A slight gift, small thanks. [ Proverb ]
Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow
Of slight beginnings to important ends. [ Davenant ]
If I cannot by might, I'll do it by slight. [ Proverb ]
How slight a chance may raise or sink a soul! [ Bailey ]
A slight from an inferior is highly provoking. [ Proverb ]
Those things which now seem frivolous and slight.
Will be of serious consequence to you,
When they have made you once ridiculous. [ Roscommon ]
But now so wise and wary was the knight
By trial of his former harms and cares,
That he descry'd and shunned still his slight;
The fish, that once was caught, new bait will hardly bite. [ Spenser ]
He who slights a friend will soon have no friends to slight. [ Duwad ]
A slight debt makes a man your debtor; a heavier one, your enemy. [ Laber ]
Alas! by what slight means are great affairs brought to destruction. [ Claudianus ]
Confidence in another man's virtue is no slight evidence of a man's own. [ Montaigne ]
Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie, and teach that truth is truest poesy. [ Cowley ]
Slight sorrow for sin is sufficient, provided it at the same time produces amendment. [ Colton ]
Natural selection is the principle by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved. [ Darwin ]
I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us. [ Dickens ]
Trifling precautions will often prevent great mischiefs; as a slight turn of the wrist parries a mortal thrust. [ R. Sharp ]
We treat God with irreverence by banishing him from our thoughts, not by referring to his will on slight occasions. [ John Ruskin ]
The woman's cause is man's. They rise or sink together; dwarfed or godlike, bond or free; if she be small, slight-natured, miserable, how shall men grow? [ Tennyson ]
Hath any wronged thee? be bravely revenged; slight it, and the work is begun; forgive it, and it is finished; he is below himself that is not above an injury. [ Quarles ]
There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. [ Ruskin ]
As in the case of painters, who have undertaken to give us a beautiful and graceful figure, which may have some slight blemishes, we do not wish them to pass over such blemishes altogether, nor yet to mark them too prominently. The one would spoil the beauty, and the other destroy the likeness of the picture. [ Plutarch ]
As there are some flowers which you should smell but slightly to extract all that is pleasant in them, and which, if you do otherwise, emit what is unpleasant and noxious, so there are some men with whom a slight acquaintance is quite sufficient to draw out all that is agreeable; a more intimate one would be unsatisfactory and unsafe. [ Landor ]
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 ]
True hope is based on energy of character. A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope, because it knows the mutability of human affairs and how slight a circumstance may change the whole course of events. Such a spirit, too, rests upon itself, it is not confined to partial views, or to one particular object. And if at last all should be lost, it has saved itself, its own integrity and worth. Hope awakens courage, while despondency is the last of all evils, it is the abandonment of good, the giving up of the battle of life with dead nothingness. He who can implant courage in the human soul is the best physician. [ Von Knebel (German), Translated by Mrs. Austin ]