Source: Les Misérables
“Great acts are made up of small deeds.”
“In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.”
Source: In Watermelon Sugar
Interview http://americanindian.net/asimov.html in Southwest Airlines Magazine 1979)
General sources
The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 33
Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 22 October 1882, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/237.htm
1880s, 1882
Context: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain (1845)
Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938), Ch. 5 "The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism"
Context: Above all it is necessary to cure the labour movement of its inner ossification and rid it of the empty sloganeering of the political parties, so that it may forge ahead intellectually and develop within itself the creative conditions which must precede the realisation of Socialism. The practical attainability of this goal must become for the workers an inner certainty and must ripen into an ethical necessity. The great final goal of Socialism must emerge from all the practical daily struggles, and must give them a social character. In the pettiest struggle, born of the needs of the moment, there must be mirrored the great goal of social liberation, and each such struggle must help to smooth the way and strengthen the spirit which transforms the inner longing of its bearers into will and deed.
Epigram.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
