Pedantry is the showy display of knowledge which crams our heads with learned lumber and then takes out our brains to make room for it.
Many blunder in business through inability or an unwillingness to adopt new ideas. I have seen many a success turn to failure also, because the thought which should be trained on big things is cluttered up with the burdensome detail of little things.
Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.
While I am busy with little things, I am not required to do greater things.
The pathetic almost always consists in the detail of little events.
Details often kill initiative, but there have been few successful men who weren't good at details. Don't ignore details. Lick them.
In a major matter no details are small.
Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
The fastidious are unfortunate; nothing satisfies them.
Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite -- that particular peach is but a detail.
Measure three times before you cut once.
— Proverb
Carelessness is worse than a thieve.
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.
It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.
I have always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.