Smaller Quotes & Sayings

The idea of women having sex without risking pregnancy is deeply disturbing to the vision of women's role that Western civilization has inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition.....In Britain, the Anglican Church denounced it (birth control) as 'the awful heresy'. As families grew smaller in the US during early years of the twentieth century....the moral reaction mounted. Theodore Roosevelt attacked the use of condoms as 'decadent'. He declared women who used contraceptives as 'criminals against the race...the object of contemptuous abhorrence by healthy people. — Jack Holland

One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones. — Bret Harte

And then the darkness gives way to white neon. An Art Deco font, burning into the night, announces our arrival at the CINEMA LE CHAMPO. The letters dwarf me. Cinema. Has there ever been a more beautiful word? My heart soars as we pass the colorful film posters and walk through the gleaming glass doors. The lobby is smaller than what I'm used to, and though it's missing the tang of artificially buttered popcorn, there's something in the air I recognize, something both musty and comforting. — Stephanie Perkins

All my stories take place on the West Coast - not the beach, but smaller inland towns. I feel homesick, and I find inspiration in capturing that. — Adrian Tomine

So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within a larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible. — John Kennedy Toole

The bottom line for housing is that the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse - one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy - while not fully allayed have diminished. Moreover, while the future for housing activity remains uncertain, I think there is a reasonable chance that housing is in the process of stabilizing, which would mean that it would put a considerably smaller drag on the economy going forward. — Janet Yellen

I believe that smaller government is better government. But I also believe that in the areas where government does play a legitimate role, we should demand that it is done better. — Scott Walker

It is an in, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order, for a larger and higher organisation, to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies. — Pope Leo XIII

And then the industry itself was so cocky about what they were doing that they weren't seeing what was coming on the horizon with Japan and Germany and other places that were building smaller cars. — David Maraniss

People think that their world will get smaller as they get older. My experience is just the opposite. Your senses become more acute. You start to blossom. — Yoko Ono

The smaller fry disappears while the bigger one still rules in the business world and also in other areas like politics. — Girdhar Joshi

I'm not really scared of a lot of things. I'm scared of possums. And I'm scared of raccoons sometimes, it depends on how big it is - I'm scared of the smaller raccoons because the bigger ones are slower. — Vince Staples

Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don['t care whether you call it capitalism or communism -it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come. — Cesar Chavez

My set comes with a smaller fin in the back, i find this helps me release off the top a lot easier — Julian Wilson

Missing someone has to be one of the worst human emotions. All the other feelings like anger and fear and horror get some much more airplay, as if their intensity gives them more value, but whereas those emotions come in violent bursts and are gone again, the gnawing ache of loss has to be simply endured. It's like background noise, it's always there, it never goes away. You just have to try to block it out, distract yourself, hope that tomorrow the hole they left behind has grown a little smaller. — Alexandra Potter

It's my body and if I want to do it like Michael Jackson, I will. My nose bothered me for a long time. Now it's smaller and I'm happy. If I wanna put my tits on my back, they're mine! — Cher

Why, if all the creatures in the world gathered together to make a single gnat and put a soul into it, they would not succeed!' No more than man can make a gnat can demons, according to another tradition, make anything smaller than a grain of barley. But those who favored the thaumaturgic interpretation of the Book of Yetsirah, and believed that a man or golem could be created with its help,...." Idea of the Golem p. 171 — Gershom Scholem

I've lost 12 inches in three weeks. Every time I go for the costume fitting each week, it's smaller and smaller. I'm feeling great. I'm putting in the work. I'm getting a lot of sleep. Everything is on the backburner right now. 'Dancing' is my priority. — Ricki Lake

It was much easier for him now that he was smaller to negotiate his way through his crammed shop but he still tried to swagger past the shelves like he used to in the past. The attempt looked so strange that Scipio started to mimic him behind his back. "What's the silly giggling about?" Barbarossa asked when Prosper and Renzo bust out laughing. — Cornelia Funke

The movement toward estrangement - from each other, and from themselves - took place in far smaller, subtler steps. They were always becoming closer in the realm of doing - coordinating the ever-expanding routines, talking and texting more (and more efficiently), cleaning together the mess made by the children they made - and farther in feeling. Once, — Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm not so sure," Dad said. "Every damn thing in the universe can be broken down into smaller things, even atom, even protons, so theoretically speaking, I guess you had a winning case. A collection of things should be considered one thing. Unfortunately, theory don't always carry the day. — Jeannette Walls

The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. — Edward Kennedy

I did some theatre. I had some smaller roles in a couple TV shows and films. I used to think I did a lot of acting, but my 'career' started when I started 'Homeland'. — Morgan Saylor

What I realized with Funny or Die is that I could take it into my own hands. On a much smaller scale, I think these videos are an accurate representation of who I am. As weird as they may be, I'm at least proud of them, and it showed that I do have a slightly different voice. I can't tell you how often people bring up these videos in interviews, and I'm so happy to talk about them because we created them from the ground up. — Dave Franco

With every job I've gotten, I've bought myself something. When 'Glee' was picked up, I rented a piano for the year. For smaller victories, I'll go to dinner with a friend, or go for a walk and think about it all. It's important to say to yourself, Today was a good day. — Dianna Agron

I love the smaller scenes. I love the smaller, slightly more theatrical scenes. — Martin Freeman

Returning to the Brandt home but I agreed to give a hand. We arrived after lunch and found Lise at work loading a wheelbarrow with the smaller stones from the huge pile beside the shed. The flower bed itself was in the middle of the yard, positioned in a sunny area between deep pools of shade that lay beneath a couple of tall hackberry trees. — William Kent Krueger

The press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are. — Marguerite Yourcenar

I also believe that man's continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people ... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment - unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight - that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues. — Garth Stein

Smaller games with smaller budgets and smaller audiences have the luxury of being more experimental or bizarre or interesting than 12 million dollar games that need to play it as safely as possible to ensure a return on investment. — Anna Anthropy

There's something to said about smaller bed - you're forced to stay close to me. Where you belong. — Samantha Chase

I grow into my death.
My life is small
and getting smaller. The world is green.
Nothing is all. — Mark Strand

The potential gains from improved stabilization policies are on the order of hundredths of a percent of consumption, perhaps two orders of magnitude smaller than the potential benefits of available supply-side fiscal reforms. — Robert Lucas Jr.

Mistakes are part of your life; it is impossible to live a mistake-free life! You have made mistakes and you shall make mistakes! Just let them be fewer and smaller! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It was a day-by-day record of a Guild much younger and smaller than the current one. After several pages, she had grown fond of the record-keeper, who clearly admired the people he was writing about. — Trudi Canavan

The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive. — Cameron Conaway

Rather than struggling to become bigger fish, we might concentrate our energies on finding smaller ponds or smaller species to swim with, so our own size will trouble us less. — Alain De Botton

Take the next little step-the smaller you make it, the more likely you'll take it.. — Jill Badonsky

I discovered when I had a child of my own that I had become a biased observer of small children. Instead of looking at them with affectionate but nonpartisan eyes, I saw each of them as older or younger, bigger or smaller, more or less graceful, intelligent, or skilled than my own child. — Margaret Mead

For the greater beauty of the instrument, the balls representing the planets are to be of considerable bigness; but so contrived, that they may be taken off at pleasure, and others, much smaller, and fitter for some purposes, put in their places. — David Rittenhouse

Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field. — Matthea Harvey

What changes that we can control will make this space more gracious?" The group can then reshape the room to suit their needs. At the Center office, we previously had one long table in the conference room bolted to the floor. It offered no flexibility so we removed this table and replaced it with three square tables. They can be configured into one large board table, a medium sized conference table or three smaller tables. We scale the size of the table to the number of participants in the meeting so everyone feels more intimately connected. — Patricia Hughes

Smaller World:
I know he's not really gone, she said, but the world still feels smaller to me today. — Brian Andreas

Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. — Werner Herzog

Everything smaller than Heaven bores us because only Heaven is bigger than our hearts. — Peter Kreeft

Some of the smallest things on a smaller film, to me, are greater achievements than on a big film when you have the resources and the time and everything else. — Roger Deakins

Most weight loss diets center around portion control, which is just trying to eat smaller amounts of the same addictive foods. This approach inevitably fails. — Joel Fuhrman

The fratricidal Yoruba wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a great boost to the transatlantic traffic in human beings. There were constant skirmishes between the Ijebus, the Egbas, the Ekitis, the Oyos, the Ibadans, and many other Yoruba groups. Some of the smaller groups might even have been wiped out from history, as the larger ones enlarged their territory and consolidated their power. The vanquished were brought from the interior to the coast and sold to the people of Lagos and to communities along the network of lagoons stretching westward to Ouidah. And they in turn arranged the auctions at which the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish loaded up their barracoons and slave ships. Some of these intertribal wars were waged for the express purpose of supplying slaves to traders. At thirty-five British pounds for each healthy adult male, it was a lucrative business. — Teju Cole

In clear-cutting, he said, you clear away the natural forest, or what the industrial forester calls "weed trees," and plant all one species of tree in neat straight functional rows like corn, sorghum, sugar beets or any other practical farm crop. You then dump on chemical fertilizers to replace the washed-away humus, inject the seedlings with growth-forcing hormones, surround your plot with deer repellants and raise a uniform crop of trees, all identical. When the trees reach a certain prespecified height (not maturity; that takes too long) you send in a fleet of tree-harvesting machines and cut the fuckers down. All of them. Then burn the slash, and harrow, seed, fertilize all over again, round and round and round again, faster and faster, tighter and tighter until, like the fabled Malaysian Concentric Bird which flies in ever-smaller circles, you disappear up your own asshole. — Edward Abbey

If it had been a heart attack, the newspaper
might have used the word massive,
as if a mountain range had opened
inside her, but instead
it used the word suddenly, a light coming on
in an empty room. The telephone
fell from my shoulder, a black parrot repeating
something happened, something awful
a sunday, dusky. If it had been
terminal, we could have cradled her
as she grew smaller, wiped her mouth,
said good-bye. But it was sudden,
how overnight we could be orphaned
& the world became a bell we'd crawl inside
& the ringing all we'd eat. — Nick Flynn

If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains? — Ron Brackin

These civilians are discovering that their place in the world is smaller than they imagined. They do not matter. In war, men lose what makes them great. Their creativity. Their wisdom. Their joy. All that's left is their utility. War is not monstrous for making corpses of men so much as it is for making machines of them. And woe to those who have no use in war except to feed the machines. The — Pierce Brown

Perhaps I asked too large
I take - no less than skies
For Earths, grow thick as
Berries, in my native town
My Basket holds - just - Firmaments
Those - dangle easy - on my arm,
But smaller bundles - Cram. — Emily Dickinson

A Gold Glove would be one of the things I would really cherish. When I was younger, I was always smaller. I couldn't hit, so I had to work on defense. — Ryan Zimmerman

The smaller we feel in the world, the more we need to shine in the eyes of our partner. — Esther Perel

I like the brand Band of Outsiders. Their suits are cut really slim, for smaller framed gentlemen. — Aziz Ansari

The Nature of Familiar Letters, written, as it were, to the Moment, while the Heart is agitated by Hopes and Fears, on Events undecided, must plead an Excuse for the Bulk of a Collection of this Kind. Mere Facts and Characters might be comprised in a much smaller Compass: But, would they be equally interesting? — Samuel Richardson

People say that when you return to the place where you grew up, it always seems smaller than you remember ... but I don't know if it was because I had built it up in my memories or I had gotten bigger. Maybe both. — Jeannette Walls

Could you do a glamour and turn into something smaller?" I asked it. "Preferably not a chain, since it's no longer the 1990s?" The sword didn't reply (duh), but I imagined it was humming at a more interrogative pitch, like, Such as what? "I dunno. Something pocket-size and innocuous. A pen, maybe?" The sword pulsed, almost like it was laughing. I imagined it saying, A pen sword. That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. — Rick Riordan

Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it's easier to get away with murder. — James Carville

If I remember rightly Holland for instance has something like 45, and it's a much smaller country. In comparison we have very few and they are very badly financed. — Richard Rogers

Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness. — Sarah Ruhl

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

Dreams shape the kind of human beings we become. Not having a dream gave me a smaller future and made me a smaller person. — Martina Boone

I wouldn't run for President. I wouldn't want to move to a smaller house. — Bono

When humans' nerves detect big and small stimuli at the same time, they ignore the smaller one. — Fuminori Nakamura

Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever is was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, 'Enough! This is a silly way to decide who's in charge!' And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn't leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller. — Kristin Cashore

Audiences, as they get smaller, can intensify their relationship with the product, and so can the creative relationship with the people that you are serving. The good news is that, the more shows there are, the less the conglomerates have to gain by breaking the will of each individual creative. — Dan Harmon

Liberals want the government to get bigger, and they want you to drive smaller cars, and they want to dictate the way you live. — Rush Limbaugh

I've never had a very quiet voice. I tried in choir to make it smaller, and it just didn't work out. And I listened to a lot of soul music when I was growing up on my own accord. But I was mostly into Mama Cass and Gladys Knight, and they all had big voices too; just different than mine. — Beth Ditto

It's just human, or inhuman, nature: People will find a way to make a big deal out of their differences-the smaller, the better. It reminded me of the Mantagues and the Capulets (if I wanted to think highbrow), or the Hatfields and the McCoys (if I wanted to go lowbrow) ... or the Jets and the Sharks (if I happened to feel musical). — Kevin J. Anderson

The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. — Jeff Bezos

In a smaller church your pastoring sets up your preaching. In a larger church your preaching sets up your pastoring. — Timothy Keller

Love you," Xavier said just before he drifted back to sleep.
"Love you more," I said playfully.
"Not a chance," Xavier said, fully awake now. "I'm bigger, I can contain more love."
"I'm smaller, therefore my love particles are more compressed, which means I can fit more in."
Xavier laughed. "That argument makes no sense. Overruled."
"I'm just basing it on how much I miss you when you're not around," I countered.
"How can you possibly know how much I miss you?" he said. "Have you got some sort of built-in miss-o-meter that can give us a reading?"
"I'm a girl; of course I have a built-in miss-o-meter. — Alexandra Adornetto

When business became big business - conglomerates employing hundreds and even thousands of people - companies divided themselves into still smaller units. — Jill Lepore

Authority is something from which we are constantly subtracting, of which there remains always a residue, and which we attempt to make smaller and smaller. — Federica Montseny

Some people aren't great with babies, or they're not great with a smaller child - it's not that they're bad mothers. — Cara Buono

From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it might be important for us to realize that we came from an unknown somewhere; we brought with us an attained state of consciousness; and while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. From some perspectives, it may seem that we are making giant strides, but from the greater overview, our quantity of spiritual knowledge is smaller than Ptolemy's knowledge of astronomy! — John Templeton

He's built like a brick shithouse made of a hundred smaller brick shithouses. — Chuck Wendig

Whenever possible, buy a fish whole. With tuna, this isn't practical; with smaller fish, it is. — Nobu Matsuhisa

The other contained a set of rugged clothes, hiking boots, and a smaller backpack with many pouches and zippers. — Henry Gene Foster

Forgiveness doesn't make one person better, or the other guy smaller. Forgiving is just letting go. It's turning back toward being what we really are. — Edward Fahey

The present moment can be chopped into infinitely smaller present moments. This moment is forever. And it is all that matters. — Wendy Wunder

I kept thinking, as I was telling Didi, that somehow what was in my head
in my memory, in my thoughts
was not being translated fully into the world. I felt as though three-dimensional people and events were becoming two-dimensional in the telling, and as though they were smaller as well as flatter, that they were just less for being spoken. What was missing was the intense emotion that I felt, which, like water or youth itself, buoyed these small insignificant encounters into all that they meant to me. There they were, shrinking before my eyes, shrinking into my words. Anything that can be said, can be said clearly. Anything that cannot be said clearly, cannot be said. — Claire Messud

As a rough rule of thumb, I would say the smaller the pond, the more belligerent the fish. — Craig Brown

The Universe is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do. — Douglas Adams

Christmas is the season for miracles, you know. Sometimes they come big and loud, I guess - but I've never seen one of those. I think probably most miracles are a lot smaller, and sort of still, and so quiet, you could miss them. — Gary D. Schmidt

I don't want to lose my accent, I just want it to become smaller. — Goran Visnjic

The smaller girl hid her eyes with her hands, and Ewan smiled. Did she think that would make her invisible? — C.J. Milbrandt

Usually it seems like either you sacrifice something and a lot of people will pay attention, or you stay true to yourself and appeal to a smaller group of people, but now we've managed to do what we felt was the right thing to do in our heart and had it reach a wide audience. It feels very rare. — Jack Antonoff

Minneapolis doesn't benefit from a proximity to other rich cities and their intermingling of commerce. Instead, it's so far from other major metros that it's a singular magnet for regional talent. "There's basically nothing between us and Seattle, so we've historically had all these smaller cities in Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Montana that are our satellites," Orfield told me. — Anonymous

Have you ever stopped to really consider how many people we share the universe with? I mean, really. I did the other day, and it made me feel smaller than an ant. — Claire Contreras

The nationalism of a small nation can, with treacherous ease, become detached from its roots in what is noble and human. It then become pitiful, making the nation appear smaller rather than greater. It is the same with nations as with individuals; while trying to draw attention to the inadequacies of others, people all too often reveal their own. — Vasily Grossman

The Awa are a distinctive-looking, diminutive forest people, smaller than any of the dozen other Amazon tribespeople I have met. Reduced size is adaptive in a rain forest. You can move around more easily and unobtrusively. Not only humans but other species are smaller in rain forests. — Alex Shoumatoff

If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man. — Ludwig Von Mises

They're Lares. House gods."
"House gods," Percy said. "Like ... smaller than real gods, but larger than apartment gods? — Rick Riordan

I've definitely had obstacles in my career - my whole entire career - to stay a certain weight, to get smaller than I have been, but I look at my family, I look at where I come from and that's not really in our genes. — Raven-Symone

Is this true on smaller scales too? Apart from a visible fragment is everybody largely invisible - invisible like the magic part of magic mushrooms and the song part of songbirds? Maybe the balance between one's visibility and invisibility is like the balance between the salt and the water in the blood, delicate and critical, as becomes obvious when the balance deteriorates: people with an invisibility deficiency seem like paper dolls, subject to crumple. Other people have the opposite problem: they cannot be seen building a bicycle, nor making lentil soup, nor knitting a green wool sweater by candlelight; neither can you look down from your second-story window in the morning and see them tromping off through the snow — Amy Leach

I like having a smaller family. I think the more people you have in the family, the more people there are to have problems with. — Mackenzie Rosman

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands. — H.L. Mencken