# Miniature

Miniature is a noun which could mean: a greatly diminished size or form; a reduced scale, a small version of something; a model of reduced scale; a small, highly detailed painting; a portrait miniature; the art of painting such highly detailed miniature works; an illustration in an illuminated manuscript; a musical composition which is short in duration; a token in a game (gaming) representing a unit or character; lettering in red; rubric distinction; and a particular feature or trait. Its derived terms are miniaturist and miniaturism.
    CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

## Quotes

    Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

### A - F

* Mughal painting is a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting, with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the court of the Mughal Empire (16th - 19th centuries), and later spread to other Indian courts, both Muslim and Hindu, and later Sikh.
** Sana Mahmoud Abbasi in: A Comparison Study between Rajput & Mughal Indian Miniature Paintings Volume : 2, Issue : 2, February 2013, Indian Journal of Research
* My native city, with the interior of every house and every creature therein, lay open to my view in miniature. We mounted higher, and lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me.
** Edwin Abbott Abbott, in: Rudy von Bitter Rucker, Rudy Rucker The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985, p. 28
* The Air Force has it far worse than the Navy in terms of existential fears, primarily due to the rapid rise and unbelievable dissemination of drones, where seemingly now every military unit has their own miniature air wing of what would have recently passed as toys.
** Thomas P.M. Barnett in:New Air Force Mission: Cyberwar Belongs to Us, Time, 11 July 2012
* This miniature book, made up entirely of the text above [Study Bible by Charles Ryre], was hand set and printed by Doris V. Welsh, a former member of the Newberry Library.
** Bible in: The NAME Above All Names (the Uniqueness of Jesus Christ), Lulu.com, 2007, p. 9
* In the seventeenth century, it was held by some that inside a human sperm there was a minute human being - a [[w:Homunculus|homunculus - that was planted inside the womb. Development consisted of the miniature homunculus enlarging and passing through birth and on to maturity-just like inflating a balloon.
** John Tyler Bonner in: Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales, Princeton University Press
* In the Seljuk period, figurative themes of Turco-Mongol character are some what apparent in all the minor arts in both Iran and Iraq. The true Persian miniature, however, which is indisputably the most perfect figurative art on the soil of Islam, did not come into the world until after the conquest of Iran by the Mongols, and more precisely under the rule of the Īl-Khāns (1256). It is modeled upon Chinese painting with its perfect blend of calligraphy and w:Illustration|illustration...The link between writing and image remains fundamental to Persian miniatures, which, belongs, as a whole, to the art of books; all the famous miniaturists were calligraphers before becoming painters.
** Titus Burckhard in: Art of Islam: Language and Meaning, World Wisdom, Inc, 2009, P.37
* By reason of its normative character, the Persian miniature can serve to express a contemplative vision; this particular quality is partly due to the Shiʿite milieu in which the boundary between religious law and free inspiration is far less trenchant than in the Sunni one.
** Titus Burckhardt in: "Art of Islam: Language and Meaning", p. 38
* A meek bank clerk who oversees the shipment of bullion joins with an eccentric neighbor to steal gold bars and smuggle them out of the country as miniature Eiffel Towers.
** Charles Crichton et al., in :The Lavender Hill Mob, Optimum Classic, 2006
* Their study [Soliloquy] is particularly fruitful in enabling us to grasp something of the distinctive quality of Shakespeare's craftsmanship, being in-miniature reflections of his art of language and characterization, and his skill of dovetailing in the construction.
** Wolfgang Clement in: Shakespeare's Soliloquies, Psychology Press, 23 December 2004, p. 1
* The story of miniature railways began with the construction of large model locomotives. Some were built to publicize the work of manufacturers of full-size equipment. Others were built by skilled machinists for their own amusement. It was some time before the first complete miniature railways were constructed with track, rolling stock and all other paraphernalia needed to create a working railway system, but once the possibilities were widely understood the number of railways steadily increased. Since the last quarter of the nineteenth century they have been a feature of life on country estates and in many private gardens.
** Michael Croft in: Miniature Railways, Osprey Publishing, 4 March 2008, p. 4
* This year [1930], when we all needed something to take our minds off our troubles, miniature golf did it . . . . If we cannot find bread, we are satisfied with the circus.
** Elmer Davis in: Lee Foster Hartman Harper's Magazine, Volume 162, Harper's Magazine Company, 1931, p. 5
* Remembering that man is indeed the microcosm, the universe in miniature, the Divine Dance of the future should be able to convey with its slightest gestures some significance of the universe.
** Ruth St. Denis in: Ron Geaves, Theodore Gabriel Sufism in Britain, A&C Black, 7 November 2013, p. 64
* Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10$^{-12gms}$, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.
** Michael Denton in: Benjamin Wiker, Jonathan Witt A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature, InterVarsity Press, 12 July 2006, p. 18
* The inflexible path along which he moved would not deviate in that direction. It would not turn him that way. The golden figure in that scene, the miniature doll in that room, was only distantly related to him. It was himself, but a faraway self.
** Philip K. Dick in: Robert Silverberg Strange Gifts: Science Fiction Stories by Alfred Bester, Gordon R. Dickson, Philip K. Dick, and More!, Wildside Press LLC, 1 March 2009, p. 43
* The tree was evidently aged, from the size of its stem. It was about six feet high, the branches came out from the stem in a regular and symmetrical manner, and it had all the appearance of a tree in miniature.
** Robert Fortune in The Horticultural review and botanical magazine, Volume 1, 1851, p. 577
* Thinking is an experimental dealing with small quantities of energy, just as a general moves miniature figures over a map before setting his troops in action.
** Sigmund Freud in: Familiar Quotations: A Collection of passages, phrases and proverbs traced to their sources in ancient and modern literature, John Bartlett, 1968, p. 834
* ONCE when the snow of the year was beginning to fall, We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, “Whose colt?” A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall, The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head And snorted to us. And then we saw him bolt. We heard the miniature thunder where he fled, And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and gray, Like a shadow across instead of behind the flakes. The little fellow’s afraid of the falling snow. He never saw it before. It isn’t play With the little fellow at all. He’s running away. He wouldn’t believe when his mother told him,...
** Robert Frost in: Mark Richardson Robert Frost in Context, Cambridge University Press, 14-Apr-2014, p. 375
* Think of the Queen Mary— the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trimtab.
** Buckminster Fuller in: David L. Dotlich,et al., The 2010 Pfeiffer Annual: Leadership Development, John Wiley & Sons, 19 January 2010, p. 221

