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Smallness Quotes

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Smallness Quotes

“We are paint streaked runners, deafened by the cries of all the sad people. It's a powerful sound that practically yanks the tears right out of you. Sometimes, you just can't help but feel like a very small clam in a very big ocean.”

FreedomYouthRevolutionDiscoverySelf DiscoveryMemoirInsignificantNewBorn AgainYouthfulnessSmallnessSelf ExplorationSixteenth NotesTaylor RhodesYoung Adult Nonfiction
Book:Sixteenth Notes: the breaking of the rose-colored glasses
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“But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat. He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.”

WarPeaceDespairIndifferenceEyesDesperationNationalityPersonalPublicSmallnessExasperationBigness
Book:The God of Small Things
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“I stared up in disbelief at the information my eyes fed my brain, and lost myself to the stars. For the first time in my life I had a greater idea of how infinitesimally small our planet really is and, furthermore, how tiny and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of the vast universe. I took a seat on a rock next to Lily and took in the moment to comprehend the vastness of everything else, and the incredible smallness of I.”

FirstsIdeasMomentsEyeUniverseNextLostStarsBrainGreaterRocksInformationPlanetsFirst TimeIncrediblesTinySeatsFedsSchemesInsignificantOur PlanetDisbeliefLiliesVastnessSmallnessLost Myself
Author:Craig Stone
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“You are different from the really great man in only one thing: The great man, at one time, also was a very little man, but he developed one important ability: he learned to see where he was small in his thinking, and actions. Under the pressure of some task which was dear to him he learned better and better to sense the threat that comes from his smallness and pettiness. The great man, then, knows when and in what he is a little man.”

ThinkingKnowsMenLittlesImportantDifferentActionAbilityOne ThingTasksPressureThreatDearGreat MenOne TimeReally GreatLittle ManSmallnessPettiness
Author:Wilhelm Reich
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“As Attraction is stronger in small Magnets than in great ones in proportion to their Bulk, and Gravity is greater in the Surfaces of small Planets than in those of great ones in proportion to their bulk, and small Bodies are agitated much more by electric attraction than great ones; so the smallness of the Rays of Light may contribute very much to the power of the Agent by which they are refracted.”

MayBodyLightGreaterPlanetsStrongerSurfaceAttractionAgentsProportionRaysGravityElectricMagnetGreat OnesSmallnessRays Of Light
Book:Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light. ...
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“Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn't take, their constant bickering and smallness, it's like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don't scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.”

WorldGivingChildrenLittlesLongNightGirlLeftFeetListeningPicksTestsConstantNakedMy TimeLightningHelplessStrokesScratchesSpinningGlareSmallnessBickeringHeadlightsLong NightsJoie De Vivre
Book:Sixty stories
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“I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.”

MenBelieveKindI BelieveNationsUnderstandingGreatnessDevelopmentPeriodsTestsNobleAbsenceInventionLimitationGrotesqueSmallnessIncapability
Book:The Stones of Venice -: The Fall
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“I suppose the half-breeds in Manitoba, in 1870, did not fight for two hundred forty acres of land, but it is to be understood there were two societies who treated together. One was small, but in its smallness it had its rights. The other was great, but in its greatness it had no greater rights than the rights of the small, because the right is the same for everyone.”

TwoTogetherFightingHalfGreaterRightsLandGreatnessUnderstoodHundredTreatedFortyAcresSmallness
Author:Louis Riel
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“I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.”

FeelsFirstsBodyLastsHouseForceBlackRoomsHalfFeetDyingLove YouYouthReadyTasteFilledYour BodyTraditionalSmokeOddFiftySquaresDucksAwkwardBedroomTeenageNaiveHoodUpstairsCapesChimneysSmallnessSquatFirsts And LastsCape CodRipeness
Author:Gary Shteyngart
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“I have often thought how strange it is that men can at once and the same moment cheerfully consign our sex to lives either of narrowest toil or senseless luxury and vanity, and then sneer at the smallness of our aims, the pettiness of our thoughts, the puerility of our conversation!”

MenMomentsSexStrangeConversationAimLuxuryVanityOur ThoughtsToilSneerSmallnessPettiness
Book:The Duties of Women: A Course of Lectures
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“Immediately upon the fall, the mind of man shrank from its primitive greatness and expandedness, to an exceeding smallness and contractedness... Before, his soul was under the government of the noble principles of divine love, whereby it was enlarged to the comprehensiveness of all his fellow creatures and their welfare... [But] sin, like some powerful astringent, contracted his soul to the very small dimensions of selfishness, and God was forsaken, and man retired within himself, and became totally governed by narrow and selfish principles and feelings.”

MenMindSoulFeelingsGovernmentFallSinAnimalPowerfulPrinciplesGreatnessDivineCreaturesFellowsNobleSelfishSelfishnessWelfareDimensionsPrimitiveDivine LoveRetiredForsakenSmallness
Author:Jonathan Edwards
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“The idea of self-effacement, the idea that you feel so powerless that the only tiny morsel of power you have is over your own ability to deny yourself food - that to me is a very profound and sad methodology and indicator of how powerless a lot of people feel in this world. That they will turn that onto themselves until they are physically smaller. I think it's affected my worldview a lot - just being sensitive and empathetic towards the ways people want to be small. I don't wish smallness for anyone.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayWantFeelsIdeasSelfTurnsWishAbilityThis WorldProfoundDenyTinySensitiveOver YouAffectedJust BeingPowerlessWorldviewMethodologyIndicatorsEmpatheticSmallness
Author:Carrie Brownstein
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“Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile. Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.”

IfsTryingMayLittlesHas BeensDoneCharacterAbleLosesGenerationsAchieveConditionsDemandPropertyDestroyedJudgementParadiseWorthwhileDiscouragedPurchasingSmallnessPurchasing PowerGood Judgement
Author:Roger Babson
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