As we become curators of our own contentment on the Simple Abundance path… we learn to savor the small with a grateful heart.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (b.1947) American Self-help Author
I can never bring you to realize the importance of sleeves, the suggestiveness of thumb-nails, or the great issues that may hang from a boot-lace.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
There is nothing too little for so little a creature as man.—It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans—the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
Those that are little, little things suit.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
It’s the little things that make the big things possible. Only close attention to the fine details of any operation makes the operation first class.
—J. Willard Marriott (1900–85) American Entrepreneur, Businessperson
If you add a little to a little and do this often, soon the little will become great.
—Hesiod (f.700 BCE) Greek Poet
As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn’t let it go for less than half-a-crown…
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Inches make champions.
—Vince Lombardi (1913–70) American Football Coach
All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.
—Laozi (fl.6th Century BCE) Chinese Philosopher, Sage
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
—Marian Wright Edelman (b.1939) American Activist, Advocate
We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the everyday things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
It is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American Children’s Novelist
It has been rightly said that nothing is unimportant, nothing powerless in the universe; a single atom can dissolve everything, and save everything! What terror! There lies the eternal distinction between good and evil.
—Gerard de Nerval (1808–55) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
Little pots soon boil over.
—Anonymous
You may succeed in delaying, but never in preventing the transition of South Africa to a democracy.
—Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) South African Political leader
Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
To be free of destructive stress don’t sweat the small stuff and by realizing that all stuff is small.
—Indian Proverb
What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81) Swiss Moral Philosopher, Poet, Critic
Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.
—Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American Self-Help Author
It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
—John Wooden (1910–2010) American Basketball Coach, Educator
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
If we triumph in the little things of our common hours, we are sure to triumph in our lives.
—Unknown
All great things are only a number of small things that have carefully been collected together.
—Unknown
The person determined to achieve maximum success learns the principle that progress is made one step at a time. A house is built one brick at a time. Football games are won a play at a time. A department store grows bigger one customer at a time. Every big accomplishment is a series of little accomplishments.
—David J. Schwartz (1927–87) American Self-help Author
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