Petty Quotes

There is nothing more vapid than a philistine petty bourgeois existence with its farthings, victuals, vacuous conversations, and useless conventional virtue.

Anton Chekhov
- Petty
The narrow-minded and petty sticklers for the formalities which hedge rank and office are the true vulgarians, however observant they be of etiquette.

John Lancaster Spalding
- True
- Petty

I think there's a suspicion in the South of people putting on airs. You see it in most successful Southern politicians, but you also see it in someone like Richard Petty, who may be a multimillionaire stock car driver, but he's also beloved because he has a nice self-deprecatory way about him.

John Shelton Reed
- People
- May
- Nice
What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.

Saint Augustine
- Great
- Art
- Earth
People are very hungry for something new. I think they are interested in being called to be a part of something larger than the sort of small, petty, slash-and-burn politics that we have been seeing over the last several years.

Barack Obama
- People
- Thinking
- Small
A man has only a limited number of ways in which he can express strong emotions or violent passions. He uses the same gestures as when what he feels is only petty and unimportant. He utters the same ordinary words.

Tadeusz Borowski
- Men
- Strong
- Words
There are petty-minded people who cannot endure to be reminded of their ignorance because, since they are usually quite blind to all things, quite foolish, and quite ignorant, they never question anything, and are persuaded that they see clearly what in fact they never see at all, save through the darkness of their own dispositions.

Madeleine de Souvre
To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, 'I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot.'

Plutarch
- Good
- Great
- Petty