### G - L

* It [smart contact lens] is likely to spur a range of other innovations towards miniaturizing technology and using it in wearable devices to help people monitor.
** Google, in: Google unveils 'smart contact lens' to measure glucose levels, BBC, 17 January 2014
* It is relatively simple to set up a fantasy campaign, and better still, it will cost almost nothing. In fact you will not even need miniature figures, although their occasional employment is recommended for real spectacle when battles are fought.
** Gary Gygax in: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Pat Harrigan Second Person: Role-playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, MIT Press, 2007, p. 5
* The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally, this is not a conscious, intellectual process.
** Carl Jung in: Erica Jong Parachutes & Kisses, Penguin, 3 August 2006, p. 143
* The whole life of the empire went back to the senate — later to the Caesar, the all-powerful, omniscient god of the empire. Every province, every district had its capital in miniature, its small portion of Roman sovereignty to govern every aspect ...
** Peter Kropotkin in: Subrata Mukherjee, Sushila Ramaswamy Prince Peter Kropotkin: His Thoughts and Works, Deep and Deep Publications, 01-Jan-1998, p. 374
* Ottoman miniature painting gave up the warmth, the whimsy, the theatricality, and the multiple meanings of Iranian art in favor of realism, which was also expressed in Ottoman maps, fortress plans and geographies.
** Ira M. Lapidus in: Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History, Cambridge University Press, 29 October 2012, p. 446
* ...the theological standpoint on which Luther based his intervention, and it shows in miniature the rich Augustinian spirituality of penance and the progress that he had forged in his early works.
** Martin Luther in: John C. Olin et al., Luther, Erasmus, and the Reformation:a Catholic-Protestant reappraisal, Fordham University Press, 1969, p. 46
* Demons aren't bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round, like those water filled balls which produce a miniature snowstorm when you shake them.
** Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman in: Review: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Booking In Heels

### M - R

* While I pride myself on trying to be creative in all areas of my life, I have occasionally gone overboard, like the time I decided to bring to a party a salad that I constructed, on a huge rattan platter, to look like a miniature scale model of the Gardens of Babylon.
** Gregory Maguire in: Meet the Writers: Biography, barnesandnoble.com
* Sixtenth century represents the zenith of Ottoman miniature painting. During this time, the influences of the late 15th and early 16th centuries—the encounters with western European portraiture, the growing emphasis on historiographical painting, the impact of ;nautical cartography, and the enduring influence of the Persian legacy – began to crystallize into distinctly Ottoman styles and genres.
** Gábor Ágoston, Bruce Alan Masters in: Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire, Infobase Publishing, 1 January 2009, p. 268
* The great composers of the Romantic period all wrote works that we today call "miniatures." They are not large-scale works like concertos, sonatas, etc. but rather small, self-contained works that usually stick to one or two sentiments. Some famous examples are Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte ("Songs without words"), which are the length of a short song and organized accordingly, yet are for solo piano. Schubert chose to call some of his piano miniatures Moments musicaux ("Musical moments"), which designates them as short works. Chopin had his preludes; Brahms called many of his works in this genre "Intermezzo," a word that means something in-between. Like Chopin's preludes, they really stand alone, or in a set of similarly-titled pieces.
** Piano Miniatures, in:The Piano Miniature in the Romantic Period, Music iPreciation WIKI
* Schools are miniature universes. They encompass, on a child's scale, the same kind of domination and repression as the most despotically organised societies.
** Octave Mirbeau in: Sébastien Roch, Dedalus, 2000, p. 69
* India has been a cauldron of dreams, ideas and aspirations of the humankind and this is a distinctive character of India, and Indian in that sense represents the world in miniature. If a system can succeed in India, it will indicate the possibility of success in the world as a whole.
** K. R. Narayanan in:Dalit Identity In The New Millennium (Set Of 10 Vols.), Commonwealth Publishers, 1 January 2003, p. 10
* Plant lovers looking for new and exciting kinds to grow, orchid growers seeking more variety, will find unending fascination and beauty in miniature orchids. It has been proven that orchids can be grown on windowsills and under lights as well as in green houses. Miniature orchids – those ranging in height from ½ inch to 6 inches offer everything that the larger one do.
** Rebecca Tyson Northen in: Miniature Orchids and How to Grow Them, Courier Dover Publications, 1980 , p. 9
* The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.
** Novalis in: Thomas Carlyle Collected works, Volume 7, Chapman and Hall, 1869, p. 294
* Rance: A search party must be organized. What have you in the way of dogs? Prentice: A spaniel and a miniature poodle. Rance: Let them be unleashed!
** Joe Orton in: Orton Complete Plays: Entertaining Mr Sloane; Loot; What the Butler; Ruffian; Erpingham Camp; Funeral Games; Good & ..., Bloomsbury Publishing, 20 March 2014, p. 315
* One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature.
** Albert Pike in: In Pieces, Robert Peake, 2012, p. 4
* He could, though, just make out a miniature replica of Cori Celesti, upon whose utter peak the world’s quarrelsome and somewhat bourgeois gods lived in palace of marble, alabaster and uncut moquette three-piece suits they had chosen to call Dunmanifestin.
** Terry Pratchett in: The Light Fantastic: (Discworld Novel 2), Random House, 24 November 2009, p. 18
* It might help if you imagine an inner living dimension within yourself in which you create, in miniature psychic form, all the exterior conditions that you know. Simply put, you do exactly this. Your thoughts, feelings and mental pictures can be called incipient exterior events, for in one way or another each of these is materialized into physical reality.
** Jane Roberts in: The Nature of Personal Reality, p. 35
* I've never seen anywhere in the world as beautiful as Kashmir. It has something to do with the fact that the valley is very small and the mountains are very big, so you have this miniature countryside surrounded by the Himalayas, and it's just spectacular. And it's true, the people are very beautiful too.
** Salman Rushdie in’The Art of Fiction p. 186 quoted in:Chapter 4 Recurring Motifs in the Non-Fictional Works of Salman Rushdie and Rohinton Mistry, shodhganga.inflibnet
* I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is - at last what – I have found.
** Bertrand Russell in: What I Have Lived For, Brighthouse

