In beauty, faults conspicuous grow;
The smallest speck is seen on snow. [ Gay ]
The smallest hair throws its shadow. [ Goethe ]
Love is the smallest part of gallantry. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The smallest errors are always the best. [ Moliere ]
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]
God hangs the greatest weights on the smallest wires. [ Bacon ]
The whole of nature exists in the very smallest things. [ Quoted by Emerson ]
The smallest act of charity shall stand us in great stead. [ Atterbury ]
Of our enemies, the smallest are often the most to be dreaded. [ La Fontaine ]
The smallest are nearest God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun. [ Jean Paul ]
The smallest word has some unguarded spot, and danger lurks in i without a dot. [ O. W. Holmes ]
No power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
He who gives up the smallest part of a secret has the rest no longer in his power. [ Richter ]
A true delineation of the smallest man is capable of interesting the greatest man. [ Carlyle ]
The smallest children are nearest to God, as the smallest planets are nearest the sun. [ J. Paul F. Richter ]
Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind. [ Martin Luther ]
A foolish superstition introduces the influences of the gods even in the smallest matters. [ Livy ]
It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to regard half an hour as a small thing. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Out of the smallest a great is at length composed, and none of all can fail, unless the whole is fated to break up. [ Rückert ]
Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to the smallest duty, and the most infinite comfort to the smallest trouble. [ Phillips Brooks ]
The tallest and the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, it is a meanness to calculate the difference. [ Thackeray ]
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]
Those that are the loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. In springing a mine, that which has done the most extensive mischief makes the smallest report; and again, if we consider the effect of lightning, it is probable that he that is killed by it hears no noise; but the thunderclap which follows, and which I most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety. [ Colton ]
If the eye were so acute as to rival the finest microscope, and to discern the smallest hair upon the leg of a gnat, it would be a curse, and not a blessing to us; it would make all things appear rugged and deformed; the most finely polished crystal would be uneven and rough; the sight of our own selves would affright us; the smoothest skin would be beset all over with rugged scales and bristly hair. [ Bentley ]
Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. [ Emerson ]
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. [ Addison ]