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Little Things: Quotations from Burning Words

Love's secret is to be always doing things for God, and not to mind because they are such little ones.— F. W. FABER

At Toulon, Napoleon, looking out of the batteries, drew back a step to let some one take his place. The next moment the new arrived was killed. That step brought the French Empire, and made possible the bloody roll of its victories and defeats. The rout at Waterloo turned on a shower of rain hindering Grouchy's advance. The resolution of a moment, with some men, has been the turning-point of infinite issues to a world.— J. C. GEIKIE

One of the best things in the gospel of Jesus is the stress it lays on small things. It ascribes more value to quality than to quantity; it teaches that God does not ask how much we do, but how we do it.— J. F. CLARKE

Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, "Give me something huge to fight, - and I should enjoy that - but why make me sweep the dust?"— CHARLES KINGSLEY

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.— LONGFELLOW

The reason why those who are converted to Christ often make so poor a work of rectifying their old habits, is that they lay down their work in the very places where it needs to be prosecuted most carefully, that is, in their common employments. They do not live to God in that which is least.— HORACE BUSHNELL

All the mischiefs which befall Christian character, and destroy its growth, are such as lie in the ordinary humble duties of life. Let us try always to feel that in the commonest things we may hear the command of God, that the trifles of each day trifles though they be - vibrate and sound with the reverberation of His great voice. The best things are nearest; light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of God just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things of life. For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life.— EDWARD GARRETT

We are to work after no set fashion of high endeavor; but to walk with Jesus, performing, as it were, a ministry on foot, that we may stop at the humblest matter, and prove our fidelity there.— HORACE BUSHNELL

There are no trifles in the moral universe of God. Speak me a word to-day; - it shall go ringing on through the ages.— Wm. M. PUNSHON

My brother, life is all great. Life is great because it is the aggregation of littles. As the chalk cliffs that rear themselves hundreds of feet above the crawling sea beneath, are all made up of the minute skeletons of microscopic animalculæ ; so life, mighty and awful as having eternal consequences, life that towers beetling over the sea of eternity, is made up of these minute incidents, of these trifling duties, of these small tasks; and if thou art not "faithful in that which is least," thou art unfaithful in the whole. God, who prepares His work for the ages, accomplishes it by the feeblest instruments. It is the method of His providence to produce great results from inconsiderable means. The law which prevades the kingdom of nature is discerned in the history of mankind. Truth makes silent progress, like the water that trickles behind the rocks, and loosens them from the mountain on which they rest. Suddenly the hidden operation is revealed, and a single day suffices to lay bare the work of years, if not of ages.— JOHN LANAHAN

Duty is duty, conscience is conscience, right is right, and wrong is wrong, whatever sized type they may be printed in. 66 Large" or "small" are not words for the vocabulary of conscience.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN