Petty Quotes - page 14
Whatever the mistakes committed by the Hindu Ayodhya movement on the ground, at the intellectual level it is a struggle for truth and honesty, against attempts (some petty, some high-handed) to falsify history. On the other hand, the stand taken by leading negationist historians in this debate wil be studied in the future as a classic in latter-day Marxist history falsification.
Koenraad Elst
Black magic is not a myth. It is a totally unscientific and emotional form of magic, but it does get results - of an extremely temporary nature. The recoil upon those who practice it is terrific.
It is like looking for an escape of gas with a lighted candle. As far as the search goes, there is little fear of failure!
To practice black magic you have to violate every principle of science, decency, and intelligence. You must be obsessed with an insane idea of the importance of the petty object of your wretched and selfish desires.
I have been accused of being a "black magician." No more foolish statement was ever made about me. I despise the thing to such an extent that I can hardly believe in the existence of people so debased and idiotic as to practice it.
Aleister Crowley
What is South Africa? A boiler into which thirteen million blacks are clubbed and penned in by two and a half million whites. If the poor whites hate the Negroes, it is not, as M. Mannoni would have us believe, because "racialism is the work of petty officials, small traders, and colonials who have toiled much without great success." No; it is because the structure of South Africa is a racist structure.
Frantz Fanon
If you see a man who is unterrified in the midst of dangers, untouched by desires, happy in adversity, peaceful amid the storm, who looks down upon men from a higher plane, and views the gods on a footing of equality, will not a feeling of reverence for him steal over you, will you not say: "This quality is too great and too lofty to be regarded as resembling this petty body in which it dwells? A divine power has descended upon that man.”.
Seneca
I do walk off sets but not for the reasons you might suppose. I'm not temperamental about myself. I can take care of myself all right. But I do get temperamental when I hear some little would-be Napoleon of a director, some little killer-diller of a petty czar cursing out extras, grips, electricians. I've walked off sets when things like that happen. And will again, if and when they happen again. I've said to the pettifogging Nappies, ‘Why don't you bawl me out if that's the way you feel about it? You don't dare to bawl the stars out, do you? They could bark right back at you, couldn't they? So you have to light on the little fellows, the ones who can't talk back, don't you?' It's an obsession with me.
Carole Lombard
Above all it is necessary to cure the labour movement of its inner ossification and rid it of the empty sloganeering of the political parties, so that it may forge ahead intellectually and develop within itself the creative conditions which must precede the realisation of Socialism. The practical attainability of this goal must become for the workers an inner certainty and must ripen into an ethical necessity. The great final goal of Socialism must emerge from all the practical daily struggles, and must give them a social character. In the pettiest struggle, born of the needs of the moment, there must be mirrored the great goal of social liberation, and each such struggle must help to smooth the way and strengthen the spirit which transforms the inner longing of its bearers into will and deed.
Rudolf Rocker
My prayer is not the whimpering of a beggar nor a confession of love. Nor is it the petty reckoning of a small tradesman: Give me and I shall give you.
My prayer is the report of a soldier to his general: This is what I did today, this is how I fought to save the entire battle in my own sector, these are the obstacles I encountered, this is how I plan to fight tomorrow.
Nikos Kazantzakis
When he was dead I raised myself to my feet and I looked about me. Everything was still. A loneliness had come upon my soul.
There was darkness everywhere now but in the forest. And even here there were wisps of grey, as if evil crept in.
I lifted my head to the sky and I shook my fist. "Oh, I reject you. I reject your Heaven and I reject your Hell. Do as you wish with me, but know that your desires are petty and your ambitions have no meaning!”
I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.
Michael Moorcock
The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
Friedrich Engels
Can sweetening our tea, &c. with sugar, be a circumstance of such absolute necessity? Can the petty pleasure thence arising to the taste, compensate for so much misery produced among our fellow creatures, and such a constant butchery of the human species by this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?-Pharisaical Britain! to pride thyself in setting free a single Slave that happens to land on thy coasts, while thy Merchants in all thy ports are encouraged by thy laws to continue a commerce whereby so many hundreds of thousands are dragged into a slavery that can scarce be said to end with their lives, since it is entailed on their posterity!
Benjamin Franklin
The peculiar (or own) value that such and such activity can have for a man rather really depends ("dépend bien plutôt", Fr.) on the spirit in which it was deployed (or displayed, - "déployée", Fr.) than its importance or its scope. Thus the most humble work (or task, - "besogne", Fr.) can be accomplished by a great genius, whereas the highest functions (or offices), such as to rule over a whole people, can be practised in a petty (or mean or stingy) spirit of personal glorification, as it is frequently seen.", Fr.)
African Spir
Don't talk to me about your hideous reality! What does it mean - reality? Some see things black, others blue - the multitude sees them brute-fashion. There is nothing less natural than Michael Angelo; there is nothing more powerful! The anxiety about eternal truth is a mark of contemporary baseness; and art will become, if things go on in that way, a sort of poor joke as much below religion as it is below poetry, and as much below politics as it is below business. You will never reach its end - yes, its end! - which is to cause within us an impersonal exaltation, with petty works, in spite of all your finished execution.
Gustave Flaubert
MY Sister! my sweet Sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Kingdoms and Empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have rolled
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something-I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;-not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase Pain.
Lord Byron
When sorrow is deepest...then the surface crust is pierced, and consolation wells up, and all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. Thus great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.
Rabindranath Tagore
One man talks continually about the particular actions of this or another neighbor; whilst another looks beyond the acts to the inward principle from which they spring, and gathers from them larger views of human nature. In a word, one man sees all things apart and in fragments, whilst another strives to discover the harmony, connection, unity of all. One of the great evils of society is, that men, occupied perpetually with petty details, want general truths, want broad and fixed principles.
William D. Tammeus
You are Great, Little Man, when you are not small and petty. You are great when you carry on your trade lovingly, when you enjoy carving and building and painting and decorating and sowing, when you enjoy the blue sky and the deer and the dew and music and dancing, your growing children and the beautiful body of your woman or your man, when you learn to understand and think about life.
Wilhelm Reich
