Small Gods Quotes & Sayings

The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly. — Ray Bradbury

The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sun-dial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions. — Plautus

So, you met Steinbeck," mused Hemingway over his port after the women had left. "It is a fateful peculiarity that you might meet him and me at virtually the same time. To what do you attribute that, Homer?" "I don't know, sir," Homer answered. "Just the way it worked out, I guess." "Don't you believe it. There are no coincidences in life. Although the big God of the Hebrews might be the greatest of them, I believe there are small gods who watch out and sometimes determine our fate. I believe they also like to have a little fun with us from time to time. Kismet. You heard of it?" "I — Homer Hickam

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express - not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life - but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves - always with respect - the mildest possible grimace of irony. — Doris Lessing

There. Let the gods of friendship and common sense strike him dead. — Kelly Moran

No baby knows when the nipple is pulled from his mouth for the last time. No child knows when he last calls his mother "Mama." No small boy knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story that will ever be read to him. No boy knows when the water drains from the last bath he will ever take with his brother. No young man knows, as he first feels his greatest pleasure, that he will never again not be sexual. No brinking woman knows, as she sleeps, that it will be four decades before she will again awake infertile. No mother knows she is hearing the word Mama for the last time. No father knows when the book has closed on the last bedtime story he will ever read: From that day on, and for many years to come, peace reigned on the island of Ithaca, and the gods looked favorably upon Odysseus, his wife, and his son. — Jonathan Safran Foer

That night, Sushila went to the puja room when she arrived home. Her house was small, with only a few rooms, but there had always been a puja room as long as she could remember. It was in the northeast corner of the house, and Sushila once asked her mother why they did not have a fancier bigger puja room.
"We are small people and we will be happy with small gods. It is not the size of the space used for worship that matters," said her mother. "It is the size of your heart that matters. You can learn the lessons of Buddha and the Goddess in a prison, you do not need even this humble puja room. There are people in this town who are happy with much less than what we have. — Joe Niemczura

The gods attend to great matters, they neglect small ones. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. — Ray Bradbury

If you want your life to be a small part of eternity, to be lucid even in the heart of madness, love ... Love with all your strength, love as though it is all you know how to do, love enough to make the gods themselves jealous ... for it is in love that all ugliness reveals its beauty. — Yasmina Khadra

A book's never gonna be perfect, but then the Romans believed perfection angered the gods. — Melvyn Small

Rigg shrugged. "I know it makes you feel better, but I think it's arrogant to believe in anything anyway."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah," Rigg said, frowning at the clouds. "No one can really know what's out there. People are too small in the grand scheme of things. Saying we know and understand the gods is like a bug saying they know and understand our airships. They don't and they can't."

Hari smiled. "Fair enough. — Ash Gray

Neleus ...
The son of Poseidon!
A birth that came from the mate of a god and a mortal woman.
Not plain at all!
So it was, when the gods love, mate as humans with humans!
From such a union two children were born, both boys.
Their mother placed them in a small boat, and dropped it into the sea.
The sea loved and saved them, children of Neptune were anyway!
The river itself is connected with the sea, fresh water with salt, the land and the sea ...
"The sea herself guided us like legendary heroes into this new place ..".
It couldn't be differently.
Children of the Gods aren't we, our race? Have similar origin and similar history! Could not abandoned us, prey and exposed, like the two babies? — Katerina Kostaki

The small mound I have mentioned a while ago was once occupied by the Phenician city of Laish. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eschol captured the place, and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors whenever they wore their own out. Jeroboam set up a golden calf here to fascinate his people and keep them from making dangerous trips to Jerusalem to worship, which might result in a return to their rightful allegiance. With all respect for those ancient Israelites, I can not overlook the fact that they were not always virtuous enough to withstand the seductions of a golden calf. Human nature has not changed much since then. — Mark Twain

