“The mathematicians know a great deal about very little and the physicists very little about a great deal.”

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Eight, Symbolic Religious Communication, p. 147

Source: Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899), I

The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 539

Hawthorne http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/hjj/nhhj1.html, (1879) ch. I: The Early Years.

The Civil War, Book III, 68; variant translation: "In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes."

Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections