Look for a lovely thing and you will find it,
It is not far ---
It never will be far.
(sara teasdale)
Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
(mother teresa)
Small events and choices determine the direction of our lives just as small helms determine the directions of great ships.
(m. russell ballard)
Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things
and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.
(lawrence bell)
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.
(sir arthur conan doyle)
It is not the straining for great things that is most effective;
it is the doing of the little things,
the common duties, a little better and better.
(elizabeth stuart phelps)
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
(thornton wilder)
To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face;
to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains;
to approach my work with a clean mind;
to hold ever before me,
even in the doing of little things,
the ultimate purpose toward which I am working;
to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart;
to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours;
to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep
and the joy that comes from work well done
- this is how I desire to waste wisely my days.
(thomas dekker)
The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—
the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
(samuel taylor coleridge)
The details make life holy.
If you want a little happiness in life don’t forget to look at the little things.
It is a poet’s work to see the incidental, pluck it,
place an appropriate silence around both sides and see the profound
in what passes for a passing moment.
It is an artist’s job to as much discover art as create it.
(noah ben shea)
Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent
and the Divine is shining through it all the time.
This is not just a nice story or a fable.
It is true.
(thomas merton)
Where there is too much,
something is missing.
(hasidic saying)
We ought not to grow tired of doing little things for the love of God,
who regards not the greatness of the work,
but the love with which it is performed.
(brother lawrence)
Look closely. The beautiful may be small.
(emmanuel kant)
and then this one, which doesn’t really go with the theme of little, but it is from c.s. lewis, so all will be forgiven (and i will tie it all together after the quote. you knew i would do that, didn’t you?)...
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
(c.s. lewis, mere christianity)
isn’t it amazing that when God gives you a word for the year (like the word “little”) that He then sends you so many great things to help you understand what He wants you to do this year.... and maybe more importantly what He does NOT want you to do this year... and that even if a lot of those things don’t seem to make sense OR to be very earth shakingly HUGE things that He is doing in your life, you realize that one day you may come to see that they were essential to what He was building in your life...