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

With no small amount of swagger, Gavin Greyling said, "I remember Gavin fucking Guile, who won the False Prism's War, who outwitted the Thorn Conspirators and ended the Red Cliff Uprising. Gavin Guile, who brought low pirate kings and bandit lords, who ended the Blood Wars with wits and one deadly wave of his hand, who brought justice to the Seven Satrapies. Gavin Guile, who hunted wights and criminals, who built Brightwater Wall in less than a week, who aborted the birth of gods, destroyed at least two bane, and killed a god full fledged at Ruic Head. Gavin Guile, who faced a sea demon and lived, saving all the people of Garriston and the Blackguard, too. Gavin Guile, who sank Pash vecchio's great ship Gargantua with a rat. Gavin Guile, who armed us for war and gave the Blackguard the seas entire with ou sea chariots and hull wreckers. Gavin Guile, heart of our heart, our Promachos, the one who goes before us in war, who came and conquered and will come again. — Brent Weeks

You were small, but far-famed. We were in Oldtown at your birth, and all the city talked of was the monster that had been born to the King's Hand, and what such an omen might foretell for the realm."
"Famine, plague, and war, no doubt." Tyrion gave a sour smile. "It's always famine, plague, and war. Oh, and winter, and the long night that never ends."
"All that," said Prince Oberyn, "and your father's fall as well. Lord Tywin had made himself greater than King Aerys, I heard one begging brother preach, but only a god is meant to stand above a king. You were his curse, a punishment sent by the gods to teach him that he was no better than any other man."
"I try, but he refuses to learn." Tyrion gave a sigh. "But do go on, I pray you. I love a good tale."
"And well you might, since you were said to have one, a stiff curly tail like a swine's. — George R R Martin

But Celaena had stood in front of the that wooden door to the bedroom, listening to Yrene wash her clothes in the nearby kitchen. She found herself unable to turn away, unable to stop thinking about the would-be healer with the brown-gold hair and caramel eyes, of what Yrene had lost and how helpless she'd become. There were so many of them now - the children who had lost everything to Adarlan. Children who had now grown into assassins and barmaids, without a true place to call home, their native kingdoms left to ruin and ash.
Magic had been gone all these years. And the gods were dead, or simply didn't care anymore. Yet there, deep in her gut, was a small but insistent tug. A tug on a strand of some invisible web. So Celaena decided to tug back, just to see how far and wide the reverberations would go. — Sarah J. Maas

What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small ... and you will escape the jealousy of the great. — Philip K. Dick

ROSE FELT LIKE she had a neon sign flashing over her head - looking for a one night stand, only sex gods need apply. — Mary J. Williams

Leo plunked the cheese wheel in front of me. "Cut me a wedge of this, my good ma. Chop-chop!"
I scowled at him. "Don't test me, Valdez. When I am a god again, I will make a constellation out of you. I will call it the Small Exploding Latino."
"I like it!" He patted my shoulder, causing my knife to jiggle.
Did no one fear the wrath of the gods any more? — Rick Riordan

The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on. We make ourselves and in so doing are the gods of the small universe of self and the large world of repercussions. — Rebecca Solnit

Small children believe themselves to be gods, or some of them do, and they can only be satisfied when the rest of the world goes along with their way of seeing things. — Neil Gaiman

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. — Gabor Mate

We stood and watched as the clan ran ahead of us into the valley that would become our home. Jafir pressed his hand to the small mound growing in my belly and smiled. Our hope. "We have been blessed by the gods," he said. "The cruelties of the world are behind us now. Our child will never know them." I — Mary E. Pearson

Vimes was hazy on religion. He attended Watch funerals and went to such religious events as the proper fulfilling of the office of Commander entailed, but as for the rest ... well, you saw things sometimes that made it impossible to believe not only in gods, but also in common humanity and your own eyes. — Terry Pratchett

Such a small question, little mouse. Why. Yet, such a large answer. Suffice it to say that the gods are at war. And when the gods make war, it's we little mice who pay the price."

