Little pot,
Don't get hot
On the spot. [ Proverb ]

Little but good. [ French ]

Little attentions. [ French ]

Little gear, less care. [ Scotch Proverb ]

There is no little enemy. [ Franklin ]

Much bruit, little fruit. [ Proverb ]

A little pot is soon hot. [ Proverb ]

Little goods, little care. [ Proverb ]

Ask much to have a little. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A big head and little wit. [ Proverb ]

Little wealth, little care. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Much bran and little flour. [ Proverb ]

Little pots soon boil over. [ German Proverb ]

Great boaster, little doer. [ French Proverb ]

A great cry and little wool. [ Proverb ]

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower. [ Watts ]

Little said is soon amended. [ Proverb ]

Little goods are soon spent. [ Proverb ]

Enough words, little wisdom. [ Sallust ]

A little labor, much health. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Much law but little justice. [ Proverb ]

Little wealth, little sorrow. [ Proverb ]

Great braggers, little doers. [ Proverb ]

Love me little, love me long. [ Marlowe ]

Little moments make an hour.
Little thoughts a book,
Little seeds a tree or flower.
Water-drops a brook;
Little deeds of faith and love
Make a home for you above. [ Anonymous ]

Tarry-long brings little home. [ Proverb ]

A little man fells a tall oak. [ French Proverb ]

Great talkers are little doers. [ Proverb ]

I love God and little children. [ Jean Paul ]

Read my little fable:
He that runs may read.
Most can raise the flowers now,
For all have got the seed. [ Tennyson ]

Little pitchers have wide ears. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Great thieves hang little ones. [ German ]

Little strokes fell great oaks. [ Proverb ]

Little pigs eat great potatoes. [ Proverb ]

Where will I get a little page,
Where will I get a caddie? [ Thistle of Scotland ]

A little nonsense now and then,
Is relished by the best of men. [ Anon ]

Little chips light great fires. [ Proverb ]

Little bodies have great souls. [ Proverb ]

Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind. [ Prior ]

Dine on little, and sup on less. [ Cervantes ]

Little losses amaze, great tame. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A long harvest and a little corn. [ Proverb ]

He who loves little dares little. [ Proverb ]

Love me little, love me long,
Is the burden of my song;
Love that is too hot and strong
Burneth soon to waste;
Still I would not have thee cold,
Not too backward or too bold;
Love that lasteth till 'tis old
Fadeth not in haste. [ Old Ballad ]

One may see day at a little hole. [ Proverb ]

Infinite riches in a little room. [ Marlowe ]

Minds that have nothing to confer
Find little to perceive. [ Wordsworth ]

Little and often fills the purse. [ Proverb ]

Little serpents may bite mortally. [ Proverb ]

Little birds may pick a dead lion. [ Proverb ]

Fair and foolish, black and proud,
Long and lazy, little and loud. [ Proverb ]

Little things please little minds. [ Proverb ]

Tall oaks from little acorns grow. [ David Everett ]

What costs little is less esteemed. [ Proverb ]

Great fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em;
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
And so ad infinitum. [ Lowell ]

That which sufficeth is not little. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Much in earth but little in heaven. [ Proverb ]

Little souls on little shifts rely. [ John Dryden ]

Little bantams are great at crowing. [ Proverb ]

Little minds are vexed with trifles. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

No religion but blasphemes a little. [ Victor Hugo ]

A little instrument of mighty power. [ Cervantes ]

Sweet are the little brooks that run
O'er pebbles glancing in the sun.
Singing in soothing tones. [ Hood ]

Little boats should keep near shore. [ Franklin ]

In blissful dream, in silent night.
There came to me, with magic might,
With magic might, my own sweet love,
Into my little room above. [ Heine ]

Little wealth brings little trouble. [ Proverb ]

Little dew-drops of celestial melody. [ Carlyle, of Burns' songs ]

A little and good fills the trencher. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Make good cheese, if you make little. [ Proverb ]

Do as little as you can to repent of. [ Proverb ]

'Tis little we can do for each other. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

He needs little advice that is lucky. [ Proverb ]

The great put the little on the hook. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A little kitchen makes a large house. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A little with quiet is the only diet. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He that hath little is the less dirty. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Stay a little, and news will find you. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

No viper so little but hath its venom. [ Proverb ]

He that knows little often repeats it. [ Proverb ]

With little wit and ease to suit them,
They whirl in narrow circling trails,
Like kittens playing with their tails. [ Goethe ]

A little wood will heat a little oven. [ Proverb ]

Great businesses turn on a little pin. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He thought the World to him was known,
Whereas he only knew the Town;
In men this blunder still you find,
All think their little set - Mankind. [ Hannah More ]

No creature smarts so little as a fool. [ Pope ]

We forgive too little, forget too much. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep
A little out, and then,
As if they played at bo-peep,
Did soon draw in again. [ Robert Herrick ]

Too much spoils, too little is nothing. [ Proverb ]

Great trees keep under the little ones. [ Proverb ]

A retentive memory and little judgment. [ French Proverb ]

To contemplation's sober eye.
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly.
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay,
But flutter through life's little day. [ Gray ]

Mingle a little folly with your wisdom. [ Horace ]

See how the orient dew
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses
(Yet careless of its mansion new
For the clear region where it was born)
Round in itself incloses,
And in its little globe's extent
Frames, as it can, its native element. [ Andrew Marvell ]

Of a little thing a little displeaseth. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A little garden square and walled;
And in it throve an ancient evergreen,
A yew-tree, and all round it ran a walk
Of shingle, and a walk divided it. [ Tennyson ]

Politeness costs little and yields much. [ Mme. de Lambert ]

We say little if not egged on by vanity. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Ambition is not a vice of little people. [ Montaigne ]

Stop a little to make an end the sooner. [ Proverb ]

Ambition has but one reward tor all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name! [ William Winter ]

Who are a little wise the best fools be. [ Donne ]

It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And, ever widening, slowly silence all. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

To fine folks a little ill finely wrapt. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

I am a heavy stone,
Rolled up a hill by a weak child: I move
A little up, and tumble back again. [ W. Rider ]

Little opportunities should be improved. [ Fenélon ]

Little is done when every man is master. [ Proverb ]

Little pigeons can carry great messages. [ Proverb ]

Electric telegraphs, printing, gas,
Tobacco, balloons, and steam.
Are little events that have come to pass
Since the days of the old regime.
And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page,
I'd give - though it might seem bold -
A hundred years of the Golden Age
For a year of the Age of Gold. [ Henry S. Leigh ]

A lazy ox is little better for the goad. [ Proverb ]

A little stream will drive a light mill. [ Proverb ]

The great thieves punish the little ones. [ Proverb ]

Nature needs little; opinion exacts much.

We promise much, that we may give little. [ Vauvenargues ]

We seldom repent having eaten too little.

