“So far as it goes, a small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.”

—  Lucretius

Dum taxat, rerum magnarum parva potest res
exemplare dare et vestigia notitiae.
Book II, lines 123–124 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Original

Dum taxat, rerum magnarum parva potest res exemplare dare et vestigia notitiai.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "So far as it goes, a small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge." by Lucretius?
Lucretius photo
Lucretius 45
Roman poet and philosopher -94–-55 BC

Related quotes

Virgil photo

“If we may compare small things with great.”
Si parva licet componere magnis.

Virgil Georgics

Book IV, line 176 (tr. Fairclough). Cf. Eclogues 1.23.
Georgics (29 BC)

“He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 13.
Context: In the popular arena, one can tell … that the average man … imagines that an industrious acquisition of particulars will render him a man of knowledge. With what pathetic trust does he recite his facts! He has been told that knowledge is power, and knowledge consists of a great many small things.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“Great men are sometimes so even in small things.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 188.

Corrie ten Boom photo

“Child, you have to learn to see things in the right proportions. Learn to see great things great and small things small.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer
William Bradford photo

“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.”

William Bradford (1590–1657) English Separatist leader in Leiden, Holland and in Plymouth Colony (1590-1657)

Ch. 7.

William Alcott photo

“None, so far as I know, will affirm, or at least with any show of reason maintain, that anatomy, so far as that goes, is in favor of flesh-eating.”

William Alcott (1798–1859) American physician and author

Source: Vegetable Diet (1838), p. 225

Napoleon Hill photo

“If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author
Robert Grosseteste photo

“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 of minute objects.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

De iride (On the rainbow) Note this prediction of optical scientific instruments like the telescope and microscope, not to be utilized until 250 years later.

“The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Right Thing," ll. 7-9
The Far Field (1964)
Context: God bless the roots! — Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.

John Ogilby photo

“Great things to compare with Small.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Bucolicks
Variant: If I may great things compare with Small.

Related topics