Tremendous Trifles Quotes

The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

Lying in bed would be an altogether supreme experience if one only had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing...after all, what's a life anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die...By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.

He is a [sane] man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion.

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

Of a sane man there is only one safe definition. He is the man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.

Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past

The more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing, the less he knows it.

To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.

My best friends are all either bottomless skeptics or quite uncontrollable believers . . . .

Our civilization has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the thing that I felt in that jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.

For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.

Brown paper represents the primal twilight of the first toil of creation, and with a bright-coloured chalk or two you can pick out points of fire in it, sparks of gold, and blood-red, and sea-green, like the first fierce stars that sprang out of divine darkness.

For the perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call its triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon.

For my part, I think brightness more important than cleanliness; since the first is of the soul, and the second of the body.

We do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees as green banners.

I can imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture than that of making mountains out of molehills.

I believe in preaching to the converted; for I have generally found that the converted do not understand their own religion.

It is the same with the voters. The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or with a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet.

There are some refusals which, though they may be done what is called conscientiously, yet carry so much of their whole horror in the very act of them, that a man must in doing them not only harden but slightly corrupt his heart. One of them was the refusal of milk to young mothers when their husbands were in the field against us. Another is the refusal of fairy tales to children.

A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change.

I feel grateful for the slight sprain which has introduced this mysterious and fascinating division between one of my feet and the other. The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost. In one of my feet I can feel how strong and splendid a foot is; in the other I can realise how very much otherwise it might have been. The moral of the thing is wholly exhilarating. This world and all our powers in it are far more awful and beautiful than even we know until some accident reminds us. If you wish to perceive that limitless felicity, limit yourself if only for a moment. If you wish to realise how fearfully and wonderfully God's image is made, stand on one leg. If you want to realise the splendid vision of all visible things-- wink the other eye.

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tales the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.

Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It

Do not sag with exhaustion. There is no mandate; only opportunity. Our culture fosters inattention; we are all creatures of that culture. But by making your way through this book—by merely picking it up, perhaps—you, reader, are in a new culture, one that values looking. The unbelievable strata of trifling, tremendous things to observe are there for the observing. Look!

How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind while producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never printed by singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing? If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while auditing and bankers while banking?

But trivial as are the topics they are not utterly without a connecting thread of motive. As the reader's eye strays, with hearty relief, from these pages, it probably alights on something, a bed-post or a lamp-post, a window blind or a wall. It is a thousand to one that the reader is looking at something that he has never seen: that is, never realised. He could not write an essay on such a post or wall: he does not know what the post or wall mean. He could not even write the synopsis of an essay; as "The Bed-Post; Its Significance—Security Essential to Idea of Sleep—Night Felt as Infinite—Need of Monumental Architecture," and so on. He could not sketch in outline his theoretic attitude towards window-blinds, even in the form of a summary. "The Window-Blind—Its Analogy to the Curtain and Veil—Is Modesty Natural?—Worship of and Avoidance of the Sun, etc., etc." None of us think enough of these things on which the eye rests. But don't let us let the eye rest. Why should the eye be so lazy? Let us exercise the eye until it learns to see startling facts that run across the landscape as plain as a painted fence. Let us be ocular athletes. Let us learn to write essays on a stray cat or a coloured cloud. I have attempted some such thing in what follows; but anyone else may do it better, if anyone else will only try.

Causes of the advent of pessimism: the most powerful desires of life have been hitherto the most slandered, so that a curse weighs on life. For we comprehend that these self-same instincts are inseparable from life, and one therefore turns against life. Whereas the mass, which has no feeling at all for this conflict, flourishes, while the conflicted type miscarries and, as a product of degeneration, invites antipathy–that the mediocre, on the other hand, when they pose as the goal and meaning of existence, arouse nausea and indignation. And the individual, faced with this tremendous machinery, loses courage and submits. The herd, the mass, 'society', unlearns modesty and blows up its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way the whole of existence is vulgarised; and in so far as the mass is dominant it bullies the exceptions, so that they lose faith in themselves and become nihilists. The question 'for what?', after a painful struggle, even victory. That something is a hundred times more important than the question of whether we feel well or not–and consequently whether others feel well or not. The predominance of suffering over pleasure, or its opposite (hedonism) are already signposts to nihilism. For in both cases no ultimate meaning is posited except the appearance of pleasure or pain. But for any worthy man, the value of life is certainly not measured by the standard of these trifles. A suffering might predominate, and in spite of this, a powerful will might exist, a Yes to life, a need and acceptance of this predominance.

Causes of the advent of pessimism: The most powerful desires of life have been hitherto the most slandered, so that a curse weighs on life. For we comprehend that these self-same instincts are inseparable from life, and one therefore turns against life. Whereas the mass, which has no feeling at all for this conflict, flourishes, while the conflicted type miscarries and, as a product of degeneration, invites antipathy–that the mediocre, on the other hand, when they pose as the goal and meaning of existence, arouse nausea and indignation. And the individual, faced with this tremendous machinery, loses courage and submits. The herd, the mass, 'society', unlearns modesty and blows up its needs into cosmic and metaphysical values. In this way the whole of existence is vulgarised; and in so far as the mass is dominant it bullies the exceptions, so that they lose faith in themselves and become nihilists. The question 'for what?', after a painful struggle, even victory. That something is a hundred times more important than the question of whether we feel well or not–and consequently whether others feel well or not. The predominance of suffering over pleasure, or its opposite (hedonism) are already signposts to nihilism. For in both cases no ultimate meaning is posited except the appearance of pleasure or pain. But for any worthy man, the value of life is certainly not measured by the standard of these trifles. A suffering might predominate, and in spite of this, a powerful will might exist, a Yes to life, a need and acceptance of this predominance

In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

If you wish to find the past preserved, follow the million feet of the crowd. At the worst the uneducated only wear down old things by sheer walking. But the educated kick them down out of sheer culture.

it reminded me that there was in the world of to-day that utterly idiotic thing, a worship of success; a thing that only means surpassing anybody in anything; a thing that may mean being the most successful person in running away from a battle; a thing that may mean being the most successfully sleepy of the whole row of sleeping men.

In this case we must be logical and exact; for we have to keep watch upon ourselves. The power of wealth, and that power at its vilest, is increasing in the modern world. A very good and just people, without this temptation, might not need, perhaps, to make clear rules and systems to guard themselves against the power of our great financiers. But that is because a very just people would have shot them long ago, from mere native good feeling.

That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. We are in the wrong world. When I thought that was the right town, it bored me; when I knew it was wrong, I was happy. So the false optimism, the modern happiness, tires us because it tells us we fit into this world. The true happiness is that we don’t fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way.

At the four corners of a child's bed stand Perseus and Roland, Sigurd and St. George. If you withdraw the guard of heroes you are not making him rational; you are only leaving him to fight the devils alone.

Annie has been with me for years and is a tremendous talker. She starts immediately and discusses the war news. Annie says that the war will be over quite soon now and the major will be back before I know where I am. . . . Cannot help feeling that Annie is a trifle too optimistic, but am comforted all the same, and repair to the kitchen in a cheerful frame of mind.

The secret history of the late distress is a lesson to all modern statesmen. Rest assured that in politics, however tremendous the effects, the causes are often as trifling.

There is no subtle spiritual evil in the fact that people always brag about their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they become unsufferable.

...boundaries are the most beautiful things in the world. To love anything is to love its boundaries; thus, children will always play on the edge of anything. ... For when we have come to the end of a thing we have come to the beginning of it.

Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. “The trouble with the nation’s economy,” he declared, was simply Prohibition, which “makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency”; the “present economic crisis,” he explained, was due to the “withdrawal of billions of dollars from the channels of legitimate trade” by these bootleggers.

I am sure that it was only because Michael Angelo was engaged in the ancient and honourable occupation of lying in bed that he ever realised how the roof of the Sistine Chapel might be made into an awful imitation of a divine drama that could only be acted in the heavens.

The perplexity of life arises from their being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call it's triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon.

I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree.

People always brag about their vices; it is when they begin to brag about their virtues that they become insufferable.

German soldiers look as if they despised you, but French soldiers as if they despised you and themselves even more that you.

Being a nation means standing up to your equals, whereas being an empire only means kicking your inferiors.

Americans... are the most idealistic people in the whole world. Their only danger is that the idealist can easily become the idolator.

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.

I will not merely say that this story is true: because, as you will soon see, it is all truth and no story. It has no explanation and no conclusion; it is, like most of the other things we encounter in life, a fragment of something else which would be intensely exciting if it were not too large to be seen. For the perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them; what we call its triviality is really the tag-ends of numberless tales; ordinary and unmeaning existence is like ten thousand thrilling detective stories mixed up with a spoon.

A man offered me a newspaper or something that I had dropped. I can distinctly remember consigning the paper to a state of irremediable spiritual ruin. I am very sorry for this now, and I apologise both to the man and to the paper. I have not the least idea what was the meaning of this unnatural anger; I mention it as a psychological confession.

An affair that might have seemed a mere trifle - and might seem so still under different circumstances - was shown to be 'something immense in the sight of God'. 'A'isha could not have understood the vast dimensions of the stage upon which she had been summoned to play her part, but everything that happened upon this stage took place in so brilliant a light - and had such tremendous consequences - that we should not think it strange if God chose to intervene in the matter; nor is it difficult in hindsight, aware of the significance of this incident in the development of Islam, to realize that the loss of a necklace by a fifteen-year-old girl travelling through an earthly desert might be of greater significance than galactic catastrophes or the death of stars.

One of the striking characteristics of the era of Coolidge Prosperity was the unparalleled rapidity and unanimity with which millions of men and women turned their attention, their talk, and their emotional interest upon a series of tremendous trifles -- a heavyweight boxing-match, a murder trial, a new automobile model, a transatlantic flight.