Pettiness – Page 3

Often we allow ourselves

Often we allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. We lose many irreplaceable hours brooding over grievances that, in a year’s time, will be forgotten by us and by everybody. No, let us devote our life to worthwhile actions and feelings, to great thoughts, real affections and enduring undertakings. … Read more

The pettiness of a

The pettiness of a mind can be measured by the pettiness of its adoration or its blasphemy. Andre Gide

But the writer who

But the writer who endures and keeps working will finally know that writing the book was something hard and glorious, for at the desk a writer must try to be free of prejudice, meanness of spirit, pettiness, and hatred; strive to be a better human being than the writer normally is, and to do this … Read more

I think you are

I think you are a liar because you think you know what is true. You think you feel what is true. But you do not yet know what you do feel and what you do know. Your desire and do not take; you love and are too afraid to feel your love; you conceal your … Read more

In larger things we

In larger things we are convivial; what causes trouble is the trivial. Richard Armour

Do not be caught

Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen thousand foot mountain… avoid prettiness – the word looks much like pettiness – and there is but little difference between them. Ralph Waldo Emerson

You work here [on

You work here [on the farm] simply without philosophizing; sometimes the work is hard and crowded with pettiness. But at times you feel a surge of cosmic exaltation, like the clear light of the heavens… . And you, too, seem to be taking root in the soil which you are digging, to be nourished by the rays of the sun, to share life with the tiniest blade of grass, with each flower; living in nature’s depths, you seem then to rise and grow into the vast expanse of the universe.
A. D. Gordon