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# Weekend Words: Little
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-little/
- Published: 2014-11-16T14:30:49.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:32:25.000Z
- Description: A week after he was declared a lame duck, President Obama signed an unprecedented climate pact with China. But is it too little too late?
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/11/little.jpg)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, “Big Fishes Eat Little Fishes” (1556), pen drawing. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. (image via Web Gallery of Art)

A week after he was declared a [lame duck](https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-lame/), President Obama signed an unprecedented [climate pact](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/world/asia/deal-on-carbon-emissions-by-obama-and-xi-jinping-raises-hopes-for-upcoming-paris-climate-talks.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&ref=hyperallergic.com) with China. But is it too little too late?

> “The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.“  
>  
> **—Alben W. Barkley**

> “To get it right, be born with luck or else make it. Never give up. Get the knack of getting people to help you and also pitch in yourself. A little money helps, but what really gets it right is to never — I repeat — never under any conditions face the facts.”  
>  
> **—Ruth Gordon**

> “Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.”  
>  
> **—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe**

> “Ev’ry day a little death  
> On the lips and in the eyes,  
> In the mummers, in the pauses,  
> In the gestures, in the sighs.  
> Ev’ry day a little dies.”  
>  
> **—Stephen Sondheim, *A Little Night Music***

> “Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon.”  
>  
> **—Emily Dickinson**

> “Out of Ireland we have come.  
> Great hatred, little room,  
> Maimed us at the start.  
> I carry from my mother’s womb  
> A fanatic heart.”  
>  
> **—William Butler Yeats, “Remorse for Intemperate Speech”**

> “If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”  
>  
> **—George Carlin**

> “Man wants little here below,  
> Nor wants that little long.”  
>  
> **—Oliver Goldsmith, “Edwin and Angelina, or the Hermit”**

> “I know very little about acting. I’m just an incredibly gifted faker.”  
>  
> **—Robert Downey, Jr.**

> “Nature uses as little as possible of anything.”  
>  
> **—Johannes Kepler**