~Dal Durvaas, The Living Gods — W.M. Driscoll

The wine god sighed. 'Oh Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.' He left me alone to think about that. And as I watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, I had to smile. — Rick Riordan

You cruel, hard-hearted gods!" I flung the goblet in his direction. Hermes barely had time to dart out of its way before it hit the wall and shattered to small pieces. "You're all the same! Hsst! Jealous! Vindictive! That's what you are! You allow yourselves to take pleasure with any mortal you wish. Let a goddess do the same. Let a goddess choose a mortal for her lover, and you set off in a fury of revenge against her as if her actions are an affront to you. And all the while, you male gods allow yourselves all kinds of liberties you deny to us females. — Tamara Agha-Jaffar

I was in college in the sixties when movies really got good. I'm a fan of Bergman and Hitchcock and Polanski and Antonioni. Those are my gods. — David Small

Religions contradict one another-on small matters, such as whether we should put on a hat or take one off on entering a house of worship, or whether we should eat beef and eschew pork or the other way around, all the way to the most central issues, such as whether there are no gods, one God, or many gods. — Carl Sagan

In the blood of scales and days of kings,
Will come a boy to save us all.
Let us pray to the gods above, our voices large and small.
For all we fear in the shadows, will be destroyed with light.
Talonsphere will rise from the ground, and bring fire to the night. — Peter Koevari

Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot peppers. She would let the chili cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon juice and a pitch of fresh dill, and, finally, measure out and add her chili powders. On more than one occasion Shadow had tried to get her to show him how she made it: he would watch everything she did, from slicing the onions and dropping them into the olive oil at the bottom of the pot. He had even written down the recipe, ingredient by ingredient, and he had once made Laura's chili for himself on a weekend when she had been out of town. It had tasted okay-it was certainly edible, but it had not been Laura's chili. — Neil Gaiman

You have to learn how to be Gods yourselves, and be kings and priests to God, the same as all Gods have done before you, namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one: from grace to grace FROM EXALTATION TO EXALTATION until you ATTAIN THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. — Sam Smith

He started to list the coin vanishes he had mastered, which reminded him of the coin he had tossed into Laura's grave, and then, in his head, Audrey was telling him that Laura had died with Robbie's cock in her mouth, and once again he felt a small hurt in his heart. — Neil Gaiman

The evil spirits returned to Belial inside the mountain. He stared with a dire face into the blackened ooze of the Abyss that filled the large lake inside their sanctuary. Small flames of fire flitted across the surface of it. The sixty plus other gods gathered around their leader like a bodyguard of Watchers, swords drawn, javelins and maces held tight. Would they fight this day? Belial said, still staring into the oblivion, "It is worse than I thought." Molech whined, "Are the heavenly host approaching?" "No. He transfigured." "Glorification," said Molech. "Is that not a call to battle?" "He is not attacking us on our turf. He is challenging us to his." "It is almost upon us," said Belial. "All gods, prepare for war. — Brian Godawa

That,' he confessed aloud, 'was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well ... if you keep quiet about it, I will. — Poul Anderson

Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis." -Ibid- — Terry Pratchett

He wasn't sure himself why he was pulling his punches in this way, but somehow it seemed important not to let Contact know everything, to keep something back. It was a small victory against them a little-game, a gesture on a lesser board; a blow against the elements and the gods. — Iain M. Banks

The wrong thing being?" asks Halwaz.
"Closing up their source, of course," you say, in a tone which implies, "Did you think I was merely talking about their sacrificing small fuzzy animals in an attempt to bring back ancient evil gods? — Mike Reeves-McMillan

The place whereon the priest formerly raveled out the small intestine of the sacrificial victim for purposes of divination and cooked its flesh for the gods. The word is now seldom used, except with reference to the sacrifice of their liberty and peace by a male and a female fool. — Ambrose Bierce

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
'Yes. Yes, of course.'
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG. — Terry Pratchett

The vampire gagged. The muscles of its neck constricted, widened, constricted again, and it disgorged a six-inch-long metal cylinder onto my desk. The bloodsucker grasped it, twisted the cylinder's halves apart, and retrieved a roll of papers. "Photographs," Ghastek said, handing me a couple of sheets from the roll.
"That's disgusting."
"He is thirty years old," Ghastek said. "All his internal organs, with the exception of the heart, atrophied long ago. The throat makes for a very good storage cavity. People seem to prefer it to the anus."
Translation: be happy I didn't pull it out of my ass. Thank the gods for small favors. — Ilona Andrews

Sometimes you simply need to say thank you to someone, to be grateful for the road behind and the road ahead and the place you're at, and gods are very good at accepting those feelings. And for all that humanity asks them for intercession with this crisis or that, it's important when things go well to be thankful or at least conscious of your good fortune, whether the gods deserve the gratitude or not. We strive so much to achieve these small slivers of balance that it would be a shame not to look around and appreciate them when they happen. — Kevin Hearne

I was the Sumerian god of fertility. You know what that means, don't you? (Sin)
You have a lot of penis envy over the other fertility gods? Don't worry. I won't tell the other gods about your small penis problem. (Kat) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She brought a chair into the room and placed it alongside the top of his bed. Then she held his hand as he drifted off to sleep. It was so small in her own hand, and it felt warm and dry. She pressed his hand gently, and his fingers returned the pressure, but only just, as he was almost asleep by then. She remembered, but not very well, what it was to fall asleep holding the hand of another; how precious such an experience, how fortunate those to whom it was vouchsafed by the gods of Friendship, or of Love. She thought she had forgotten that, but now she remembered. — Alexander McCall Smith

I am well aware that there is such a great craving in man for heroism and the heroic, and that hero worship forms not a small motif in his complex. I am also aware that, unless man believes in his own heroism and the heroism of others, he cannot achieve much or great things. We must, however, take proper care that we do not make a fetish of this cult of hero-worship, for then we will turn ourselves into votaries of false gods and prophets. — Aung San

Bran knew. "She's a child. A child of the forest." He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan's tales.
"The First Men named us children," the little woman said. "The giants called us wok dak nag gran, the squirrel people, because we were small and quick and fond of trees, but we are no squirrels, no children. Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of the earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sun our songs ten thousand years."
Meera said, "You speak the Common Tongue now."
"For him. The Bran boy. I was born in the time of the dragon, and for two hundred years I walked the world of men, to watch and listen and learn. I might be walking still, but my legs were sore and my heart was weary, so I turned my feet for home."
"Two hundred years?" said Meera.
The child smiled. "Men, they are the children. — George R R Martin

Karou's glance flickered to where the corpse had been, which did not go unnoticed by Liraz. "You think I didn't learn?" the angel asked, incredulous.
And with that, Karou almost dared to hope. "Did you?" she asked, and her voice was very small.
Did you learn?
Did you glean Ziri's soul?
Dear gods and stardust, did you?
Liraz started to tremble. "I don't know," she said, "I don't know." Her voice shattered, and just like that she was crying. — Laini Taylor

I think there is only one. Oh, there are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe, and in the bloodstained shadows where men like Belasius wait for them. But I believe there must be one who is God Himself, like the great sea, and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we all come to Him in the end. — Mary Stewart

Has the Sperm Whale ever written a book, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing nothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his pyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale been known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by their child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile, because the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue, or at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of protrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall lure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and livingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now unhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove's high seat, the great Sperm Whale shall lord it. — Herman Melville

The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.
The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability. — Herodotus

Quillonians were a reclusive race, proud, prone to drama, and violent when cornered. A couple of them had stayed at my parents' inn, and as long as everything went their way, they were perfectly cordial, but the moment any small problem appeared, they would start putting exclamation marks at the end of all their sentences. My mother didn't like dealing with them. She was very practical. If you brought a problem to her, she'd take it apart and figure out how best to resolve it. From what I remembered, Quillonians didn't always want their problems resolved. They wanted a chance to shake their clawed fists at the sky, invoke their gods, and act as if the world was ending. — Ilona Andrews

But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death. — Salman Rushdie

May the Gods all preserve for me (until my present form ceases) this clear and sunlit view of external reality, the instinctive awareness of my unimportance, the cosiness of being small, and the solace of being able to imagine myself happy. — Fernando Pessoa

There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshipped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don't demand much in the way of miracles. — Terry Pratchett

I took his hand, he took a friend. All he has done is bite and claw for his own survival. Watching him now, so small and plain in a world of gods, it's almost as if he's the hero nobly struggling against a father who rejected him, against a Society that laughs at his size, his weakness, and scorns him as a cannibal even though it was they who told him to do whatever he had to do to win. — Pierce Brown

Some say knowledge is power. Some tell us that all power comes from the gods. Others say it derives from law. Yet that day on the steps of Baelor's Sept, our godly High Septon and the lawful Queen Regent and your ever-so-knowledgeable servant were as powerless as any cobbler or cooper in the crowd. Who truly killed Eddard Stark, do you think? Joffrey, who gave the command? Ser Ilyn Payne, who swung the sword? Or ... another?"
Tyrion cocked his head sideways. "Did you mean to answer your damned riddle, or only to make my head ache worse?"
Varys smiled. "Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less."
"So power is a mummer's trick?"
"A shadow on the wall," Varys murmured, "yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow."
Tyrion smiled. "Lord Varyls, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I'd feel sad about it. — George R R Martin

Many religions have attempted to make statues of their gods very large, and the idea, I suppose, is to make us feel small. But if that's their purpose, they can keep their paltry icons. We need only look up if we wish to feel small. — Carl Sagan

God will always do great things with people who are willing to be faithful in the small things. — Lysa TerKeurst

Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods. — Ray Bradbury

Priests confine broad truths into narrow doctrines, because more rules mean that they have more power. Priests mistake their own prejudice for conscience and mistake what they personally fear for what should universally be feared. Priests look inward to their own small souls and try to impress that smallness on the world, when they should be looking at the greatness of the universe and trying to impress that upon their souls. Priests forget they owe everything to their gods and begin to think the world owes everything to them . . . : the cat stopped, and shook his head. :Power is a poison. — Mercedes Lackey

The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jedda, in Babylon. — Cormac McCarthy

It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails. — Louis L'Amour

I sit here
drunk now.
I am
a series of
small victories
and large defeats
and I am as
amazed
as any other
that
I have gotten
from there to
here
without committing murder
or being
murdered;
without
having ended up in the
madhouse.

as I drink alone
again tonight
my soul despite all the past
agony
thanks all the gods
who were not
there
for me
then. — Charles Bukowski

Better to have small faith in a great God than to have great faith in a small god. — Steven J. Lawson

Don't let anyone or anything drown out that still small voice that says, "You were made for more. — Kirstin Leigh

Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?"
Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames - a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room. "I am a scribe in the House of LIfe, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods. — Rick Riordan

There are such people, unfortunates who have to be angry before they can feel alive. I had sometimes wondered if it were some old relic of pagan superstition, the fear of risking the jealousy and anger of the gods, that made such people afraid of even small happinesses. Or perhaps it was only that tragedy is more self-important than laughter. — Mary Stewart

To whom shall I offer this book, young and sprightly,
Neat, polished, wide-margined, and finished politely?
To you, my Cornelius, whose learning pedantic,
Has dared to set forth in three volumes gigantic
The history of ages - ye gods, what a labor!
And still to enjoy the small wit of a neighbor.
A man who can be light and learned at once, sir,
By life's subtle logic is far from a dunce, sir.
So take my small book - if it meet with your favor.
The passing of years cannot dull its sweet savor. — Catullus

Humanized gods are too small to captivate my imagination, or be worthy of my fullest allegiance. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Natural,my ass! The worst poison known to man comes from a tree frog in South America. You cannot imagine how small an amount would be necessary to kill you.and it's natural.Calling something NATURAL is a MEANINGLESS MARKETING PLOY."
"All right,calm down! Maybe I like alternative medicine because it's been in use for more than six thousand years.After all that time,they have to know what they're doing."
"You mean the wacky idea that somehow in the distant past people had more scientific wisdom than they do today?That's both crazy and counterintuitive.Six thousand years ago people thought thunder was a bunch of gods moving around furniture."
-Conversation btw Dr.Jack Stapleton and Vinnie — Robin Cook

For the first time in the history of the world, Buddhism proclaimed a salvation which each individual could gain from him or herself, in this world, during this life, without any least reference to God, or to gods either great or small. — Aldous Huxley

Oh, I believe you. It's too ridiculous not to be true. It's just that each time my world gets stranger, I think: Right. We're at maximum oddness now. At least I know the full extent of it. First, I find out my brother and I are descended from the pharaohs and have magic powers. All right. No problem. Then I find out my dead father has merged his soul with Osiris and Why not? Then my uncle takes over the House of Life and oversees hundreds of magicians around the world. Then my boyfriend turns out to be a hybrid magician boy/immortal god of funerals. And all the while I'm thinking, Of course! Keep calm and carry on! I've adjusted! And then you come along on a random Thursday, la-di-da, and say, Oh, by the way, Egyptian gods are just one small part of the cosmic absurdity. We've also got the Greeks to worry about! Hooray! — Rick Riordan

Man wasn't made to share the universe with gods. Their ways are not meant for the humble likes of us. But we've decoded some of their secrets regardless. Like worms, we've grabbed on to the talons of eagles and learnt some small truths and means of flight. But we can never really fly. We try, and succeed to a certain extent, but the fall is always - will always be - there. To be a druid is to embrace death, dance with it a while and finally fall prey to it. That is why we'll never rule this world. We have the power to bend all men to our whim, but are forever pushing ourselves further, trying to fly higher ... and falling. — Darren Shan

You're a domestic man, David. You feel hundreds of small affections all the time. They haunt every friendly pillow and comfortable chair like household gods. Together they add up to a great love, big enough to ignore this silly man who's hanging around your wife's skirts. — J.G. Ballard

Plastic gods are safe. Plastic gods don't mess with you. Plastic gods don't matter much; they fit in a small crevice of the life you want, the life you were planning to have. And when everything in life is working . . . plastic gods feel like enough. — Jennie Allen

His companion was older, clean-shaved, with a lined ascetic face. His hair had been pulled back and tied in a knot behind his head. "Small men oft feel a need to prove their courage with unseemly boasts," he declared. "I doubt if he could kill a duck." Tyrion shrugged. "Fetch the duck." "If you insist." The rider glanced at his companion. The brawny man unsheathed a bastard sword. "I'm Duck, you mouthy little pisspot." Oh, gods be good. "I had a smaller duck in mind." The big man roared with laughter. "Did you hear, Haldon? He wants a smaller Duck! — George R R Martin

*The disc's greatest lovers were undoubtedly Mellius and Gretelina, whose pure, passionate and soul-searing affair would have scorched the pages of History if they had not, because of some unexplained quirk of fate, been born two hundred years apart on different continents. However, the gods took pity on them and turned him into an ironing board** and her into a small brass bollard.
**When you're a god, you don't have to have reasons. — Terry Pratchett

a dream half-waking, broken and uneasy, of the small gods of small places; gods of hills and woods and streams and crossways; the gods who still haunt their broken shrines, waiting in the dusk beyond the lights of the busy Christian churches, and the dogged rituals of the greater gods of Rome. — Mary Stewart

Holy spirits, you walk up there
in the light, on soft earth.
Shining god-like breezes
touch upon you gently,
as a woman's fingers
play music on holy strings.

Like sleeping infants the gods
breathe without any plan;
the spirit flourishes continually
in them, chastely kept,
as in a small bud,
and their holy eyes
look out in still
eternal clearness.

A place to rest
isn't given to us.
Suffering humans
decline and blindly fall
from one hour to the next,
like water thrown
from cliff to cliff,
year after year,
down into the Unknown. — Friedrich Holderlin

Opening paragraph for The Last Gods of Indochine:

"It was hard to believe the human body could contain so much water, and yet, there it all was. Phrai twisted the cloth and watched it plop in dull patters on the ground, the pocked earth sponging up sound as well. Sweat had been seeping out his employer for weeks, and he had been at the dying man's side all the while, pouring fresh water back into his mouth with the devotion of a nun. Phrai imagined nearly half the man had been absorbed and squeezed from these rags, creating small pools just outside the hut. In another part of the world, that half of him would evaporate out of existence, but here it could not; the thick air held eternity at bay. — Samuel Ferrer

We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves. — James Hollis