Smallest Thing Quotes

A hotel is like a prison, he thought. The rooms are cells holding secrets and passions. Then something happens, the smallest thing, and the doors fly open. The explosion goes off. Panic. And fragments of truth. ~ E. Howard Hunt

All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas. ~ Nick Cave

The smallest thing by the influence of eternity is made infinite and eternal. We pass through a standing continent or region of ages, that are already ebfore us, glorious and perfect while we come to them. Like men in a ship we pass forward, the shores and marks seeming to go backward, though we move and they stand still. We are not with them in our progressive motion, but prevent the swiftness of our course, and are present with them in our understandings. Like the sun we dart our rays before us, and occupy those spaces with light and contemplation which we move towards, but possess not with our bodies. And seeing all things in the light of Divine knowledge, eternally serving God, rejoice unspeakable in that service, and enjoy it all. ~ Thomas Traherne

When you are deeply in love,. even the smallest thing can hurt u like hell and break u into pieces ... ~ BHARAT SHARMA

Sometimes it doesn't matter how dark the world gets. You can be saved by the smallest thing. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Wait until you're old, Nora," she said, "and then you'll know. It's the mixture of being content with even the smallest thing and then feeling a great dissatisfaction with everything. ~ Colm Toibin

Imagining what would happen if you changed one thing you do on a daily basis - and thinking about how that change would affect everything else - is a clever way to conquer seemingly impossible scenarios and consider how even the smallest thing you deal with impacts everything else you do. ~ Tanner Christensen

That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time ~ Joanne Harris

Wealth is the smallest thing on earth, the least gift that God has bestowed on mankind. ~ Martin Luther

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself__anything that carried the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called. ~ George Orwell

Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains, and atomies infinity. ~ Eric Knight

Certain people have said that the world is like a calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action. ~ Lemony Snicket

He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. ~ Cormac McCarthy

You know, the smallest thing can change a life. In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance - and when you least expect it - since we're on a course that you could have never planned, into a future you never imagined. Where will it take you? That's the journey of our lives: our search for the light. But sometimes, finding the light means you must past through the deepest darkness. ~ Nicholas Sparks

I do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally. ~ Colin Farrell

Humans believe in so many lies that even the smallest thing becomes a big dream that makes us suffer. Usually it's just a judgment, and mainly it's a self-judgment: 'Poor me. Look what happened to me when I was nine years old. Look what happened to me last night!" Well, whatever happened in your past is not truth anymore. It could be the most horrible thing, but right now it's not the truth, because right now is the only truth you live in. Whatever happened in your past is in the virtual reality, and whatever happened to your body was healed long ago, but the mind can make you suffer and live in shame for years. ~ Miguel Ruiz

Sometimes, if a song is written, in essence, to be that stripped down, it's very touchy when you start adding things, because even the smallest thing can have a huge impact. Somebody has to make the decision that there's a better song in there if there's less. ~ Chris Cornell

The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher ... I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is. ~ Augusten Burroughs

There is a part of everything which is unexplored,
because we are accustomed to using our eyes only in association with the memory of what people before us have thought of the thing we are looking at. Even the smallest thing has something in it which is unknown. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth. ~ Cormac McCarthy

If we're open to it, God can use even the smallest thing to change our lives ... to change us. It might be a laughing child, car brakes that need fixing, a sale on pot roast, a cloudless sky, a trip to the woods to cut down a Christmas tree, a school teacher, a Dunhill Billiard pipe ... or even a pair of shoes.
Some people will never believe. They may feel that such things are too trivial, too simple, or too insignificant to forever change a life. But I believe.
And I always will. ~ Donna VanLiere

We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all. Because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand, and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you could hold onto that flame, great things could construct around it, that are massive and powerful and world changing, all held up by the tiniest of ideas. ~ Nick Cave

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which one attempts to do. There is a sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in all its parts-which the superficial man, who leaves his work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns work into art. The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic. ~ William Matthews

Once a year my back will go out and it'll be ... it's like a sciatic thing and it's the smallest thing. Like I could be leaning over the sink to brush my teeth in a weird way and it happens. ~ Kevin James

Perspective is so interesting. The smallest thing becomes pleasurable when troubles are monumental. ~ Sandra Vischer

The smallest thing in this universe is an intelligent living creature.
He sets himself to be imaginary in the premises of arrogant scientist. ~ Toba Beta

Sometimes it could be the smallest thing that could topple over a whole life, and, in the end, destroy it. ~ Nova Ren Suma

To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Years later he'd stood in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. Shelves tipped over. Some rage at the lies arranged in their thousands row on row. He picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. He'd not have thought the value of the smallest thing predicated on a world to come. It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation. ~ Cormac McCarthy

What really makes baseball so hard is it's retributive capacity for disaster if the smallest thing is done wrong, and the invisible presence of defeat that attends every game. ~ Roger Angell

I can't do much, but I can do something, she thought, and if I can do even the smallest thing, then I am a powerful being. ~ Robert Beatty

It is better to do the smallest thing in the world than to hold half an hour to be too small a thing. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

An actor puts himself in the hands of a director. And the director's first responsibility, obviously, is to tell the story, but the smallest thing that's not true reads on the screen. So if a director sees that an actor is not believable, he needs to help him become believable. ~ Tobin Bell

I'm married now, but back when I had girlfriends, you were always wondering if they liked you, and if you liked them enough. You're together, but the smallest thing could make one of you go 'You know what? This isn't working!' ~ Jeremy Sisto

Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Think about how rare it is for anyone to encounter a teacher who can open you up to the notion that there is an infinite amount of meaning and possibility and inspiration in the smallest thing before you. ~ Greil Marcus

How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away. ~ Haruki Murakami

I know how it wears on a soul. How it eats little pieces of your heart at unexpected times. How you can go whole weeks happily occupied, feeling no melancholy or deprivation, and then the smallest thing ... Someone opens a letter, perhaps. Or stitches up a ripped garment that belongs to someone else. And it makes you realize how ... adrift you are. Not tied to anyone. ~ Tessa Dare

Why was it women could go to pieces or fly into a rage at the smallest thing, yet never flicker an eyelash at what left you gaping? ~ Robert Jordan

When you have so little, just the smallest thing can make you happy - and ~ Yeonmi Park

Even the smallest thing can be enough to encourage someone who has decided to give up hope. ~ Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

The park is high. And as out of a house
I step out of its glimmering half-light
into openness and evening. Into the wind,
the same wind that the clouds feel,
the bright rivers and the turning mills
that stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge.
Now I too am a thing held in its hand,
the smallest thing under the sky. --Look:

Is that one sky?:
Blissfully lucid blue,
into which ever purer clouds throng,
and under it all white in endless changes,
and over it that huge, thin-spun gray,
pulsing warmly as on red underpaint,
and over everything this silent radiance
of a setting sun.

Miraculous structure,
moved within itself and upheld by itself,
shaping figures, giant wings, faults
and high mountain ridges before the first star
and suddenly, there: a gate into such
distances as perhaps only birds know... ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too - ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring earth. ~ Marcus Aurelius

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a Leitmotiv. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I once read the most widely understood word in the whole world is 'OK', followed by 'Coke', as in cola. I think they should do the survey again, this time checking for 'Game Over'.
Game Over is my favorite thing about playing video games. Actually, I should qualify that. It's the split second before Game Over that's my favorite thing.
Streetfighter II - an oldie but goldie - with Leo controlling Ryu. Ryu's his best character because he's a good all-rounder - great defensive moves, pretty quick, and once he's on an offensive roll, he's unstoppable. Theo's controlling Blanka. Blanka's faster than Ryu, but he's really only good on attack. The way to win with Blanka is to get in the other player's face and just never let up. Flying kick, leg-sweep, spin attack, head-bite. Daze them into submission.
Both players are down to the end of their energy bars. One more hit and they're down, so they're both being cagey. They're hanging back at opposite ends of the screen, waiting for the other guy to make the first move. Leo takes the initiative. He sends off a fireball to force Theo into blocking, then jumps in with a flying kick to knock Blanka's green head off. But as he's moving through the air he hears a soft tapping. Theo's tapping the punch button on his control pad. He's charging up an electricity defense so when Ryu's foot makes contact with Blanka's head it's going to be Ryu who gets KO'd with 10,000 volts charging through his system.
This is the split sec ~ Alex Garland

You're annoyed at how much you love me. That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said. ~ Tijan

That's such a relevant thing, as an actor - committing and not being distracted by any kind of technical awareness, or whatever. You do have to block things out sometimes, and sometimes it's easier than others. ~ Dylan O'Brien

You're on the stage and you've got all those people yelling at you, so you better be right in the moment, reacting to that. It's completely live and organic. Even 20 years later, it's the same thing. You may be even better on your instrument. Hopefully, you are. ~ Andy Summers

