If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
Denis Diderot

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
Emile M. Cioran

It is better to lose everything you have to keep the balance of justice level, than to live a life of petty privilege devoid of true freedom.
Bryant H. McGill

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham

Its smallness is not petty; on the contrary, it is profound.
Jan Morris

Petty laws breed great crimes.
Ouida

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Richard M. Nixon

The Band was always famous for its retirements; we'd go and play and get a little petty cash together, and then not see each other till it was time to fill our pockets up again.
Rick Danko

The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, 'culture.'
George Grosz

The man of petty ambition if invited to dinner will be eager to be set next his host.
Theophrastus

The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.
Xun Zi

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
Anton Chekhov

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.
Xun Zi

To be able to always have a super sense of who I was and my own real identity and be petty and seem informed and always thinking in thoughts would be great.
Jeff Goldblum

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.
Alexander Herzen

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop

We're not going to pay attention to the silliness and the petty comments. And quite frankly, women have joined me in this effort, and so it's not about appearances. It's about effectiveness.
Katherine Harris

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Tahar Ben Jelloun

Whether the gentleman is capable or not, he is loved all the same; conversely the petty man is loathed all the same.
Xun Zi

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Ivan Turgenev