Size Topics

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian. In his poetry, as in Homer’s, only the simplest and most enduring features of humanity are seen, such essential parts of a man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple; we see the circles of stone, and the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life acquire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through his mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is distinguished by the few elements in the lives of its heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars and the earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless plain for their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted entire from age to age. There are but few objects to distract their sight, and their life is as unencumbered as the course of the stars they gaze at.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

It is very considerably smaller than Australia and British Somaliland put together. As things stand at present there is nothing much the Texans can do about this, and ... they are inclined to shy away from the subject in ordinary conversation, muttering defensively about the size of oranges.
—Alex Atkinson, British humor writer. repr. In Present Laughter, ed. Alan Coren (1982)

Learn to shrink yourself to the size of the company you are in. Take their tone, whatever it may be, and excell in it if you can; but never pretend to give the tone. A free conversation will no more bear a dictator than a free government will.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)