A single little word can strike him dead. [ Luther ]

The greatest oaks have but little acorns. [ Proverb ]

Good words are worth much and cost little. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

When to soft Sleep we give ourselves away,
And in a dream as in a fairy bark
Drift on and on through the enchanted dark
To purple daybreak - little thought we pay
To that sweet bitter world we know by day. [ T. B. Aldrich ]

A little ship needs not but a little sail. [ Proverb ]

Fancy requires much, necessity but little. [ German Proverb ]

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. [ William Shakespeare ]

A little string will tie up a little bird. [ Proverb ]

He enjoys much who is thankful for little.
A grateful mind is a great mind. [ Seeker ]

Poor folks must say thank ye for a little. [ Proverb ]

Little troubles are great to little people. [ Proverb ]

Love makes fools of us all, big and little. [ Thackeray ]

As many suffer from too much as too little. [ Bovee ]

One can live on little, but not on nothing. [ Proverb ]

Force without fore-cast is of little avail. [ Proverb ]

Rage is for little wrongs; despair is dumb. [ Hannah More ]

From little spark may burst a mighty flame. [ Dante ]

When mastiffs fight, little curs will bark. [ Proverb ]

Now our fates from unmomentous things
May rise like rivers out of little springs. [ Campbell ]

A little gall spoils a great deal of honey. [ French Proverb ]

A world of woes despatched in little space. [ Dryden ]

Little pains
In a due hour employ'd great profit yields. [ John Philips ]

A little barrel can give but a little meal. [ Proverb ]

Little fishes should not spout like whales. [ Proverb ]

A little more than kin, and less than kind. [ William Shakespeare ]

From every blush that kindles in thy cheeks.
Ten thousand little loves and graces spring
To revel in the roses. [ Nicholas Rowe ]

Who think too little, and who talk roo much. [ Drydeu ]

We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal. [ Sydney Smith ]

The little bee returns with evening's gloom,
To join her comrades in the braided hive,
Where, housed beside their mighty honeycomb,
They dream their polity shall long survive. [ Charles (Tennyson) Turner ]

But far more numerous was the herd of such,
Who think too little, and who talk too much. [ Dryden ]

The little birds have God for their caterer. [ Cervantes ]

Little drops of rain pierce the hard marble. [ Lily ]

A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffer'd, rivers cannot quench. [ William Shakespeare ]

An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;
Give him a little earth for charity! [ William Shakespeare ]

Oftentimes, excusing of a fault
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse;
As patches, set upon a little breach.
Discredit more in hiding of the fault,
Than did the fault before it was so patched. [ William Shakespeare ]

He little merits bliss who others can annoy. [ Thomson ]

Little folks like to talk about great folks. [ Proverb ]

Every man a little beyond himself is a fool. [ Proverb ]

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew,
The buttercups, the little children's dower. [ Robert Browning ]

A little bird is content with a little nest. [ Proverb ]

Drip, drip, the rain comes falling,
Rain in the woods, rain on the sea;
Even the little waves, beaten, come crawling
As if to find shelter here with me. [ James Herbert Morse ]

A little learning is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. [ Alexander Pope ]

What is it to be wise?
It is but to know how little can be known,
To see all others' faults, and feel our own. [ Pope ]

Man is made great or little by his own will. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

God oft hath a great share in a little house. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Avoid extremes, and shun the fault of such
Who still are pleased too little or too much. [ Pope ]

Then know, that I have little wealth to lose;
A man I am cross'd with adversity. [ William Shakespeare ]

Your little child is your only true democrat. [ Mrs. Stowe ]

A little evil contributes more to our misery. [ Proverb ]

Scorn no man's love, though of a mean degree;
Love is a present for a mighty king,--
Much less make any one thine enemy.
As guns destroy, so may a little sling. [ George Herbert ]

Little journeys and good cost bring safe home. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Let wealth come in by comely thrift,
And not by any sordid shift;
It is haste makes waste;
Extremes have still their fault.
Who gripes too hard the dry and slippery sand,
Holds none at all, or little, in his hand. [ Herrick ]

Little dogs start the hare, the great get her. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

The little wimble will let in the great auger. [ Proverb ]

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day. [ Lyte ]

At every trifle scorn to take offence;
That always shows great pride or little sense. [ Pope ]

To know the world, not love her, is thy point;
She give but little, nor that little long. [ Young ]

A little wind kindles, much puts out the fire. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Losses we are accustomed to, affect us little. [ Juv ]

They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad. [ William Shakespeare ]

Little consoles us because little afflicts us. [ Pascal ]

Half-witted fellows speak much and say little. [ Proverb ]

Shall he who soars, inspired by loftier views.
Life's little cares and little pains refuse?
Shall he not rather feel a double share
Of mortal woe, when doubly armed to bear? [ Crabbe ]

Not that the heavens the little can make great,
But many a man has lived an age too late. [ R. H. Stoddard ]

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame.
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurelled bard,
Those bold insurancers of deathless fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain. [ Blair ]

A little given seasonably excuses a great gift. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Lip honour costs little, yet may bring in much. [ Proverb ]

A little of every thing is nothing in the main. [ Proverb ]

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above. [ F. S. Osgood ]

He that desires but little has no need of much. [ Proverb ]

Little drops of water, little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.
Thus the little minutes, humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages of eternity. [ F. S. Osgood ]

Little things blame not: Grace may on them wait.
Cupid is little; but his godhead's great. [ Anon ]

Even bees, the little alms-men of spring bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. [ Keats ]

The careful insect 'midst his works I view,
Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew.
With golden treasures load his little thighs,
And steer his distant journey through the skies. [ Gay ]

That net that holds no great, takes little fish. [ R. Southwell ]

I love prudence very little, if it is not moral. [ Joubert ]

We talk little if we do not talk about ourselves. [ Hazlitt ]

Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth. [ St. James ]

The greatest wealth is contentment with a little. [ Proverb ]

Little by little the little bird builds its nest. [ Proverb ]

Oh! nature's noblest gift - my grey goosed quill:
Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will,
Torn from thy parent bird to form a pen,
That mighty instrument of little men! [ Byron ]

Dead! God, how much there is in that little word! [ Byron ]

Little difference between a feast and a bellyful. [ Proverb ]

It is pity you are not a little more tongue-tied. [ Proverb ]

Little knows the fat sow what the lean one means. [ Proverb ]

Men love little and often, women much and rarely. [ Basta ]

Those that are always angry, are little regarded. [ Proverb ]

Ability is of little account without opportunity. [ Napoleon I ]

Little griefs are loud, great sorrows are silent. [ Proverb ]

The great and the little have need of one another. [ Proverb ]

The little cannot be great, unless he devour many. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Our rural ancestors, with little blest,
Patient of labor when the end was rest,
Indulged the day that housed their annual grain,
With feasts, and offerings, and a thankful strain. [ Pope ]

There is a strength
Deep-bedded in our hearts, of which we reck
But little, till the shafts of heaven have pierced
Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent
Before her gems are found? [ Mrs. Hemans ]

Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel with smile or frown;
With that wild wheel we go not up or down;
Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

It is only in little matters that men are cowards. [ W. H. Herbert ]

Man loves little and often, woman much and rarely. [ Basta ]

He is a little chimney, and heated hot in a moment! [ Longfellow ]

Great industry and little conscience make one rich. [ German Proverb ]

You would be little for God if the devil were dead. [ Proverb ]

Praise without profit puts but little into the pot. [ Proverb ]

The art of making much show with little substance.. [ Macaulay ]

The common ingredients of health and long life are:
Great temperance, open air,
Easy labor, little care. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

When there is but little bread cut first if you can. [ Proverb ]

The great would have none great, and the little all. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Dress up even a little toad and it will look pretty. [ Proverb ]

Little dogs start the hare, but great ones catch it. [ Proverb ]

A little incense offered puts many things to rights.

A little, tiny, pretty, witty, charming darling she. [ Lucretius ]

Death, thou art infinite; it is life that is little. [ Bailey ]

Little minds, like weak liquors, are soonest soured. [ Proverb ]

Little wit in the head makes much work for the feet. [ Proverb ]

A man in pursuit of greatness feels no little wants. [ Emerson ]

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great. [ Voltaire ]

He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows. [ Fuller ]

There is little due to pleasure, but much to health. [ Proverb ]

Living requires but little life; doing requires much. [ Joubert ]

If you squeeze a cork, you will get but little juice. [ Proverb ]

Little girls are won with dolls, big ones with oaths. [ A. Ricard ]

Infidelities rupture love; little faults wear it out. [ Bussy-Rabutin ]

Little sticks kindle the fire, great ones put it out. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

These little things are great to little men.(Trifles) [ Goldsmith ]

You have a little wit, and it does you good sometimes. [ Proverb ]

Enjoy your little while the fool is in search of more. [ Spanish Proverb ]

A little loss alarms one, a great loss tames one down. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Where love is great the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Sc. 2 ]

Curiosity is a little more than another name for hope. [ J. G. and A. W. Hare ]

Little enemies and little wounds must not be despised. [ Proverb ]

He is a little man; let him go and work with the women! [ Longfellow ]

Choose such pleasures as recreate much and cost little. [ Fuller ]

You are like fig-tree fuel, much smoke and little fire. [ Proverb ]

He can give little to his servant that licks his knife. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A little debt makes a debtor, but a great one an enemy. [ Proverb ]

Little sticks kindle a fire, but great ones put it out. [ Proverb ]

In courtesy, rather pay a penny too much than too little. [ Proverb ]

Life is of little value unless it be consecrated by duty. [ Samuel Smiles ]

A good word for a bad one is worth much, and costs little. [ Proverb ]

He's a little fellow, but every bit of that little is bad. [ Proverb ]

Too much and too little occasions the troubles of mankind. [ Proverb ]

Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow. [ Horace ]

There would be no great ones if there were no little ones. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He can feel no little wants who is in pursuit of grandeur. [ Lavater ]

We are led on, like little children, by a way we know not. [ George Eliot ]

Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace.
Secret joys and secret smiles. Little pretty infant wiles. [ William Blake ]

Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes. [ Henry Home ]

He who lives but for himself lives but for a little thing. [ Barjaud ]

We laugh but little in our days, but are we less frivolous? [ Beranger ]

Little things console us, because little things afflict us. [ Pascal ]

We must recoil a little, to the end we may leap the better. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Obedience is much more seen in little things than in great. [ Proverb ]

Children, when little, make parents fools, when great, mad. [ Proverb ]

He is not poor that hath little, but he that desireth much. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Solitude cherishes great virtues, and destroys little ones. [ Sydney Smith ]

A little stream may quench thirst as well as a great river. [ Proverb ]

Silence is a fine jewel for a woman, but it is little worn. [ Proverb ]

Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor. [ Seneca ]

He who prays and bites has not a little of the devil in him. [ Lavater ]

There's little pleasure in the house When our gudeman's awa. [ W. J. Mickle ]

This world, where much is to be done and little to be known. [ Samuel Johnson ]

Little thieves have iron chains and great thieves gold ones. [ Dutch Proverb ]

It is better living on a little than outliving a great deal.

A man knows his companion in a long journey and a little inn. [ Proverb ]

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]

They are little to be feared, whose tongues are their swords. [ Proverb ]

The little dogs hunt out the hare, but the big ones catch it. [ Italian Proverb ]

Pedantry proceeds from much reading and little understanding. [ Steele ]

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men. [ Anonymous ]

A little wind kindles a great fire, a great one blows it out. [ Proverb ]

I wish you all sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste. [ Le Sage ]

Unmannerly a little, is better than troublesome a great deal. [ Proverb ]

Better a little fire to warm us, than a great one to burn us. [ Proverb ]

Little children, little sorrows; big children, great sorrows. [ Proverb ]

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little! [ Horace ]

A college education shows a man how little other people know. [ Haliburton ]

It is not great, but little good-haps that make up happiness. [ J. Paul F. Richter ]

Twenty to one offend more in writing too much than too little. [ Roger Ascham ]

Young authors give their brains much exercise and little food. [ Joubert ]

Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much shadow. [ Victor Hugo ]

Small faults indulged are little thieves, that let in greater. [ Proverb ]

It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

A little time may be enough to catch a great deal of mischief. [ Proverb ]

Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman's counsel. [ George Chapman ]

God grant you fortune, my son, for knowledge avails you little. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Without philosophy we should be little above the lower animals. [ Voltaire ]

Men speak but little when vanity does not induce them to speak. [ Rochefoucauld ]

There are cases where little can be said and much must be done. [ Johnson ]

Virtue would not go far, if a little vanity walked not with it. [ Proverb ]

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. [ J. Stuart Mill ]

Revenge is always the weak pleasure of a little and narrow mind. [ Juvenal ]

With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart. [ Tennyson ]

Some had rather guess at much, than take pains to hear a little. [ Proverb ]

Little wrongs done to others are great wrongs done to ourselves. [ Proverb ]

Old houses mended cost little less than new before they're ended. [ Gibber ]

One may surfeit with too much, as well as starve with too little. [ Proverb ]

He that waits upon another's trencher makes many a little dinner. [ Proverb ]

A world this in which much is to be done, and little to be known. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

A little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no relish of the sweet. [ Locke ]

We cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;
We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame;
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

He that is uneasy at every little pain is never without some ache. [ Proverb ]

The chapel is not so little, but the priest may say service in it. [ Proverb ]

Men never think their fortune too great, nor their wit too little. [ Proverb ]

If great men would have care of little ones, both would last long. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

There is no man, though never so little, but sometimes he can hurt. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Little books have their fates according to the taste of the reader. [ Maurus ]

Thou little thinkest what a little foolery governs the whole world. [ John Seliden ]

Who falls from all he knows of bliss, cares little into what abyss. [ Byron ]

Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of little children. [ Thackeray ]

He that makes a fire of straw hath much smoke, and but little warmth. [ Proverb ]

Little things console us, because little things afflict us. (Trifles) [ Pascal ]

When you have counted your cards, you will find you have little left. [ Proverb ]

Love, anger, pride and avarice all visibly move in those little orbs. [ Addison ]

Sufficiently provided from within, he has need of little from without. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe of the poet ]

Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Every day a little life, a blank to be inscribed with gentle thoughts. [ Rogers ]

I esteem the world as much as I can, and still I esteem it but little. [ Chamfort ]

Little kingdom is great household, and great household little kingdom. [ Bacon ]

Great cry but little wool, as the devil said when he shear'd his hogs. [ Proverb ]

A little rain will fill the lily's cup, which hardly moists the field. [ Edwin Arnold ]

He will always be a slave, who does not know how to live upon a little. [ Horace ]

A secret is too little for one, enough for two, and too much for three. [ Howell ]

A man's little the better for liking himself, if nobody else likes him. [ Proverb ]

When the lion's skin cannot prevail, a little of the fox's must be used. [ Lysander ]

Their little minim forms arrayed in all the tricksy pomp of fairy pride. [ Drake ]

Speak little and well, if you wish to be considered as possessing merit. [ From the French ]

He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model. [ South ]

It is a good friend that is always giving, though it be never so little. [ Proverb ]

Whose every little ringlet thrilled, as if with soul and passion filled! [ Moore ]

A child's service is little, yet he is no little fool that despiseth it. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

What we know here is very little, but what we are ignorant of is immense. [ La Place ]

As many suffer from too much as too little. A fat body makes a lean mind. [ Bovee ]

Literature is a fragment of a fragment, and of this but little is extant. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body. [ Swift ]

Too much painstaking speaks disease in one's mind, as much as too little. [ Carlyle ]

Little shame, little conscience, and much industry, will make a man rich. [ Proverb ]

Learn on how little man may live, and how small a portion nature requires. [ Lucan ]

Better one's House be too little one day, than too big all the year after. [ Proverb ]

An army abroad is of little use unless there are prudent counsels at home. [ Cicero ]

Whoever has not ascended mountains knows little of the beauties of Nature. [ William Hewitt ]

Trust him with little who, without proofs, trusts you with everything, or,
When he has proved you, with nothing. [ Lavater ]

The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little circumstances. [ Gibbon ]

Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for. [ Landor ]

The rose that lives its little hour is prized beyond the sculptured flower. [ Bryant ]

The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it. [ Goldoni ]

Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument. [ Dr. Watts ]

We think that not to live happily is not to live; then, how little we live!

