“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.””
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus; and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.””
“Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,And do not drop in for an after-loss:Ah! do not, when my heart hath ‘scaped this sorrow,Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,To linger out a purposed overthrow.If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,When other petty griefs have done their spite,But in the onset come: so shall I tasteAt first the very worst of fortune’s might;And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.””
“There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.””
William PettyWilliam Petty was a prominent 17th-century English philosopher, scientist, and political economist, best known for his pioneering contributions to the fields of statistics and economics. Born in 1623 ...
“If we had the true and complete history of one man - which would be the history of his head - we would sign the warrants and end ourselves forever, not because of the wickedness we would find within that man, no, but because of the meagerness of feeling, the miniaturization of meaning, the pettiness of ambition, the vulgarities, the vanities, the diminution of intelligence, the endless trivia we’d encounter, the ever present dust.””
“How many husbands and wives,” Merrin uttered sadly, “must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds. Ah, dear God!” He shook his head. And then he nodded. “There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.””
“If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine. What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment.””
“Men who pride themselves on being shrewd in discovering the weak points, the vanity, the dishonesty, immorality, intrigue, and pettiness of others think they understand character. They know only a part of character. They know only the depths to which some men may sink; they know not the heights to which some men may rise.””
“Tomorrow,and tomorrow,and tomorrowCreeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time,And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death.Out, out, brief candle.Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more.It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.””
“What’s the point?” “Who can know?” answered Merrin. “Who can really hope to know? And yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us … the observers … every person in this house. And I think”
“Colonel Crawley’s defective capital. I wonder how many families are driven to roguery and to ruin by great practitioners in Crawlers way?”
“No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves.””
“If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,When other petty griefs have done their spite,But in the onset come: so shall I tasteAt first the very worst of fortune’s might;And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,Compar’d with loss of thee will not seem so.””
“Suppose the ambassador from the French comes back:Tells Harry that the King doth offer him Katherine his daughter;and with her to dowry some petty and unprofitable dukedoms:The offer likes not;””
“(H)ow many great noblemen rob their petty tradesmen, condescend to swindle their poor retainers out of wretched little sums, and cheat for a few shillings? When we read that a nobleman has left for the Continent, or that another noble nobleman has an execution in his house - that one or other owe six or seven millions, the defeat seems glorious even, and we respect the victim of the vastness of his ruin. But who pities a poor barber who can't get his money for powdering the footman's heads; or a poor carpenter who has ruined himself by fixing up ornaments and pavilions for my lady's déjeuner; or the poor devil of a tailor whom the steward patronizes, and who has pledged all he is worth, and more, to get the liveries ready, which my lord has done him the honor to bespeak? - When the great house tumbles down, these miserable wretches fall under it unnoticed: as they say in old legends, before a man goes to the devil himself, he sends plenty of other souls thither.””