Definition of Petty at BrainyQuote.com

Definition of Petty

Petty

Little; trifling; inconsiderable; also, inferior; subordinate; as, a petty fault; a petty prince.

Related Definitions:

Also, As, Fault, Inconsiderable, Inferior, Little, Petty, Prince, Subordinate, Trifling

Petty Quotations

Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
George Carlin

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.
J. K. Rowling

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.
Richard M. Nixon

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.
Emile M. Cioran

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
Sydney J. Harris

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.
Anton Chekhov

It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
W. Somerset Maugham

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.
Denis Diderot

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop

The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.
Xun Zi

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.
Xun Zi

Whether the gentleman is capable or not, he is loved all the same; conversely the petty man is loathed all the same.
Xun Zi

I have very little respect for Nancy Reagan. There is something about her that is very petty.
Walter Annenberg

Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.
William Wycherley

It is better to lose everything you have to keep the balance of justice level, than to live a life of petty privilege devoid of true freedom.
Bryant H. McGill

Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious.
Zhuangzi

Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman's quality.
Pierre Corneille

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Graham Greene

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot

Who among us has the strength to oppose petty egoism, those petty good feelings, pity and remorse?
Ivan Turgenev

If I would go up on a high note, Eddie would want a low one. That's how petty the situation had become.
Sammy Hagar

I don't want to be a politician. I don't like politics. It's petty; it fights dirty.
John Mellencamp

What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.
Tahar Ben Jelloun

I get so tired listening to one million dollars here, one million dollars there, it's so petty.
Imelda Marcos

At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.
John Carmack

To be able to always have a super sense of who I was and my own real identity and be petty and seem informed and always thinking in thoughts would be great.
Jeff Goldblum

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.
Robert Jackson

Every man may reign secure in his petty tyranny, and spread terror and desolation around him, until the trump of the Archangel shall excite different emotions in his soul.
James Otis

The Band was always famous for its retirements; we'd go and play and get a little petty cash together, and then not see each other till it was time to fill our pockets up again.
Rick Danko

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.
Alexander Herzen

More Petty Quotations

Petty Translations

petty in German is klein

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