Men are led by trifles. [ Napoleon ]
We must not stand upon trifles. [ Cervantes ]
The smallest hair throws its shadow. [ Goethe ]
Little minds are vexed with trifles. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. [ Shakespeare ]
Trifles themselves are elegant in him. [ Pope ]
O jealousy! thou magnifier of trifles. [ Schiller ]
A small unkindness is a great offence. [ Hannah More ]
By great efforts obtain great trifles. [ Terence ]
Triflers not even in trifles can excel. [ Young ]
Man shows his character best in trifles. [ Schopenhauer ]
A trifle makes a dream, a trifle breaks. [ Tennyson ]
I have never occupied myself with trifles. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
These trifles will lead to serious mischief. [ Horace ]
Since trifles make the sum of human things,
And half our misery from our foibles springs. [ Hannah More ]
What mighty contests rise from trivial things! [ Pope ]
Affection, like melancholy, magnifies trifles. [ Leigh Hunt ]
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear:
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life. [ Edward Young ]
A drop of water is as powerful as a thunder-bolt. [ Huxley ]
The labour is foolish that is bestowed on trifles. [ Mart ]
Things fit only to give weight to smoke. (Trifles) [ Persius ]
There is nothing insignificant, nothing! (Trifles) [ Coleridge ]
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. [ Emerson ]
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one pace. [ Lao-Tze ]
Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle. [ Michael Angelo ]
These little things are great to little men.(Trifles) [ Goldsmith ]
Contentions for trifles can get but a trifling victory. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Trifles make up the happiness or misery of mortal life. [ Alex. Smith ]
Trifles render us miserable, but trifles also console us. [ Romainville ]
Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life. [ Alexander Smith ]
Trifles discover a character, more than actions of importance. [ Shenstone ]
The chains which cramp us most are those which weigh on us least. [ Madame Swetchine ]
It is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in trifles. [ Wendell Phillips ]
Alas! by what slight means are great affairs brought to destruction. [ Claudianus ]
Little things console us, because little things afflict us. (Trifles) [ Pascal ]
It is exactly in the treatment of trifles that a man shows what he is. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Winter does not work only on a broad scale; he is careful in trifles. [ Alexander Smith ]
Trifles lighter than straws are levers in the building up of character. [ Tupper ]
The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little circumstances. [ Gibbon ]
There are some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed. [ Chamfort ]
The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. (Trifles) [ William Shakespeare ]
Trifles unconsciously bias us for or against a person from the very beginning. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ. [ William Shakespeare ]
There is a kind of latent omniscience, not only in every man, but in every particle. [ Emerson ]
A stray hair, by its continued irritation, may give more annoyance than a smart blow. [ Lowell ]
The soft drops of rain pierce the hard marble, many strokes overthrow the tallest oak. [ Lyly ]
Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles, And waste the time, which looks for other revels. [ William Shakespeare ]
It is the mark of a great man to treat trifles as trifles, and important matters as important. [ Lessing ]
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones. [ Chesterfield ]
Those who bestow too much application on trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. [ Rochefoucauld ]
A grain of sand leads to the fall of a mountain when the moment has come for the mountain to fall. [ Ernest Renan ]
Each particle of matter is an immensity, each leaf a world, each insect an inexplicable compendium. [ Lavater ]
I have seldom known any one who deserted truth in trifles that could be trusted in matters of importance. [ Paley ]
A fly is a very light burden; but if it were perpetually to return and settle on one's nose, it might weary us of our very lives. [ Fredrika Bremer ]
Trifles we should not let plague us only, but also gratify us; we should seize not their poison-bags only, but their honey-bags also. [ Richter ]
Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns. [ Goldsmith ]
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 vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him. [ Chesterfield ]
The intellectual faculty is a goodly field, capable of great improvement; and it is the worst husbandry in the world to sow it with trifles and impertinences. [ Sir M. Hale ]
Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame. [ Swift ]
When I see the elaborate study and ingenuity displayed by woman in the pursuit of trifles, I feel no doubt of their capacity for the most herculean undertakings. [ Julia Ward Howe ]
Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which can never return. [ Johnson ]
Few of us appreciate the number of our everyday blessings; we think they are trifles, and yet trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle,
as Michael Angelo said. [ Sir John Lubbock ]
As small letters hurt the sight, so do small matters him that is too much intent upon them; they vex and stir up anger, which begets an evil habit in him in reference to greater affairs. [ Plutarch ]
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 ]
A spark is a molecule of matter, yet may it kindle the world; vast is the mighty ocean, but drops have made it vast. Despise not thou small things, either for evil or for good; for a look may work thy ruin, or a word create thy wealth. [ Tupper ]
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 ]
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel. [ Pascal ]
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 ]