Look about, my son, and see how little wisdom it takes to govern the world. [ Oxenstiern ]

Great evils one triumphs over bravely, but the little eat away one's heart. [ Mrs. Carlyle ]

Love will subsist on wonderfully little hope, but not altogether without it. [ Scott ]

Little waves with their soft white hands efface the footprints in the sands. [ Longfellow ]

We know accurately only when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases. [ Goethe ]

Nature never hurries; atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

From a choleric man withdraw a little; from him that says nothing, for ever. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Love, which is such a little thing, is still the most serious thing in life. [ Lemontey ]

You drink out of the broad end of the funnel, and hold the little one to me. [ Proverb ]

It is a little learning, and but a little, which makes men conclude hastily. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. [ Bible ]

Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house. [ Shenstone ]

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years. [ Tennyson ]

Fishes live in the sea, as men do land; the great ones eat up the little ones. [ William Shakespeare ]

By persisting in your path, though you forfeit the little, you gain the great. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

If you had as little money as manners, you would be the poorest of all your kin. [ Proverb ]

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it. [ Washington Irving ]

Little ones are taught to be proud of their clothes before they can put them on. [ Locke ]

I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others. [ Lord Greville ]

Riches are of little avail in many of the calamities to which mankind are liable. [ Cervantes ]

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues. [ Thoreau ]

There is very great necessity indeed of getting a little more silent than we are. [ Carlyle ]

Better is little, provided it is your own, than an abundance of borrowed capital. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

The brains of a fox will be of little service if you play with the paw of a lion. [ Proverb ]

Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses. [ Johnson ]

Why should we complain, since we are so little moved by the complaints of others? [ Alfred Bougeart ]

Prosperity seems to be scarcely safe, unless it be mixed with a little adversity. [ Hosea Ballou ]

The great would not think themselves demigods if the little did not worship them. [ Boiste ]

The sunshine of life is made up of very little beams that are bright all the time. [ Dr. John Aiken ]

It is better to have one friend of great value, than many friends of little value. [ Anaxarchus ]

Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay. [ Holmes ]

A man who pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less. [ Voltaire ]

Do you know a young and beautiful woman who is not ready to flirt - just a little? [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Oh, the little more, and how much it is! and the little less, and what worlds away! [ Browning ]

They praise my rustling show, and never see my heart is breaking for a little love. [ Christina G. Rossetti ]

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them. [ Washington Irving ]

To speak but little becomes a woman: and she is best adorned who is in plain attire. [ Democritus ]

Fortune is like a market, where many times if you wait a little the price will fall. [ Bacon ]

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little enjoyed. [ Johnson ]

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them. [ Goldsmith ]

Generally all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger better than travail. [ Bacon ]

He that goes continually abroad a borrowing, shews he has little at home of his own. [ Proverb ]

Women prefer us to say a little evil of them, rather than say nothing of them at all. [ A. Ricard ]

The look of a gentleman is little else than the reflection of the looks of the world. [ Hazlitt ]

If a man read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. [ Bacon ]

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty, by how little. [ W. K, Alger ]

Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age. [ John Dryden ]

How far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is better to pay and have but little left, than to have much and be always in debt. [ Proverb ]

Contentment, as it is a short road and pleasant, has great delight and little trouble. [ Epictetus ]

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems! [ Southey ]

There are no more thorough prudes than those women who have some little secret to hide. [ George Sand ]

We can only know a little, and the question is merely whether or not we know this well. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Heaps of huge words uphoarded hideously, with horrid sound, though having little sense. [ Spenser ]

Two persons will not be friends long if they cannot forgive each other little failings. [ La Bruyere ]

This little member can behold the earth, and in a moment view things as high as heaven. [ Charnock ]

A little philosophy leads men to despise learning; a great deal leads them to esteem it. [ Chamfort ]

There is no study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it. [ Pope ]

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little. [ Swift ]

A stern discipline pervades all Nature, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind. [ Spenser ]

Childien when they are little make parents fools, when they are great they make them mad. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing ]

What is this little, agile, precious fire, this fluttering motion which we call the mind? [ Prior ]

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called Conscience. [ George Washington ]

The sober comfort, all the peace which springs from the large aggregate of little things. [ Hannah More ]

The little done vanishes from the sight of man, who looks forward to what is still to do. [ Goethe ]

A little praise is good for a shy temper; it teaches it to rely on the kindness of others. [ Landor ]

People of a lively imagination are generally curious, and always so when a little in love. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

The most striking characters are sometimes the product of an infinity of little accidents. [ Danton ]

To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion. [ Helvetius ]

Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy. [ Young ]

I am little inclined to practice on others, and as little that they should practice on me. [ Sir W. Temple ]

A little learning is not a dangerous thing to one who does not mistake it for a great deal. [ Blanco White ]

There is no passion of the human heart that promises so much and pays so little as revenge. [ H. W. Shaw ]

There is a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, to keep watch for the life of poor Jack. [ Dibdin ]

Goethe said there would be little left of him if he were to discard what he owed to others. [ Charlotte Cushman ]

Live and learn; and indeed it takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning. [ John Ruskin ]

It is of very little use in trying to be dignified, if dignity is no part of your character. [ Bovee ]

A tight little bundle of wailing and flannel, Perplex'd with the newly found fardel of life. [ Fred. Locker ]

The truth is, we pamper little griefs into great ones, and bear great ones as well as we can. [ Hazlitt ]

I pack my troubles in as little compass as I can for myself, and never let them annoy others. [ Southey ]

Her feet beneath her petticoat like little mice stole in and out, as if they feared the light. [ Suckling ]

The physician owes all to the patient, but the patient owes nothing to him but a little money. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Little minds are too much wounded by little things; great minds see all, and are not even hurt. [ La Roche ]

Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without tears. [ Johnson ]

Let us be content, in work, to do the thing we CAN and not presume to fret because it's little. [ E. B. Browning ]

Truth lies at the bottom of a well, the depth of which, alas! gives but little hope of release. [ Democritus ]

He is truly great that is little in himself, and that maketh no account of any height of honors. [ Thomas a Kempis ]

An old proverb attributes happiness to him who expects little and thereby avoids disappointment. [ Henry D. Chapin ]

Take note of what you see, give heed to what you hear, and be silent. Judge little, inquire much. [ Platen ]

The little babe up in his arms he bent, who with sweet pleasure and bold blandishment 'gan smile. [ Spenser ]

Great men do not play stage tricks with the doctrines of life and death; only little men do that. [ John Ruskin ]

He that has too little wants wings to fly, he that has too much is encumbered with his large tail. [ Proverb ]

Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. [ Jesus ]

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that caprice lasts a little longer. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears. [ Johnson ]

Men's fame is like their hair, which grows after they are dead, and with just as little use to them. [ George Villiers ]

Harsh cousels have little or no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil. [ Helvetius ]

Sometimes there are accidents in our lives the skillful extrication from which demands a little folly. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Temperance is a tree which has for its root very little contentment, and for its fruit calm and peace. [ Buddha ]

Men who have great riches and little culture rush into business, because they are weary of themselves. [ Horace Greeley ]

