Where is it written that one should only care about big things?

Where is it written that one should only care about big things? I fought for big things, long ago… for issues, principles, a country. Where are all of them now?... I found out something, you know. I discovered that the big things don’t love you back. They take and take, and never give in return. They’ll drain your blood, your soul, if you let them, and never let go.

I was four years old, and had long since reasoned that it was folly to expect the big things from people. It was enough to get the little things. The biggest thing, of course, was love, the nearness of somebody you love when you need somebody to be near.

Life is too short to pursue every human act to its most remote consequences; "for want of a nail, a kingdom was lost" is a commentary on fate, not the statement of a major cause of action against a blacksmith.

We were all brought up to want things and maybe the world isn't big enough for all that wanting. I don't know. I don't know anything

Where there are large powers with little ambition (which will happen sometimes, though seldom) nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes; for she has given the machinery without the vis motrix.

She says, trying uselessly to console me: 'What are you so long for in your face? Everybody forgets some small things, all the time!'

But if small things go, will large things be close behind?

If you desire many things, many things will seem but a few.

Pero la vida es corta:
viviendo, todo falta;
muriendo, todo sobra.

Kurz ist das Leben: wer dennoch großen Zielen nachjagt verfehlt das Mögliche.

All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.

A life spent chasing the mythical state of being able to do everything is less meaningful than a life of focusing on a few things that count.

If then you desire (aim at) such great things, remember that you must not (attempt to) lay hold of them with a small effort; but you must leave alone some things entirely, and postpone others for the present.

When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren’t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort.