Petty Quotes

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive. (W. Somerset Maugham)
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. View quote
Aesop
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction. View quote
Graham Greene
In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws. View quote
Emil Cioran
If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal. View quote
Denis Diderot
Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles. View quote
Anton Chekhov
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. View quote
Winston Churchill
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things. View quote
George Carlin
The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination. (Norman Mailer)
I get so tired listening to one million dollars here, one million dollars there, it's so petty. View quote
Imelda Marcos
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. View quote
Robert H. Jackson
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see What petty follies they themselves commit. View quote
William Shakespeare
The petty economies of the rich are just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor. View quote
William Feather
Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. View quote
Winston Churchill
[A]t its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior. View quote
John D. Carmack
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets. View quote
Edward Abbey
... the Saudis have never shown any respect for human rights, either now or in the past. Even a petty burglar faces having one of his hands chopped off. The liberal press in America prefers to ignore all this, although they don't hesitate to blacken the reputation of Iran. View quote
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
I am aware that the battle I am fighting is a petty one, but I am also aware that in order to win that which is great, you must first win that which is small. View quote
James Frey
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse. (Alexis de Tocqueville)
Among our neighbors of Central and Southern America, we see the Caucasian mingled with the Indian and the African. They have the forms of free government, because they have copied them. To its benefits they have not attained, because that standard of civilization is above their race. Revolution succeeds Revolution, and the country mourns that some petty chief may triumph, and through a sixty days' government ape the rulers of the earth. View quote
Jefferson Davis
A brave man scorns to quarrel once a day; Like Hectors in at every petty fray. View quote
John Dryden
Apartheid - both petty and grand - is obviously evil. Nothing can justify the arrogant assumption that a clique of foreigners has the right to decide on the lives of a majority. View quote
Steve Biko
The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies. View quote
Kevin Spacey