Protector Of The Small Quotes

This is what I've come to," he said mournfully. "Following little birdies ~ Tamora Pierce

She promised herself that from now on she would try to sit as close to Neal as possible. She could not kick someone eight chairs away. ~ Tamora Pierce

The conduct of a wise politician is ever suited to the present posture of affairs. Often by foregoing a part he saves the whole, and by yielding in a small matter secures a greater. ~ Plutarch

Time slowed, and stilled. It was just the two of us, me murmuring in the empty, sunlit room. Will didn't say much. He didn't answer back, or add a dry comment, or scoff. He nodded occasionally, his head pressed against mine, and murmured, or let out a small sound that could have been satisfaction at another good memory.
"It has been, the best six months of my entire life."
"Funnily enough, Clark, mine too."
And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it. ~ Jojo Moyes

The privileges of the side-table included the small prerogatives of sitting next to the toast, and taking two cups of tea to other people's one. ~ Charles Dickens

Things are embarrassing, best to avoid them. But since your death I prefer a naturalist style of conversation. Let's strip it down to what matters. Let's have emotions and beliefs on show without the modest covering of small talk. ~ Rosamund Lupton

I watched plays with the kind of voracity with which small children read books; with the same visceral passion, the same complete trust in the imagination which is so difficult to sustain through the course of one's whole life. ~ Deirdre Madden

An unexpected sight opens in front of my eyes, a sight I cannot ignore. Instead of the calm waters in front of the fortress, the rear side offers a view of a different sea - the sea of small, dark streets and alleys - like an intricate puzzle. The breathtaking scenery visible from the other side had been replaced by the panorama of poverty–stricken streets, crumbling house walls, and dilapidated facades that struggle to hide the building materials beneath them. It reminds me of the ghettos in Barcelona, the ghettos I came to know far too well. I take a deep breath and look for a sign of life - a life not affected by its surroundings. Nothing. Down, between the rows of dirty dwellings stretches a clothesline. Heavy with the freshly washed laundry it droops down, droplets of water trickling onto the soiled pavement from its burden. Around the corner, a group of filthy children plays with a semi–deflated soccer ball - it makes a funny sound as it bounces off the wall - plunk, plunk. A man sitting on a staircase puts out a cigarette; he coughs, spits phlegm on the sidewalk, and lights a new one. A mucky dog wanders to a house, lifts his leg, and pisses on it. His urine flows down the wall and onto the street, forming a puddle on the pavement. The children run about, stepping in the piss, unconcerned. An old woman watches from the window, her large breasts hanging over the windowsill for the world to see. Une vie ordinaire, a mundane life...life in its purest. These streets bring ~ Henry Martin

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ~ C. G. Jung

His penmanship was shamefully crabbed. Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery, crawling up on one another as though trying to escape the page. His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I'll never throw these small things away. There will never be a time when I don't want them, all the tiny parts of Cal that made a life. ~ Cath Crowley

Beyond the Mountains of the Moon, around the curve of the earth, my shadow streched, and within me scratched and crawled small living things,

I was sand and rock. My innards were crusted with gems. My heart was molten. ~ Catherine Fisher

I was too smart and that made people uncomfortable--most folks where we've lived our whole lives don't trust too much intelligence in a woman. There is also the problem of my eyes--they don't hide anything. If I don't care for a person, my eyes make it plain. I don't care for most. Folks are generally comfortable with the small lies they tell each other. They don't know what to do with someone like me, who mostly doesn't bother with small lies. ~ Roxane Gay

Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country. ~ Aravind Adiga

Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain. ~ Tayeb Salih

My first and lasting impression of the Connecticut River Valley is its serene beauty, especially in the autumn months. Deep River was a near picture-perfect New England village. When I arrived there, the town was a typical working-class place, nothing like the trendy upper-income enclave it became. The town center had a cluster of shops, a movie theater open only on weekends, several white-steepled churches (none of them Catholic), the town hall, and a Victorian library. It was small, even by Ansonia standards. ~ John William Tuohy

