The coward wretch whose hand and heart
Can bear to torture aught below.
Is ever first to quail and start
From slightest pain or equal foe. [ Eliza Cook ]

Not to understand a treasure's worth,
Till time has stolen away the slightest good,
Is cause of half the poverty we feel,
And makes the world the wilderness it is. [ Cowper ]

Alas! today I would give everything
To see a friend's face, or hear a voice
That had the slightest tone of comfort in it. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

One's duty as a gentleman should never interfere with one's pleasures in the slightest degree. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]

The slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient, if it produces amendment; and the greatest is insufficient, if it does not. [ Colton ]

Faith in the hereafter is as necessary for the intellectual as the moral character; and to the man of letters, as well as to the Christian, the present forms but the slightest portion of his existence. [ Southey ]

It is with jealousy as with the gout. When such distempers are in the blood, there is never any security against their breaking out, and that often on the slightest occasions, and when least suspected. [ Fielding ]

Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason. [ Steele ]

Gallantry to women (the sure road to their favor) is nothing but the appearance of extreme devotion to all their wants and wishes, a delight in their satisfaction, and a confidence in yourself as being able to contribute towards it. The slightest indifference with regard to them, or distrust of yourself is equally fatal. [ Hazlitt ]

There are chords in the human heart - strange varying strings - which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view. [ Dickens ]