“...life has taught me to make no distinction between a hero and a little man, between great events and small trifles. From my point of view, men and events are all more or less the same size.”

“An invincible determination can accomplish almost anything and in this lies the great distinction between great men and little men.”

“Second, we make no distinction between man and nature: the human essence of nature and the natural essence of man become one within nature in the form of production or industry, just as they do within the life of man as a species. Industry is then no longer considered from the extrinsic point of view of utility, but rather from the point of view of its fundamental identity with nature as production of man and by man.”

“Size, the mere number of square inches, of a picture, counts for nothing. A small picture may be quite as satisfying as a large; for remember that, as compared with the size of the mountain itself, the difference between a picture of it, thirty inches long, and one of six inches, is less than trifling.”

“How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that makes a turning point.”

“Yet actual physical size has an emotional meaning. We relate everything to our own size, and our emotional response to size is controlled by the fact that men on the average are between five and six feet high... If practical considerations allowed me, cost of material, of transport, etc., I should like to work on large carvings more often than I do. The average in-between size does not disconnect an idea enough from prosaic everyday life. The very small or the very big [sculpture] takes on an added size emotion.”

“The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.”

“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.”

“An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.”

“Life has been very hard on me, but, at the same time, it has taught me a great deal.”