In all small things be honest and the big ones will take care of themselves. ~ Rolf Margenau

Much of that which passes for conversation these days is the lobbing of small bombs of dogma and little clots of banality at one another. ~ Dee Hock

It's the worst of bad manners to ridicule the small gesture ... Small, stepwise changes in personal habits aren't trivial. Ultimately they will, or won't, add up to having been the thing that mattered. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Since the average person's small supply of politeness must last him all his life, he can't afford to waste it on bridge partners. ~ Alfred Sheinwold

The villagers had decided that 'practical' meant 'extremely magical and full of interesting objects' and had officially subtitled themselves, Winesap: A Pracktical Towne. ~ Catherynne M Valente

This is overdue. Quite a bit, I'm afraid. I apologize. We moved to Topeka when I was very small, and Mother accidentally packed it up with the linens. I have traveled a long way to return it, and I know the fine must be large, but I have no money. As it is a book of fairy tales, I thought payment of a first-born child would be acceptable. I always loved the library. I'm sure she'll be happy there. ~ Ellen Klages

If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves. ~ Jacques Ellul

Either we of the faith shall
become a small persecuted,
neglected island amid
mankind, or we shall be able
to life up at the end of the
struggle the old battle cry,
"Christus Imperat! ~ Hilaire Belloc

In the aftermath of death Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous. ~ Anna Quindlen

Nothing great or small escapes the ordaining hand of Him who numbers the hairs of our head. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

What I'd like more than anything," he said quietly, "is for you to listen to an apology."
"You have nothing to apologize for."
"I'm afraid I do." He let out a measured breath. "But first, I have something to give you."
He went to a cabinet in a corner of the room and rummaged through its contents. Finding the object he sought... a small book... he brought it to her.
Phoebe blinked in wonder as she read the gold and black lettering on the battered cloth cover. The title was worn and faded, but still legible.

Stephen Armstrong: Treasure Hunter

Opening the book with unsteady fingers, she found the words written on the inside cover in her own childish hand, long ago.

Dear Henry, whenever you feel alone, look for the kisses I left for you on my favorite pages.

Blinded by a hot, stinging blur, Phoebe closed the book. Even without looking, she knew there were tiny x's in the margins of several chapters. ~ Lisa Kleypas

If one were to protest all the injustices of life," says Sigrud, "great and small, one would have no time for living. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

It is said that history turns on small hinges. A human career, too, results from an accumulating series of decisions about large and small matters over a period of years. But the catch is that you can never know when a seemingly small decision may prove to be, from the vantage of later years, the big decision of your life. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

If the behaviour of babies and small children is any guide, we emerge into the world with our tendencies to imbalance already well entrenched. In our playpens and high chairs, we are rarely far from displaying either hysterical happiness or savage disappointment, love or rage, mania or exhaustion
and, despite the growth of a more temperate exterior in adulthood, we seldom succeed in laying claim to lasting equilibrium, traversing our lives like stubbornly listing ships on choppy seas. ~ Alain De Botton

The cause of poverty is not scarcity. It is fear and small thinking. ~ Alan Cohen

In the comfort of his embrace I lifted my mouth to his and initiated a kiss. Although calling it a kiss was like calling tyrannosaurus rex a small pet. ~ Blakely Bennett

Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe. ~ Alexander Pope

I felt small, like one does when the distance between stars occasionally asserts itself into your understanding, like when your own death's inevitability leaps in front of you in the middle of the night when you get up to pee. ~ Stan Goff

Though the space in hell is small, it can accommodate countless souls. When hell is full, those souls who've spent a millennium are evolved to burning flames. That's how the fire of hell is preserved. ~ Prof PP Healings

Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world. ~ Carl Sagan

If the queen catches you in here again, Princess, she'll sentence you to do the dishes right alongside me! she heard another voice ring out.
No one was there, but Snow knew the voice. It was Mrs. Kindred, the cook who had survived her aunt's dismissals over the years. When Snow's mother was alive, she'd encouraged her daughter to be friendly with those who helped them in the castle, and Mrs. Kindred had always been Snow's favorite person to chat with. She could see herself sitting on a chair, no more than six or seven, watching Mrs. Kindred chop onions, carrots, and leeks and throw them all into a giant pot of broth. She and Mrs. Kindred only stole a few moments together most days now- she suspected her aunt must have forbidden the cook from talking to her, what with how Mrs. Kindred always quickly sent Snow on her way- but back then she had always peppered the cook with questions. ("How do you cut the carrots so small? Why do leeks have sand in them? What spices are you going to add? How do you know how much to put in?") On one such occasion, she'd been such a distraction that Mrs. Kindred had finally picked her up, holding her high on her broad chest, and let her stir the pot herself. Eventually, she taught her how to dice and chop, too, since Snow wouldn't stop talking. By suppertime, young Snow had convinced herself she'd made the whole meal. She had been proud, too, carrying the dishes out to the dining table that night. ~ Jen Calonita

Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilise it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

There is a little furnace within every heart that burns pain. It is formed by a masonry of scars as tick by tick the tireless mechanics of life strip the innocence bestowed upon us at birth. There are some in whom life builds the furnace small and controllable, a passionate heat to burn off the losses, the harsh words and petty disappointments, leaving us cleaner for it. There are others. There are those whose innocence is assaulted early and with such brutality, that it goes beyond all the boundaries of deities and angels to stray into the world of unfettered evil. They build their furnaces differently. ~ Robert E. Dunn

Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic
which was what all magic was
it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that ... might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred. ~ Robin McKinley

Thomson's small oil sketches of the last years palpitate and throb. They are as direct in attack as a punch in the nose. ~ Harold Town

Ah, how lucky are the lieutenants, the six-foot Junkers, and all the rest of the Don Juan clan! ... The bookworm, be he ever so decent and clever, is really only pleasing to himself and a small handful of others. The world passes him by and beckons to life and beauty ... to gay and handsome creatures to whom the hearts of their fellow men continue to turn. ~ Theodor Fontane

Once, I did a halfhearted job of sweeping and mopping the kitchen floor, and that's the first place she checked because she knew I'd do a lousy job because "that's the kind of kid you are." As in I'm not a "go-getter who makes her own luck" like she is, so I'm "never going to get anywhere in this world." She knew all that because of two missed Cheerios and a small dust bunny. ~ Sarah Darer Littman

A deranged person is supposed to have the strength of ten men.
I have the strength of one small boy ... with polio. ~ Woody Allen

They've destroyed small farms and local economies across the globe. And now, they own patents on the seeds themselves. Those seeds represent the knowledge, labor, and heritage of all of humanity, and their DNA is now owned by Monsanto and ConAgra and ADM. They're the oligarchs of food, the pater familias of life itself. "The ownership, genetic code, practices and profits of agriculture are being collected in fewer and fewer hands - hands that have no dirt under the fingernails," writes George Pyle. ~ Anonymous

As it shut behind him, Clary reached up and angrily yanked the pins out of her hair. It cascaded in tangles down around her shoulders. "Clary," Luke said gently. He stood up. "What are you doing?" "My hair." She yanked the last pin out, hard. Her eyes were shining, and Simon could tell she was forcibly willing herself not to cry. "I don't want t wear it like this. It looks stupid." "No, it doesn't." Luke took the pins from her and set them down on one of the small white end tables. "Look, weddings make men nervous, okay? It doesn't mean anything. ~ Cassandra Clare

One of the most magical places on Earth is a small island in the Caribbean called Mustique. With brilliant beaches, warm water, and lush vegetation, this tiny green swath of land is my idea of paradise. ~ Nina Garcia