By Little and Little

One makes a better world by what Dostoevsky liked to call “microscopic actions.” When you walk down the street, Zossima tells the other monks, don’t scowl. A kindly look can shift a person’s mood and affect his next encounter, in an ever-growing chain of effects you will never see. Cast a little bread upon the waters.
–Gary Saul Morson, “The Greatest Christian Novel,” First Things

There is nothing, Sir, too  little for so little a creature as man.  It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible. 
–Samuel Johnson, in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson