It is ill mistaking in matters of importance. [ Proverb ]

Teaching is of more importance than exhortation. [ Luther ]

Airs of importance are the credentials of impotence. [ Lavater ]

In war events of importance are the result of trivial causes. [ Caesar ]

Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance. [ Shenstone ]

He who gives himself airs of importance, exhibits the credentials of impotence. [ Lavater ]

Ridicule often settles matters of importance better and more effectually than severity. [ Horace ]

The wise man will commit no business of importance to a proxy when he may do it himself. [ L'Estrange ]

We are disgusted by gossip; yet it is of importance to keep the angels in their proprieties. [ Emerson ]

To judge of the real importance of an individual, one should think of the effect his death would produce. [ Levis ]

I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance. [ Paley ]

A creation of importance can be produced only when its author isolates himself; it is ever a child of solitude. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance. [ Matthew Arnold ]

What wonderful things are events! The least are of greater importance than the most sublime and comprehensive soeculations. [ Beaconsfield ]

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained. [ James A. Garfield ]

I am not aware that payment, or even favors, however gracious, bind any man's soul and conscience in questions of highest morality and highest importance. [ Charles Kingsley ]

In love, the importance lies in the beginning. The world knows well that whoever takes one step will take more: it is important, then, to take the first step well. [ Fontanelle ]

The all importance of clothes has sprung up in the intellect of the dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius; he is inspired with clothes, a poet of clothes. [ Carlyle ]

There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is plain as noon to all other eyes. [ Rev. Dr. Croly ]

There is nothing of which men are more liberal than their good advice, be their stock of it ever so small; because it seems to carry in it an intimation of their own influence, importance, or worth. [ Young ]

All reasoning is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts and principles previously known. This will show the very great importance of knowledge, especially of that kind called experience. [ J. Foster ]

God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinction? [ Jeffrey ]

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences. [ Fenelon ]

The wisest of us must, for by far the most part, judge like the simplest; estimate importance by mere magnitude, and expect that which strongly affects our own generation, will strongly affect those that are to follow. [ Carlyle ]

Good people do a great deal of harm in the world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Another underlying condition of contentment is not to take one's self, or even the affairs of life, too seriously. In looking back, every one can see how much unhappiness has been derived from an over-weening sense of one's importance. [ Henry D. Chapin ]

In composing, think much more of your matter than your manner. To be sure, spirit, grace, and dignity of manner are of great importance, both to the speaker and writer; but of infinitely more importance is the weight and worth of matter. [ Wirt ]

Civilized society feels that manners are of more importance than morals, and the highest respectability is of less value than the possession of a good chef. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for cold entrees, nor an irreproachable private life for a bad dinner and poor wines. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Let every mother consider herself as an instrument in the hands of Providence - let her reflect on the immense importance the proper education of one single family may eventually prove; and that, while the fruit of her labors may descend to generations yet unborn, she will herself reap a glorious reward. [ Miss Hamilton ]

Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe. to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals. [ Goldsmith ]

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. [ Willmott ]

My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]