### S - Z

* We had a large old-fashioned battery, a wet cell, in the kitchen, hooked up to an electric bell. The bell was too complicated to understand at first, and the battery, to my mind, was more immediately attractive, for it contained an earthenware tube with a massive, gleaming copper cylinder in the middle, immersed in a bluish liquid, all this inside an outer glass casing, also filled with fluid, and containing a slimmer bar of zinc. It looked like a miniature chemical factory of sorts, and I thought I saw little bubbles of gas, at times, coming off the zinc. The Daniell cell (as it was called) had a thoroughly nineteenth-century, Victorian look about it, and this extraordinary object was making electricity all by itself—not by rubbing or friction, but just by the virtue of its own chemical reactions.
** Oliver Sacks in: Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, Pan Macmillan, 16 June 2011, p. 119
* The first of the “request” prayers in the daily Amidah is a fractal. It replicates in miniature the structure of the Amidah as a whole (Praise-Request-Thanks).
** Jonathan Sacks in: Hebrew Daily Prayer Book, HarperCollins UK, 14 April 2011, p. 32
* Mushrooms are miniature pharmaceutical factories, and of the thousands of mushroom species in nature, our ancestors and modern scientists have identified several dozen that have a unique combination of talents that improve our health.
** Paul Stamets in: TEDMED: Can Mushrooms Help the Immune System Fight Cancer? Interview With Paul Stamets, Mycologist, huffingtonpost.com, 11 February 2011
* Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good time.
* Dr. Strangelove in: Quotes for Maj. T.J. 'King' Kong (Character) in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb , IMDb,
* The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frederic Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures.
** Cara Sutherland in: The Statue of Liberty for Know-It-Alls, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC., 1 January 2008, p. 3
* By the beginning of the twentieth century, flowers, faces and miniature landscapes began to appear beside patterns of pointed stars, and to this day annual contests reward the most creative artists in this tradition.
** Unesco in: Oxherding and oxcart traditions in Costa Rica, Unesco.org
* Since earliest times men have loved to make small likenesses of themselves and of their animals. The ancient Greeks kept images of the gods in their houses to watch over the inmates; they place statutes in graves to please the dead, and they offered others to the nymphs of a spring so that water might flow fresh in the fountain. Such ideas lingered long and sustained a craft that gradually turned from religious to artistic pre-occupations and from the production of primitive images to true miniature sculpture.
** Dorothy B. Thompson in: Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, ASCSA, 21 November 1959, p. 49
* The selection range in miniature sculpture are: religious, frivolous, theatrical, funeral, not to mention vases and lamps. The greatest virtuosity was reached during the Hellenistic period (325-86BC).
** Dorothy B. Thompson in: "Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora"
* Artifacts of our oldest cultures give evidence that the human race has always made things in miniature. The early American Indians made ...dolls, toys, and miniature implements for their children. Toys have been found in Egyptian tombs as well as in archaeological digs of ancient China. The fascination for things in miniature is still strong for most people today.
** Dorothy B. Thompson in: Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, ASCSA, 21 November 1959, p. 49
* In western India, Jainism, an Indian religion which expounded renunciation and asceticism, gave rise to unique miniatures which flowered into the school of Rajasthani painting. The miniature paintings commenced with the patronage of the Jain merchants of Gujarat in the fourteenth century. The painting they commissioned were of illustrations of Jain Royalty and deities which were painted on dried palm leaves and bound in wooden covers...when paper was introduced in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, as somewhat large format became available...They were part of the illustrated texts which were preserved in temple libraries. The illustrated text inspired much of the later Hindu miniature paintings.
** Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models, Abhinav Publications, 1 January 2003, P.119
* The themes of Mithuna and Maithuna continued in paintings created during the Mughal and British rules (15-19th CE), mainly in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The erotic themes of the Hindu miniature paintings represented loves of divine couples.
** Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.119
* In such miniature paintings the theme of lyric poetry was depicted with strong confident lines, throbbing colours, and bold patterns, but controlled workmanship. The lively landscape created a standard for these outstanding illustrations.
** Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.120
* The ornamental borders framing the miniature paintings seem to be inspired by the decorative designs on the Mughal carpets.
** Madhu Bazaz Wangu in: "Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings, and Models", P.147
* A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, water colour, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th-century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreo types and photography in the mid-19th century. They were especially valuable in introducing people to each other over distances; a nobleman proposing the marriage of his daughter might send a courier with her portrait to visit potential suitors. Soldiers and sailors might carry miniatures of their loved ones while traveling, or a wife might keep one of her husband while he was away. The first miniaturists used water colour to paint on stretched vellum. During the second half of the 17th century, vitreous enamel painted on copper became increasingly popular, especially in France. In the 18th century, miniatures were painted with water colour on ivory, which had now become relatively cheap. As small in size as 40 mm × 30 mm, portrait miniatures were often used as personal w:Mementosmementos or as jewellery or snuff box covers.
** George C. Williamson in: "The Work of Alyn Williams, P.R.M.S. (President of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters)" Pamphlet – January 1, 1920
* These are the visionary, mystical moments, when a man 'completes his partial mind'. His everyday conscious self is only a small part of the mind, like the final crescent of the moon. In moments of crisis, the full moon suddenly appears.
** Colin Wilson in Poetry and Mysticism, p. 156 (1969)
* And what you did was, you take the staff to a special room in Tanis, a map room with a miniature of the city all laid out on the floor, and if you put the staff in a certain place, at a certain time of day, the sun shone through here — and made a beam that came down on the floor here. And gave you the exact location of the Well of Souls.
** Ryder Windham in: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the lost ark, Scholastic Inc., 2008, p. 38