#smallness

Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#great #great man #man #rest #seems

I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation. ↗

— Pieter Zeeman

#experienced #extreme #first #however #i

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is. ↗

— Phillips Brooks

#be humble #greatness #height #higher #humble

Its smallness is not petty; on the contrary, it is profound. ↗

— Jan Morris

#on the contrary #petty #profound #smallness

The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill. ↗

— Georgia O'Keeffe

#nature #smallness #understanding #world #nature

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants. ↗

— William Cobbett

#him #his #independent #makes #man

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company. ↗

— Pope John XXIII

#company #feelings #good #good company #kept

For so long as the Jew has even one ally, he will be convinced - in his smallness of mind - that his salvation came from that ally. It is only when he is alone - against all of his own efforts and frantic attempts - that he will, through no choice, be compelled to turn to G-d. ↗

— Meir Kahane

#ally #alone #attempts #came #choice

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. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#despair #desperation #exasperation #eyes #indifference