“Deviation from either truth or duty is a downward path, and none can say where the descent will end. – 'He that despiseth small things shall fall by little and little.”

Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)

"A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839). Source: Thomas de Quincy. On Murder (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006), 84

Mogadiscio Domestic Service in Somali http://www.biyokulule.com/1978_coup.htm, 0448 GMT (1 May 1978).

Pearls of Wisdom

on a documentary film about climate change, An Inconvenient Truth
2000s

Of Delays
Essays (1625)

Dubliners (1914)
Variant: His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Source: "The Dead"
Context: Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Revolution (2014)

18
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)