"Piddling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hours, A people, haggard with defeat, Asks if there be a God; yet sets its teeth, Faces calamity, and goes into the fire Another than it was. And in wild hours A people, roaring ripe With victory, rises, menaces, stands renewed, Sheds its old piddling aims, Approves its virtue, puts behind itself The comfortable dream, and goes, Armoured and militant, New-pithed, new-souled, new-visioned, up the steeps To those great altitudes, whereat the weak Live not. But only the strong Have leave to strive, ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... to piddling game, exercising his genius upon his own tutor, who attracted his attention, by endeavouring to season his mind with certain political maxims, the fallacy of which he had discernment enough to perceive. Scarce a day passed in ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of Norway's size trying to be on a level with Switzerland? Why do you think Sweden is taking such great strides forward now? Not because it looks to Switzerland, or to Norway, but to Germany! Honor to Sweden for that! But what about us? We don't want to be a piddling little nation stuck up in our mountains, a nation that brings forth peace conferences, ski-runners, and an Ibsen once every thousand years; we have potentialities for a ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... howl at her brightness. I am of a solid temper, and, like these, Steer on a constant course; with mine own sword, If called into the field, I can make that right Which fearful enemies murmur at as wrong. Now, for those other piddling complaints Breath'd out in bitterness, as when they call me Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder On my poor neighbour's rights or grand incloser Of what was common to my private use, Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries, And undone orphans wash with tears ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen |
