organized religions throughout the world are based on the experience of another and, therefore, are not liberating man but only binding him to a particular pattern that sets man against man. Each one of us has to start anew, afresh, for what we are, the world is. The world is not different from you and me. This little world of our problems, extended, becomes the world and the problems of the world." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present." - Walter Savage Landor

"He who follows the path of virtue becomes as a little child." -

"He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"How few are our real wants! How easy it is to satisfy them! Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable... He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"Trust him with little who, without proofs, trusts you with everything, or, when he has proved you, with nothing." - Johann Kaspar Lavater

"Often those who seek only license for their plundering, cry “liberty.” In the guise of this Old American ideal, men of vast economic domain would destroy what little liberty remains to those who toil. The liberty we seek is different. It is liberty fro common people - freedom from economic bondage, freedom from the oppressions of the vast bureaucracies of great corporations; freedom to regain again some human initiative, freedom that arises from economic security and human self-respect." - John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis

"Ah, how happy would many lives be if individuals troubled themselves as little about other people’s affairs as about their own!" - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

"It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men do when they don't have to." - Walter Linn

"There is little that can withstand a man who can conquer himself." - Louis XIV, aka Louis the Great or Sun King NULL

"A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn." - John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

"If, like Jacob, you trust God in little things, He may answer you by great things." - James Ramsay MacDonald

"Minds are cluttered from the age of six with the values of others - values which bear little relation to their own private capacities, needs and desires." - Marya Mannes

"Life is too short to be little." -

"Happiness has little to do with age, circumstances, health, wealth, learning or status. It follows as you become a part of life's solution rather than its problem." - Roy C. McLain

"Who are happy in marriage? Those with so little imagination that they cannot picture a better state, and those so shrewd that they prefer quiet slavery to hopeless rebellion." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"It is the same whether a man offers much or little, provided his heart is directed to Heaven." - Mishnah or The Mishnah NULL

"Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"It is easier to sacrifice great than little things." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and province, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, to rule, to lay up treasure, to build, are at most but little appendices and props." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

"The beginning of greatness is to be little, the increase of greatness is to be less, and the perfection of greatness is to be nothing." -

"Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way." -

"A word too little is better than a word too much." - J. C. Nevin

"An egotist is not a man who thinks too much of himself; he is a man who thinks too little of other people." - Joseph Fort Newton

"Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others." -

"'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"An empty mind is little different from an empty house. It, too, soon decays. Just as muscles die when not used, so the brain is weakened through idleness. It needs relaxation and entertainment. But it also needs exercise. It needs and must have work, or it will wither. It must be lived in." - Alden C. Palmer

"If one lives with Nature a little while, he soon recognizes the harmony of creation... Each of us is, therefore, an instrument of God. When one thinks of his humble self in this light, life takes on a more profound meaning." - Alden C. Palmer

"The pearl-oyster that contains the precious pearl is in itself of very little value, but it is essential for the growth of the pearl. The shell itself may prove to be of no use to the man who has got the pearl. So ceremonies and rites may not be necessary for him who has attained the Highest Truth - God." - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"All men need something to poetize and idealize their life a little - something which they value for more than its use and which is a symbol of their emancipation from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life." - Theodore Parker

"Nobody ever stubs his toe against a mountain. It's the little temptations that bring a man down." - I. L. Peretz, fully Isaac Leib Peretz, aka Yitskhok Leybush Pertez

"To be able to say how much you love is to love but little." - Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL

"The goal of wisdom is laughter and play - not the kind that one sees in little children who do not yet have the faculty of reason, but the kind that is developed in those who have grown mature through both time and understanding. If someone has experienced the wisdom that can only be heard from oneself, learned from oneself, and created from oneself, he does not merely participate in laughter: he becomes laughter itself." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

"Be patient in little things. Learn to bear the every-day trials and annoyances of life quietly and calmly, and then, when unforeseen trouble or calamity comes, your strength will not forsake you. There is much difference between genuine patience and sullen endurance, as between the smile of love, and the malicious gnashing of the teeth." - William Swan Plumer

"There is no study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it." - Alexander Pope

"What is it to be wise? 'Tis but to know how little can be known - to see all other's faults and feel our own." - Alexander Pope

"If you want to live more you must master the art of appreciating the little, everyday blessings in life. This is not altogether a golden world, but there are countless gleams of gold to be discovered in it if we give our minds to them." - Henry Alford Porter