Riches amassed in haste will diminish; but those collected by hand and little by little will multiply. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. [ Dickens ]

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good. [ Sam'l Johnson ]

He knows very little of mankind who expects, by facts or reasoning, to convince a determined party-man. [ Lavater ]

How delightful to make a few blots of ink, representing a little thought, bring money into one's pocket. [ Joseph G. Baldwin ]

Trust him little who praises all, him less who censures all, and him least who is indifferent about all. [ Lavater ]

The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will reappear. [ Carlyle ]

If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet. [ Chamfort ]

A body may as well lay too little as too much stress upon a dream; but the less he heed them the better. [ L'Estrange ]

Still on it creeps, each little moment at another's heels, till hours, days, years, and ages are made up. [ Joanna Baillie ]

The best portion of a good man's life, -- his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love. [ William Wordsworth ]

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect. [ Hosea Ballou ]

Those only who know little, can be said to know anything. The greater the knowledge the greater the doubt. [ Goethe ]

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. [ Bacon ]

Women are shy of nothing so much as the little word Yes, at least they say it only after they have said No. [ Jean Paul ]

Only just the right quantum of wit should be put into a book; in conversation a little excess is allowable. [ Joubert ]

I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard than in the tomb of the Capulets. [ Burke ]

A little plot of ground thick sown is better than a great field which, for the most part of it, lies fallow. [ Bishop Norris ]

Human reason has so little confidence in itself that it always looks for a precedent to justify its decrees. [ De Finod ]

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. [ Macaulay ]

The little (achieved) is soon forgotten by him who looks before him and sees how much still remains to be done. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Amongst such as out of cunning hear all and talk little, be sure to talk less; or if you must talk, say little. [ La Bruyere ]

When we advance a little into life, we find that the tongue of man creates nearly all the mischief of the world. [ Paxton Hood ]

There is no such way to attain to greater measures of grace, as for a man to live up to that little grace he has. [ Thomas Brooks ]

We see how much a man has, and therefore we envy him; did we see how little he enjoys, we should rather pity him. [ Seed ]

A man is not little when he finds it difficult to cope with circumstances, but when circumstances overmaster him. [ Goethe ]

As wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms, so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. [ Bacon ]

Be content with doing calmly the little which depends upon yourself, and let all else be to you as if it were not. [ Fenelon ]

Little League baseball is a good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets and the kids out of the house. [ Yogi Berra ]

All nations that grew great out of little or nothing did so merely by the public-mindedness of particular persons. [ South ]

The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living, in a little, much beneath them. [ Addison ]

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. [ Francis Bacon ]

It is strange that all great men should have some little grain of madness mingled with whatever genius they possess. [ Moliere ]

The heart of a woman is never so full of affection that there does not remain a little corner for flattery and love. [ Marivaux ]

Truth is simple and gives little trouble, but falsehood gives occasion for the frittering away of time and strength. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

General observations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room. [ Locke ]

Much wishes man for himself, and yet needs he but little; for the days are short, and limited is the fate of mortals. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

With parsimony a little is sufficient, and without it nothing is sufficient, whereas frugality makes a poor man rich. [ Seneca ]

I have tried merely to express what I had to say with as much simplicity and as little affectation as I could command. [ James A. Froude, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

A grandam's name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are as children but one step below. [ William Shakespeare ]

If we did but know how little some enjoy the great things that they possess, there would not be much envy in the world. [ Young ]

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure? [ William Shakespeare ]

What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little. [ Stanislaus ]

Discretion is more necessary to women than eloquence, because they have less trouble to speak well than to speak little. [ Father Du Bosc ]

Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, - of dwarfs giants, suspicions truths. [ Cervantes ]

Nothing is so wholesome, nothing does so much for people's looks, as a little interchange of the small coin of benevolence. [ Ruffini ]

Men live best upon a little; Nature has given to all the privilege of being happy, if they but knew how to use their gifts. [ Claudianus ]

There are heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit, sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much room. [ Fuller ]

An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. [ Charles Dickens ]

The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

A little love rapidly develops the sensibilities and intelligence of women: it is through the heart that they ripen or mold. [ Latena ]

There's no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick. [ Sheridan ]

Fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth; and there is little truth we get so true as that which we and in fiction. [ J. G. Holland ]

Look forward a little further to the period when all the noise and tumult and business of this world shall have closed forever. [ J. G. Pike ]

There is hardly a person in the House of Commons worth painting, though many of them would be better for a little whitewashing. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

Love requires not so much proofs, as expressions, of love. Love demands little else than the power to feel and to requite love. [ Richter ]

In a free country there is much clamor with little suffering; in a despotic state there is little complaint, but much grievance. [ Carnot ]

Talk not to me of the wisdom of women, - I know my own sex well; the wisest of us all are but little less foolish than the rest. [ Mary, Queen of Scots ]

A rich dress adds but little to the beauty of a person. It may possibly create a deference, but that is rather an enemy to love. [ Shenstone ]

Dost thou think that there is little difference whether thou dost a thing from the heart, as nature suggests, or with a purpose? [ Terence ]

Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much but wants more. [ Colton ]

The use we make of our fortune determines its sufficiency. A little is enough if used wisely, and too much if expended foolishly. [ Bovee ]

How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is the breath of kings. [ William Shakespeare ]

The little and short sayings of nice and excellent men are of great value, like the dust of gold, or the least sparks of diamonds. [ Tillotson ]

When Fate wills that something should come to pass, she sends forth a million of little circumstances to clear and prepare the way. [ Thackeray ]

Sorrow, like a heavy ringing bell, once set on ringing, with its own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell. [ William Shakespeare ]

If thou wouldst find much favor and peace with God and man, be very low in thine own eyes; forgive thyself little, and others much. [ Robert Leighton ]

Without earnestness there is nothing to be done in life; yet among the people we name cultivated, little earnestness is to be found. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say, nothing. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

No flattery, boy! an honest man cannot live by it; it is a little, sneaking art, which knaves use to cajole and soften fools withal. [ Otway ]

Love never reasons, but profusely gives--gives, like a thoughtless prodigal, its all, and trembles then lest it has done too little. [ Hannah More ]

I knew a wise man who had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion: Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner. [ Bacon ]

Midas longed for gold. He got gold, so that whatever he touched became gold; and he, with his long ears, was little the better for it. [ Carlyle ]

A single word is often a concentrated poem, a little grain of pure gold, capable of being beaten out into a broad extent of gold-leaf. [ Trench ]

Tendency to sentimental whining or fierce intolerance may be ranked among the surest symptoms of little souls and inferior intellects. [ Jeffrey ]

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate little else than the changeableness of the weather. [ Hare ]

A little scandal is an excellent thing; nobody is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is making mischief of his neighbors. [ Ouida ]

The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind; a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things. [ Whately ]

A worthless man will always remain worthless, and a little mind will not, by daily intercourse with great minds, become an inch greater. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The use of great men is to serve the little men, to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth. [ Theodore Parker ]

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Polygamy ought to be obligatory on physicians. It would be only just to compel those who depopulate the world to repopulate it a little.

Where men or nations have broken down, it will almost invariably be found that neglect of little things was the rock on which they split. [ Smiles ]

Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. [ Johnson ]

Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then satiety. [ Richter ]

Some men are counted wise from the cunning manner in which they hide their ignorance. In what little they do know such men play the pedant. [ A. Ricard ]

Greatness stands upon a precipice, and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces. [ Seneca ]

Poesy, drawing within its circle all that is glorious and inspiring, gave itself but little concern as to where its flowers originally grew. [ Karl Ottfried Muller ]

The happiest lot for a man as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. [ Whately ]

Our minds are like certain vehicles, - when they have little to carry they make much noise about it, but when heavily loaded they run quietly. [ Elihu Burritt ]

Her cheeks blushing, and withal, when she was spoken to. a little smiling, were like roses when their leaves are with a little breath stirred. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Poesy and oratory omit things not essential, and insert little beautiful digressions, in order to place everything in the most effective light. [ Dr. Watts ]

It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace; it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost! [ Bruyere ]

Artists may produce excellent designs, but they will avail little, unless the taste of the public is sufficiently cultivated to appreciate them. [ George C. Mason ]

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves. [ George Eliot ]

With some life is exactly like a sleigh-drive, showy and tinkling, but affording just as little for the heart as it offers much to eyes and ears. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken! [ Scott ]

Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained. [ The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (President Snow) ]

Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over. [ Goldsmith ]

It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one; a great deal may arouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure. [ Lord Greville ]

I make little account of genealogical trees. Mere family never made a man great. Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring fate. [ General Skobeleff ]

Stories first heard at a mother's knee are never wholly forgotten - a little spring that never quite dries up in our journey through scorching years. [ Ruffini ]

The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humor and so little wit in their literature. [ Coleridge ]

A table without music is little better than a manger; for music at meals is like a carbuncle set in gold, or the signet of an emerald highly burnished. [ Epictetus ]

Little-minded people's thoughts move in such small circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to determine their whole curve. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave. [ Colton ]

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change. [ Pope ]

Many have been ruined by their fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the great have become little, and the little great. [ Zimmermann ]

The poorer life or the rich one are but the larger or smaller (very little smaller) letters in which we write the apophthegms and golden sayings of life. [ Carlyle ]

In all the world there is no vice Less prone to excess than avarice; It neither cares for food nor clothing; Nature's content with little - that with nothing. [ Butler ]

That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona. [ Johnson ]

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year. [ Horace Mann ]

The eternity, before the world and after, is without our reach; but that little spot of ground which lies betwixt those two great oceans, this we are to cultivate. [ Burnet ]

Shakespeare says, we are creatures that look before and after; the more surprising that we do not look around a little, and see what is passing under our very eyes. [ Carlyle ]

The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small. I would have a man great in great things, and elegant in little things. [ Johnson ]

Physic is of little use to a temperate person, for a man's own observation on what he finds does him good, and what hurts him is the best physic to preserve health. [ Bacon ]

So long as idleness is quite shut out from our lives, all the sins of wantonness, softness, and effeminacy are prevented; and there is but little room for temptation. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

At first one omits writing for a little while; and then one stays a little while to consider of excuses; and at last it grows desperate, and one does not write at all. [ Swift ]

Men of dissolute lives have little incentive to look forward to the hopes and glories of immortality. A due conception of these would be incompatible with such a life. [ Beecher ]

Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone. [ Rev. T. Jones ]

He seldom lives frugally who lives by chance. Hope is always liberal, and they that trust her promises make little scruple of revelling today on the profits of tomorrow. [ Johnson ]

I have ventured like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory, but far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride at length broke under me. [ Shakespeare ]

The little mind who loves itself will write and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence. [ Goldsmith ]

That, of course, they are many in number, or that, after all, they are, other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour. [ Burke ]

Little eyes must be good-tempered or they are ruined. They have no other resource. But this will beautify them enough. They are made for laughing, and should do their duty. [ Leigh Hunt ]

But since, however protracted, death will come. Why fondly study, with ingenious pains. To put it off? - To breathe a little longer is to defer our fate, but not to shun it. [ Hannah More ]

No good writer was ever long neglected; no great man overlooked by men equally great. Impatience is a proof of inferior strength, and a destroyer of what little there may be. [ Landor ]

I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. [ Sir T. F. Buxton ]

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and good and dwell as little as possible on the dark and the base. [ Cecil ]

Superstition is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars in the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. [ Carlyle ]

It is not written, blessed is he that feedeth the poor, but he that considereth the poor. A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money. [ Ruskin ]

Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character. Let parents bear this ever in mind. [ Hosea Ballou ]

Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. [ Washington Irving ]

Man, it is not thy works, which are mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance. [ Carlyle ]

No one can take less pains than to hold his tongue. Hear much, and speak little; for the tongue is the instrument of the greatest good and greatest evil that is done in the world. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

This century boasts of progress! Have they invented a new mortal sin? Unfortunately there are but seven, as before - the number of the daily falls of a saint, which is very little. [ T. Gautier ]

The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, - words with little meaning, actions with little worth, - one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. [ Carlyle ]

The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence. [ Pope ]

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour? [ Dr. Johnson ]

There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found? [ Mrs. Hemans ]

If the minds of men were laid open, we should see but little difference between them and that of the fool; there are infinite reveries and numberless extravagancies pass through both. [ Addison ]

Griefs are like the beings that endure them - the little ones are the most clamorous and noisy; those of older growth and greater magnitude are generally tranquil, and sometimes silent. [ Chatfield ]

There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat. [ Dickens ]

He that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

A little grain of the romance is no ill ingredient to preserve and exalt the dignity of human nature, without which it is apt to degenerate into everything that is sordid, vicious and low. [ Swift ]

We rarely repent of having spoken too little, very often of having spoken too much: a maxim this which is old and trivial, and which every one knows, but which every one does not practise. [ La Bruyère ]

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. [ Bacon ]

Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little Oxt the domain of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish. [ George Eliot ]

Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, out of one little dusky room of his Father's house into another that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely entertaining. [ Adam Clarke ]

There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors from which the materials of this life are composed that anything to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the Sabbath for the mind. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

He who confers a favor should at once forget it, if he is not to show a sordid ungenerous spirit. To remind a man of a kindness conferred on him, and to talk of it, is little different from reproach. [ Demosthenes ]

This world could not exist if it were not so simple. The ground has been tilled a thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same; a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows green again. [ Goethe ]

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 ]

Yes, what I am to be everlastingly, I am growing to be now - now in this Present time so little thought of, this time which the sun rises and sets in, and the clock strikes in, and I wake and sleep in. [ William Mountford ]

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindnesses and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort. [ Sir Humphry Davy ]

Surely it is better to enclose the gulf and hinder all access, than by encouraging us to advance a little, to entice us afterwards a little further, and let us perceive our folly only by our destruction. [ Johnson ]

Misery is so little appertaining to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we in the same degree of illusion only lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us. [ Richter ]

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]

Gold is called the bait of sin, the snare of souls, and the hook of death; which being aptly applied may be compared to a fire, whereof a little is good to warm one, but too much will burn him altogether. [ Sir R. Filmer ]

A woman with a hazel eye never elopes from her husband, never chats scandal, never finds fault, never talks too much nor too little - always is an entertaining, intellectual, agreeable and lovely creature. [ Frederic Saunders ]

Love, when founded in the heart, will show itself in a thousand unpremeditated sallies of fondness; but every cool deliberate exhibition of the passion only argues little understanding or great insincerity. [ Goldsmith ]

It is the violence of their ideas and the blind haste of their passion that make men awkward when with women. A man who has blunted a little his sensations, at first studies to please rather than to be loved. [ George Sand ]

I should have been a French atheist were it not for the recollection of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hand in hers, and make me say, on my bended knees, Our Father who art in heaven! [ John Randolph ]

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 ]

There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scale the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman's glove; and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire. [ Balzac ]

In my enthusiasm I may have exaggerated the details a little, but you will easily forgive me that fault, since I believe it is the first time I have ever deflected from perpendicular fact on an occasion like this. [ Mark Twain, from The Story Of A Speech ]

