THE MIGHT OF LITTLE THINGS
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles, life.
YOUNG.
It is but the littleness of man that sees no greatness in trifles.—WENDELL PHILLIPS.
He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.—ECCLESIASTICUS.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.—EMERSON.
Men are led by trifles.—NAPOLEON.
"A pebble on the streamlet scant
Has turned the course of many a river."
"The bad thing about a little sin is that it won't stay little."
"Arletta's pretty feet, glistening in the brook, made her the mother of William the Conqueror," says Palgrave's "History of Normandy and England." "Had she not thus fascinated Duke Robert the Liberal, of Normandy, Harold would not have fallen at Hastings, no Anglo-Norman dynasty could have arisen, no British Empire."
We may tell which way the wind blew before the Deluge by marking the ripple and cupping of the rain in the petrified sand now preserved forever. We tell the very path by which gigantic creatures, whom man never saw, walked to the river's edge to find their food.