"Petty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come. Only would his inclinations obtrude. There was nothing mean or petty in this big creature. He loved his brother frankly and freely, and his absurd heart would not permit him to thrust ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... extract from "The Journal of a Naturalist:"—"The yellow and brown-tailed moths," he observes, "the death-watch, our snails, and many other insects, have all been the subjects of man's fears, but the dread excited in England by the appearance, noises, or increase of insects, are petty apprehensions compared with the horror that the presence of this Acherontia occasions to some of the more fanciful and superstitious natives of northern Europe, maintainers of the wildest conceptions. A letter is now before me from a correspondent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... be the meaning of so extraordinary a freak of nature? Surely it must be prophetic. Fate was kind enough to warn him in advance, no doubt; otherwise it was a trick. And why should she stoop to play so paltry a trick as that upon him? Surely fate would not be so petty. No. It was a warning. The mirror had been so affected by some supernatural agency that it divined and reflected that which was to be instead of confining itself to what Jingleberry called "simultaneity." It led instead of following or acting coincidently with the ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... appropriate duties. These consist in the supervision of the grain fields, coconut groves, betel-nut plantations, and in the preservation of the general order and peace of the town. So numerous are these petty officers, that there is scarcely a family of any consequence, that has not a member who holds some kind of office under government. This policy, in case of disturbances, at once unites a large and influential body on the side of the government, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting—landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught from their youth ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
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