I can see why it would be prohibited to throw most things off the top of the Empire State Building, but what's wrong with little bits of cheese? They probably break down into their various gases before they even hit. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

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

Observation made in the cloister or in the desert will generally be as obscure as the one and as barren as the other; but he that would paint with his pencil must study originals, and not be over-fearful of a little dust. [ Colton ]

Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has little tiny plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen and it could be like ambition. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Men of the greatest genius are not always the most prodigal of their encomiums. But then it is when their range of power is confined, and they have in fact little perception, except of their own particular kind of excellence. [ Hazlitt ]

If a young lady has that discretion and modesty without which all knowledge is little worth, she will never make an ostentatious parade of it, because she will rather be intent on acquiring more than on displaying what she has. [ Hannah More ]

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention. [ Sterne ]

As he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration; and every day brings its task, which, if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. [ Dr. Johnson ]

With a pretty face and the freshness of twenty, a woman, however shallow she may be, makes many conquests, but does not retain them: with cleverness, thirty years, and a little beauty, a woman makes fewer conquests but more durable ones. [ A. Dupuy ]

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no material can produce no combinations. [ Sir J. Reynolds ]

Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we challenge for ourselves is given us. There does not live on earth the man, be his station what it may, that I despise myself compared with him. Man is made great or little by his own will. [ Schiller ]

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have thus heaped up together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

The chief art of learning is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights, frequently repeated, the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions. [ Locke ]

To make much of little, to find reasons of interest in common things, to develop a sensibility to mild enjoyments, to inspire the imagination, to throw a charm upon homely and familiar things, will constitute a man master of his own happiness. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

He that gives all, though but little, gives much; because God looks not to the quantity of the gift, but to the quality of the givers; he that desires to give more than he can hath equaled his gift to his desire, and hath given more than he hath. [ Quarles ]

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]

I have always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered surfaces of the earth. [ Swift ]

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong. [ Henry Home ]

An accession of wealth is a dangerous predicament for a man. At first he is stunned, if the accession be sudden; he is very humble and very grateful. Then he begins to speak a little louder; people think him more sensible, and soon he thinks himself so. [ Cecil ]

A little neglect may breed great mischief. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy; all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail. [ Benjamin Franklin ]

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So a man sometimes covers up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and quenches transcendent glories with a little shining dust. [ Chapin ]

The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion. [ Colton ]

We may scatter the seeds of courtesy and kindness around us at so little expense. Some of them will inevitably fall on good ground, and grow up into benevolence in the minds of others; and all of them will bear fruit of happiness in the bosom whence they spring. [ Bentham ]

Local esteem is far more conducive to happiness than general reputation. The latter may be compared to the fixed stars which glimmer so remotely as to afford little light and no warmth. The former is like the sun, each day shedding his prolific and cheering beams. [ W. B. Clulow ]

Women have that feminine sensuousness which delights in color and odor and richness of fabric. Their sense of beauty is untaught. A little lower in the scale of civilization, they would pierce their noses, and dye their fingernails, and wear strings of glass beads. [ Mrs. L. G. Calhoun ]

The little may contrast with the great, in painting, but cannot be said to be contrary to it. Oppositions of colors contrast; but there are also colors contrary to each other, that is, which produce an ill effect because they shock the eye when brought very near it. [ Voltaire ]

People travel the world over to visit untouched places of natural beauty, yet modern gardens pay little heed to the simplicity and beauty of these environments... those special places we all must preserve and protect, each in his own way, before they are lost forever. [ Mary Reynolds, 2002 Gold Medal Winner of the Chelsea Flower Show, November 2001 Application Form. Dare to Be Wild movie ]

A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God. [ Ruskin ]

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. [ St. Augustine ]

Beauty gains little, and homeliness and deformity lose much, by gaudy attire. Lysander knew this was in part true, and refused the rich garments that the tyrant Dionysius proffered to his daughters, saying that they were fit only to make unhappy faces more remarkable. [ Zimmermann ]

How little of our knowledge of mankind is derived from intentional accurate observation! Most of it has, unsought, found its way into the mind from the continual presentations of the objects to our unthinking view. It is a knowledge of sensation more than of reflection. [ John Foster ]

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth; he has twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him: he hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks. [ William Shakespeare ]

Just to be good, to keep life pure from degrading elements, to make it constantly helpful in little ways to those who are touched by it, to keep one's spirit always sweet and avoid all manner of petty anger and irritability, - that is an ideal as noble as it is difficult. [ Edward Howard Griggs ]

It would not be more unreasonable to transplant a favorite flower out of black earth into gold dust than it is for a person to let money-getting harden his heart into contempt, or into impatience, of the little attentions, the merriments and the caresses of domestic life. [ Mountford ]

The common cause of waves is the friction of the wind upon the surface of the water; little ridges or elevations first appear, which by continuance of the force gradually increase until they become the rolling mountains seen where the wind sweeps over a great extent of water. [ F. Marryatt ]

O blessed health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. [ Sterne ]

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]

Sombre thoughts and fancies often require a little real soil or substance to flourish in; they are the dark pinetrees which take root in, and frown over the rifts of the scathed and petrified heart, and are chiefly nourished by the rain of unavailing tears, and the vapors of fancy. [ J. F. Boyes ]

One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world is their finding so little there. Generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason the countrymen escape the smallpox, - because they meet no one to give it to them. [ Greville ]

Every woman carries in the depths of her soul a mysterious weapon, instinct - that virgin instinct, incorruptible, which requires her neither to learn, to reason, nor to know, which binds the strong will of man, dominates his sovereign reason, and pales our little scientific tapers.

There are persons of that general philanthropy and easy tempers, which the world in contempt generally calls good-natured, who seem to be sent into the world with the same design with which men put little fish into a pike pond, in order only to be devoured by that voracious water-hero. [ Fielding ]

No one was ever the better for advice: in general, what we called giving advice was properly taking an occasion to show our own wisdom at another's expense; and to receive advice was little better than tamely to afford another the occasion of raising himself a character from our defects. [ Lord Shaftesbury ]

To continue love in marriage is a science. It requires so little to kill those sweet emotions, those precious illusions, which form the charm of life; and it is so difficult to maintain a man at the height on which an exalted passion has placed him, especially when that man is one's husband! [ Mme. Reybaud ]

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears, and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, Oh, nothing! Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others. [ George Eliot ]

Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there each in his department, silently thinking, silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of. [ Carlyle ]

Talk, except as the preparation for work, is worth almost nothing; sometimes it is worth infinitely less than nothing; and becomes, little conscious of playing such a fatal part, the general summary of pretentious nothingnesses, and the chief of all the curses the posterity of Adam are liable to in this sublunary world. [ Carlyle ]

If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us - that's what they sing. [ O. Henry, A Tempered Wind ]

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. [ Hazlitt ]

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern. [ Fielding ]

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 ]

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art. in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts made by successive generations of men - the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid. [ Samuel Smiles ]

Personal attachment is no fit ground for public conduct, and those who declare they will take care of the rights of the sovereign because they have received favours at his hand, betray a little mind and warrant the conclusion that if they did not receive those favours they would be less mindful of their duties, and act with less zeal for his interest. [ C. Fox ]

So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. [ Lamb ]

I wouldn't be surprised if someday some fisherman caught a big shark and cut it open, and there inside was a whole person. Then they cut the person open, and in him is a little baby shark. And in the baby shark there isn't a person, because it would be too small. But there's a little doll or something, like a Johnny Combat little toy guy - something like that. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

