Motivational Quotes

Greatness

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

- Charles, Ray

Best Quotes about Greatness

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

Forster, Edward M.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

I want to be great, something special.

Leonard, Sugar Ray

It is necessary to be slightly under employed if you are to do something significant.

Watson, James

Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world.

Chesterfield, Lord

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

Syrus, Publilius

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

Halsey, William F.

At most, the greatest persons are but great wens, and excrescences; men of wit and delightful conversation, but as morals for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole.

Donne, John

Let us never forget that the greatest man is never more than an animal disguised as a god.

Picabia, Francis

10.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. [Twelfth Night]

Shakespeare, William

11.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

I never wanted to be famous. I only wanted to be great.

Charles, Ray

13.

Greatness, in order to gain recognition, must all too often consent to ape greatness.

Rostand, Jean

14.

All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

Bowen, Elizabeth

15.

Greatness does not approach him who is forever looking down.

Hitopadesa

16.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Carlyle, Thomas

17.

Man is only truly great when he acts from his passions.

Disraeli, Benjamin

18.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

Ruskin, John

19.

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

Truman, Harry S

21.

The search after the great men is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

Nobody's ever the greatest anything.

Polak, Maralyn

23.

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.

Mcgovern, George

24.

No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.

Hazlitt, William

25.

Neither wealth or greatness render us happy.

La Fontaine, Jean De

26.

It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

Montesquieu, Charles De

27.

Great people are meteors designed to burn so that the earth may be lighted.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

28.

A great person is one who affects the mind of their generation.

Disraeli, Benjamin

29.

No one who has come to true greatness has not felt in some degree that his life belongs to the people, and what God has given them he gives it for mankind.

Brooks, Phillips

30.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

Swift, Jonathan

31.

Well, I wouldn't say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.

Truman, Harry S

32.

Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world has just gone on. I mean, look at Napoleon --but we went right on. Look at Harpo Marx --the world went around, it didn't stop for a second. It's sad but true. John Kennedy, right?

Dylan, Bob

33.

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

34.

No great thing is created suddenly.

Epictetus

35.

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

Baudrillard, Jean

36.

Greatness be nothing unless it be lasting.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

37.

There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.

Hugo, Victor

38.

It's not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.

Gardner, Edward

39.

He's the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth, Vermont. [On Calvin Coolidge]

Darrow, Clarence

40.

The world isn't kept running because it's a paying proposition. (God doesn't make a cent on the deal.) The world goes on because a few men in every generation believe in it utterly, accept it unquestioningly; they underwrite it with their lives.

Miller, Henry

41.

After a fellow gets famous it does not take long for someone to bob up that used to sit next to him in school.

Hubbard, Kin

42.

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

Froude, James A.

43.

What millions died that Caesar might be great?

Campell, Joseph

44.

To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.

Horace

45.

In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer --the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.

Taylor, A. J. P.

46.

Great woman belong to history and to self sacrifice.

Hunt, Leigh

47.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

48.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

La Bruyere, Jean De

49.

Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.

King Jr. Martin Luther

50.

Because you are a great lord, you believe yourself to be a great genius. You took the trouble to be born, but no more.

Beaumarchais, Pierre De