Fallen women are afforded a species of freedom.
Footnote: There is of course no such thing as a fallen woman, unless we are speaking of a woman who recently tripped on the stairs. One of the most difficult elements of this world is the way its social rules are simultaneously rigid and arbitrary. It is impermissible to engage in physical love before binding legal marriage, unless one is a young man of means. Men must be bold and assertive, but only if they are light-skinned. Any persons may fall in love regardless of station, but only if one is a woman and the other a man. I urge you not to navigate your own life by such faulty borders, my dear. There are, after all, other worlds. ~ Alix E. Harrow

When you go to Best Buy and see a DVD of your movie, you think it's amazing. But then there's a whole other world that comes with it. It's a very small percent that's difficult, stalker-like, or annoying. Most people are just so gracious and so nice. As cheesy as it sounds, that's the thing that really keeps you going. ~ Adam Green

Any actor has their moments of being stressed, but the great part about this job is that it's so unpredictable, and that's what I like. I love spontaneity. I don't ever want to be bored, doing the same thing from 9 to 5. ~ Liana Liberato

Hunding, stop skulking in the hallway and get in here."
The bellhop poked his head around the doorway. "I wasn't skulking," he said defensively. "I was lingering."
"Come in. I need you to do three things. One: Find a way to track Thor's FitnessKnut. Report his whereabouts at all times."
"Won't he just circle the worlds in order?"
I made a face. "Thor's sense of direction is terrible. His path will likely be erratic. Moving on. Two: Have squads of einherjar launch surprise attacks on the Bifrost. I want to know that Heimdall is on guard."
"Very good, sir. And the third thing?"
"Inform the thanes that as of tomorrow, I will be unavailable for a while." I transformed my appearance from a rugged one-eyed god of wisdom to a beautiful two-eyed woman clad in chain mail. "I will be living with my Valkyries to decide for myself which of them deserves to be captain."
Hunding raised a hairy eyebrow. "An idea from Utgard-Loki, Lord Odin?"
"Wisdom can be gleaned from any source if one only looks hard enough." I paused, thinking. "Let's put that on a T-shirt. And, Hunding?"
"My lord?"
I transformed back into my true form. "Download cute baby goat videos to my phablet. I must learn what all the fuss is about. ~ Rick Riordan

The discipline gave me a sense of achievement. Not least, fasting is a test of willpower and, whenever I felt my willpower weakening, I would tell myself that I could eat as much as I wanted after sunset. But then the strange thing was that after fasting all day long, I tended to feel full with just a small snack. ~ Kristiane Backer

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends. ~ Joel Osteen

He heard the creaking and cracking of wood again, groaning like a living thing, like the hungry stomach of the world growling for a meal. Then ~ Patrick Ness

Well, my epic freedom moment was short-lived, because I realized my cell phone was dead. I walked down the road to a gas station and asked if I could use the phone. I called Tracy and told her where I was and asked her to pick me up. When Tracy arrived I hopped in the car and the very first thing I said to her was "I gotta get home. I have to print out some TV guides and I need to write a letter to some of the guys in there." She started laughing and when she could compose herself enough to talk said, "My sisters and I all said we guarantee Noah is going to come out of jail with new friends. He's going to be friends with everybody."
I got home and immediately wrote a letter to Michael Bolton. I put my email address at the bottom. I printed out TV guides. I printed out crossword puzzles. I even printed a couple of pages of jokes and riddles and whatever would be fun to read and do and folded them up and put them in an envelope. All that was left to do was to write the address, put a stamp on the envelope, and put it in the mailbox. I put the envelope in the car in between the seat and the center console to take to the post office.
I must have been distracted or had to do something else because the envelope sat there for months. Every so often I would look at it and go, Oh crap, I haven't sent that yet. And then at some point I spilled something on it so I knew I would never send it now. I threw it out.
To this day I'm worried that one day I'm going to be at the ~ Noah Galloway

Until YOU get enough of what you're going through, no matter what advice a person gives you, you'll continue to go through the same thing. When you get the courage to stop making excuses for them, and stop excusing their behavior, then you'll be able to break free from that unhealthy situation. You've got to be willing to face YOUR truth in order to move on and be at peace. You matter! ~ Stephanie Lahart

The movie creaked along, obvious and mediocre plot. Mediocre script, mediocre music. They ought to have sealed the thing in a time capsule and marked "Late 20th Century Mediocrity" and buried it somewhere. ~ Haruki Murakami

The reward of a thing well done is having done it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong. ~ E. M. Forster

The Mysteries are the Mysteries, and ultimately personal maybe the most personal thing in the universe. Evangelism, in my opinion, is a failure of the imagination. Beware of prophets: the best visions are the ones they leave in the desert. ~ Robert Charles Wilson

You're the only thing I've ever wished for. ~ Tara Sivec

Writing a story I am just trying to find some little interesting thing to start out with: something small, even trivial. Preferably something that doesn't have a lot of thematic or political baggage - a little crumb that is interesting. ~ George Saunders

I'm not motivated by money or power or fame. In the end, it doesn't bring much happiness. The only thing that is driving me is self-satisfaction, self-validation. ~ William Clay Ford, Jr.

The ability to be successful should be a good thing. ~ Michael Grimm

I don't really do acting. I've done a little bit - enough to know I'll stick to what I know. Music is my thing. ~ Miranda Lambert

Wait a minute, I'm thinking, was this another one of those conversations where what is meant and what is being said are not the same thing? ~ Peter Hedges

Memory, like liberty, is a fragile thing. ~ Elizabeth Loftus

I believe that God's dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don't mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you're planted. But I don't have the mindset that money is a bad thing. ~ Joel Osteen

One thing is certain: the call of Christ is always a promotion. Were Christ to call a king from his throne to preach the gospel to some tribe of aborigines, that king would be elevated above anything he had known before. Any movement toward Christ is ascent, and any direction away from Him is down. ~ A.W. Tozer

Maybe it is all rotten, but if the good ones leave, who's there to make it better after the war? I know why you have to leave, Ninochka. It's leave or nothing. But I can't give up my homeland and my oath for love. That's the kind of thing that makes men say little princesses have no place at the front. ~ Kate Quinn

I was born in St. Louis and lived in Pittsburgh for a bit, before my family moved to Nigeria, where they're from. We lived there for three or four years and came back to the States when I was about ten. I realised that I'd gone from place to place not fitting in. The thing that helped me fit in when moving around and not having a ton of friends was that I could make art. That was the through-line. ~ Babatunde Adebimpe

It is a funny thing. A man can make a promise to his God, break it five minutes later and never think about it. With an idle shrug of his shoulders, a man can break solemn promises to his mother, wife or sweetheart, and, except for a slight momentary twinge of conscience, he still won't be bothered very much. But if a man ever breaks a promise to himself he disintegrates. His entire personality and character crumble into tiny pieces, and he is never the same man again.
I remember very well a sergeant I knew in the army. Before a group of five men he swore off smoking forever. An hour later he sheepishly lit a cigarette and broke his vow to the five of us and to himself. He was never quite the same man again, not to me, and not to himself. ~ Charles Willeford

For any particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? ~ Marcus Aurelius

Trust doesn't develop from always doing the right thing. Trust comes from taking responsibility when we do the wrong thing. ~ Simon Sinek

I think ... you should have children, John." At least he's no longer talking about bugs.
"I'm too young, Dad."
"It's the most important thing ... I've done in ... my life. ~ Ursula Hegi

Accept the things I cannot change," I said. "And pray for the courage to change the things I can, as well as the wisdom to know the difference."
The thing is ... I know this is good advice. It's called the Serenity Prayer, and it really does put things in perspective (it's suppose to be for recovering alcoholics, but it helps recovering freakoutaholics, like me, as well). ~ Meg Cabot

The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled.
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Rhiss looked narrowly at her, suspicion becoming certainty in his mind as he spoke. "Did you put them to sleep?"
She looked coy. "Now, I ask you, would I do that?"
"In a moment, if it suited your purposes," Rhiss retorted. "I thought as much. What was it? Did you doctor their drinks?"
She looked scandalized. "Rhissan! I'd not do a thing like that, not to friends, at any rate. They were fair worn out, poor lambs, from all that talking and thinking. I... merely encouraged their inclination to sleep. It's a useful ability with hurt animals, you know, and it works just as well on stubborn people. They can have their afternoon nap in peace, we can have our walk, and everyone will be the happier for it."
Rhiss looked at her a moment, her lovely eyes opened wide in innocence, then burst out laughing. "Very well, Mistress Lowri. Lead on. But don't you be trying any of your trickery on me. ~ D.R. Ranshaw

Probably the best thing that happened to me was going nuts. Nobody knew who I was until that happened. ~ Jimmy Piersall

I loved 'BattleDome.' It was the first thing I ever auditioned for, and I was so crazy in the audition that I knew I had the part. ~ Terry Crews

As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better ... no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems. ~ Edward De Bono

But the one thing all of the people in the Ape Yard had in common was that they were trapped, caught in that basin of poverty and servitude to Doc Bobo in the hollow, and held in place by the weight of the white structure beyond. For them, escape seemed futile at the outset. ~ Jeff Fields

Part of being a big winner is the ability to be a big loser. There is no paradox involved. It is a distinctly Harvard thing to be able to turn any defeat into victory ~ Erich Segal