There are three wicks you know to the lamp of a man's life: brain, blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out, followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute, and out go all three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the fluid ceases to supply the other centers of flame, and all is soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. [ O. W. Holmes ]

Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; and if the heart be a lurking place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part. [ Frederick Saunders ]

To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little, and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not to be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same condition, to keep friends with himself: here is a task for all a man has of fortitude and delicacy. [ Robert Louis Stevenson ]

There is something too dear in the hope of seeing again.... Dear heart, be quiet; we say; you will not be long separated from those people that you love; be quiet, dear heart! And then we give it in the meanwhile a shadow, so that it has something, and then it is good and quiet, like a little child whose mother gives it a doll instead of the apple which it ought not to eat. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

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. [ Montaigne ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard pavement of poor Picciola's prison was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here amid rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature. And O, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ Chapin ]

Great merit or great failings will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked, in the general run of the world. Examine yourself, why you like such and such people and dislike such and such others; and you will find that those different sentiments proceed from very slight causes. [ Chesterfield ]

A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every other part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more than that the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself. [ Joseph Addison ]

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such: it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending, by casual extrinsic splendour, the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. [ Carlyle ]

The little flower which sprung up through the hard payment of poor Picciola's prison, was beautiful from contrast with the dreary sterility which surrounded it. So here, amid the rough walls, are there fresh tokens of nature; and oh, the beautiful lessons which flowers teach to children, especially in the city! The child's mind can grasp with ease the delicate suggestions of flowers. [ E. H. Chapin ]

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life. [ Lord Greville ]

There is the same difference between diligence and neglect, that there is between a garden curiously kept and the sluggard's field when it was all overgrown with nettles and thorns; the one is clothed with beauty and the gracious amiableness of content and cheering loveliness; while the other hath nothing but either little smarting pungencies or else such transpiercings as rankle the flesh within. [ Feltham ]

Society is but the contest of a thousand little opposite interests - an eternal contest between all the vanities that clash with each other, wounded, humiliated the one by the other, and which expiate tomorrow in the disgust of a defeat the triumph of today. To live in solitude, to avoid being crushed in the surging throng, is what the world calls being a nonentity - to have no existence. Poor, miserable humanity! [ Chamfort ]

Frivolous curiosity about trifles, and laborious attentions to little objects which neither require nor deserve a moment's thought, lower a man, who from thence is thought (and not unjustly) incapable of greater matters. Cardinal de Retz very sagaciously marked out Cardinal Chigi for a little mind, from the moment he told him that he had wrote three years with the same pen, and that it was an excellent good one still. [ Chesterfield ]

I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]

He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously; who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them. [ Washington Irving ]

When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar! [ Carlyle ]

The little I have seen of the world teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends. I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellowman with Him from whose hand it came. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]

Love is the river of life in this world. Think not that ye know it who stand at the little tinkling rill, the first small fountain. Not until you have gone through the rocky gorges, and not lost the stream; not until you have gone through the meadow, and the stream has widened and deepened until fleets could ride on its bosom; not until beyond the meadow you have come to the unfathomable ocean, and poured your treasures into its depths - not until then can you know what love is. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

It is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk, In the wilderness alone, there where nature worships God. It is well to be in places where man is little and God is great, where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process. [ Sydney Smith ]

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon those whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious with out pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness. [ Dr. Johnson ]

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take commonsense quantum sufficit (in sufficient quantity); add a little application to the rules and orders of the House of Commons, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. [ Chesterfield ]

Though no participator in the joys of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures, in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practice toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]

See a fond mother encircled by her children; with pious tenderness she looks around, and her soul even melts with maternal love. One she kisses on its cheeks, and clasps another to her bosom; one she sets upon her knee, and finds a seat upon her foot for another. And while, by their actions, by their lisping words, and asking eyes, she understands their numberless little wishes, to these she dispenses a look, and a word to those; and whether she grants or refuses, whether she smiles or frowns, it is all in tender love. [ Krummacher ]

The first class of readers may be compared to an hour-glass, their reading being as the sand; it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second class resembles a sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third class is like a jelly-bag, which allows all that is pure to pass away, and retains only the refuse and dregs. The fourth class may be compared to the slave of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, preserves only the pure gems. [ Coleridge ]

Gratitude is a link between justice and love. It discharges by means of affections those debts which the affections only can discharge, and which are so much the more sacred for this reason. Gratitude never springs up in the soil of selfishness, for self-interest in its eagerness to appropriate is unable to understand the impulses of generosity or to measure the true value of the gift. And, when we do understand it, we must love much to be willing to accept, we refuse when we love but little. Gratitude is the justice of the heart. [ Degerando ]

Two things a master commits to his servant's care - the child and the child's clothes. It will be a poor excuse for the servant to say, at his master's return, Sir, here are all the child's clothes, neat and clean, but the child is lost. Much so of the account that many will give to God of their souls and bodies at the great day. Lord, here is my body; I am very grateful for it; I neglected nothing that belonged to its contents and welfare; but as for my soul, that is lost and cast away forever. I took little care and thought about it. [ John Flavel ]

He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]

I have very often lamented and hinted my sorrow, in several speculations, that the art of painting is made so little use of to the improvement of manners. When we consider that it places the action of the person represented in the most agreeable aspect imaginable, - that it does not only express the passion or concern as it sits upon him who is drawn, but has under those features the height of the painter's imagination, - what strong images of virtue and humanity might we not expect would be instilled into the mind from the labors of the pencil! [ Steele ]

Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gesture or quick movement inspires involuntary disrespect. One looks for a moment at a cascade; but one sits for hours, lost in thought, and gazing upon the still water of a lake. A deliberate gale, gentle manners, and a gracious tone of voice - all of which may be acquired - give a mediocre man an immense advantage over those vastly superior to him. To be bodily tranquil, to speak little, and to digest without effort are absolutely necessary to grandeur of mind or of presence, or to proper development of genius. [ Balzac ]

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. [ Goldsmith ]

Once when I was in Hawaii, on the island of Kauai, I met a mysterious old stranger. He said he was about to die and wanted to tell someone about the treasure. I said, Okay, as long as it's not a long story. Some of us have a plane to catch, you know. He started telling his story, about the treasure and his life and all, and I thought: This story isn't too long. But then, he kept going, and I started thinking, Uh-oh, this story is getting long. But then the story was over, and I said to myself: You know, that story wasn't too long after all. I forget what the story was about, but there was a good movie on the plane. It was a little long, though. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

My friends, if you had but the power of looking into the future you might see that great things may come of little things. There is the great ocean, holding the navies of the world, which comes from little drops of water no larger than a woman's tears. There are the great constellations in the sky, made up of little bits of stars. Oh, if you could consider his future you might see that he might become the greatest poet of the universe, the greatest warrior the world has ever known, greater than Caesar, than Hannibal, than--er--er" (turning to the father) - What's his name? The father hesitated, then whispered back: His name? Well, his name is Mary Ann. [ Mark Twain, Educations and Citizenship ]

A beau is one who arranges his curled locks gracefully, who ever smells of balm, and cinnamon; who hums the songs of the Nile, and Cadiz; who throws his sleek arms into various attitudes; who idles away the whole day among the chairs of the ladies and is ever whispering into some one's ear; who reads little billets-doux from this quarter and that, and writes them in return; who avoids ruffling his dress by contact with his neighbors sleeve, who knows with whom everybody is in love; who flutters from feast to feast, who can recount exactly the pedigree of Hirpinus. What do you tell me? is this a beau, Cotilus? Then a beau, Cotilus, is a very trifling thing. [ Martial ]

Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]