A Quote by Michel de Montaigne

An orator of past times declared that his calling was to make small things appear to be grand.

Michel de Montaigne

Quote Topics

All Things Appear Calling Grand His Make Orator Past Small Small Things Things Times

Quote Author

Michel de Montaigne
French - Philosopher
February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592

This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort or minute objects.

Robert Grosseteste

If a man has any brains at all, let him hold on to his calling, and, in the grand sweep of things, his turn will come at last.

William McCune

The orator is thereby an orator that keeps his feet ever on a fact.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I did not share the enthusiasm of certain politicians for the National Front leader, it was because I had noticed, in the past, some strange contradictions between Mossadeq's declared ends and his actions. Officially he defended nationalist anti-colonialism and was the most intransigent patriot who declared that no concessions or advantages should be granted to foreign powers. He described his doctrine as a "negative balance" and in fact his greatest failing was that he was negative.

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Waiting times are growing times and learning times. As you quiet your heart, you enter His peace...as you sense your weakness, you receive His strength...as you lay down your will, you hear His calling.

Roy Lessin

We hear in these days a great deal respecting rights--the rights of private judgment, the rights of labor, the rights of property, and the rights of man. Rights are grand things, divine things in this world of God's; but the way in which we expound these rights, alas! seems to me to be the very incarnation of selfishness. I can see nothing very noble in a man who is forever going about calling for his own rights. Alas! alas! for the man who feels nothing more grand in this wondrous, divine world than his own rights.

Frederick William Robertson

Originally the structure was . . . a modern narrator who would appear intermittently and talk about his memories of his grandmother, which would then be juxtaposed against scenes from the past. But the stories from the past were always more interesting that the things in the present. I find this almost endemic to modern plays that veer between past and present. . . . So as we've gone on developing GOLDEN CHILD, the scenes from the past have become more dominant, and all that remains of the present are these two little bookends that frame the action.

David Henry Hwang

Socrates said, our only knowledge was "To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant Science enough, which levels to an ass Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present. Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas! Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent, That he himself felt only "like a youth Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth."

Lord Byron

I have read of a glass kept in an idol temple in Smyrna that would make beautiful things appear deformed, and deformed things appear beautiful; carnal sense is such a glass to wicked men, it makes heavenly things which are beautiful to appear deformed, and earthly things which are deformed to appear beautiful.

Ralph Venning

There is no necessity for the man who means to be an orator to understand what is really just but only what would appear so to the majority of those who will give judgment; and not what is really good or beautiful but whatever will appear so; because persuasion comes from that and not from the truth.

Plato

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

His time was past, her handmaid Irri declared. No man should live longer than his teeth.

George R. R. Martin

How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.

Charles Caleb Colton

Youth, hope, and love: To build a new life on a ruined life, To make the future fairer than the past, And make the past appear a troubled dream.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You have to make that stand out from the rest of the three hours. There are times when I'm having fun and being loose, and there are times when I'm ultra serious - calling the Giants/Patriots in the Super Bowl is a lot different than calling the Giants/Cubs game last Saturday. There are different levels of intensity, and I try to respect that when I'm doing it.